agricultural element in the borough community was signally shown during the agrarian revolution, when the townsmen rose in defence of their commons. At London in 1513, according to the account given by Holinshed, "the citizens of London finding themselves grieved with the enclosures of the common fields about Islington, Hoxton, Shoreditch and other places near to the city . . . assembled themselves on a morning and went with spades and shovels unto the same fields, and there (like diligent workmen) so bestirred themselves that within a short space all the hedges about those towns were cast down and the ditches filled. The king's council coming to the Grey Friars to understand what was meant by this doing were so answered by the mayor and council of the city that the matter was dissembled: and so when the workmen had done their work, they came home in quiet manner, and the fields were never after hedged "1. For many years Coventry was torn by dissensions over the control of the common lands. Inflammatory verses were nailed on the minster door : "The city is bond that should be free, The right is holden fro the commonalty, Our commons that at Lammas open should be cast Roman Britain. The early history of English towns is extremely obscure. Towns of During the Roman occupation municipal life attained some degree of importance, and Colchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, York and St. Albans (Verulamium) became prominent. The first four were coloniae, the fifth a municipium, and they enjoyed a privileged status. To these we may add a number of 'country towns', the capitals of Celtic cantons, Winchester, Canterbury, Silchester, Leicester, Rochester and Cirencester, but all were comparatively small, and London alone appears to have been of any real consequences. Altogether at least thirty towns flourished in different parts of the country, 1 Holinshed, Chronicles (1808), iii. 599. Similarly at Bristol: Adams's Chronicle of Bristol, 99. 3 Coventry Leet Book, ii. 577. * F. Haverfield, in Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, ii. App. 353, and in Cambridge Mediaeval History, i. 373. Ch. Petit-Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs, i. 72. For map of towns in Roman Britain, see Brown, Arts in Early England, i. 53. but they never attained the distinction which attached to the municipalities of Gaul and other provinces of the Empire. Moreover, whatever their condition in earlier times, it is improbable that many survived the English Conquest, and to all appearance there was no continuity of development between the towns of Roman Britain and those of Saxon England1. The destruction which overtook the old Roman cities was brought about by neglect rather than by violence, for the fate of Anderida, as recorded in the Chronicle 2, was doubtless exceptional. None the less, "the very sites of cities", as Kemble has observed, "vanished from the memory as they had vanished from the eye", and it has remained for modern investigators to bring to light municipalities formerly so important as Silchester and Uriconium. Everywhere the towns were abandoned, and where not actually destroyed by fire they were left bare of inhabitants, a fate which for many years befell even London and Canterbury 5. In the protracted struggle between the English invaders and the Celtic population, municipal institutions, the exotic product of an unstable civilization, were easily uprooted and swept away. But the cessation of town-life in England was necessarily only temporary. The inveterate hatred of the Britons whom they had displaced, and later the Danish incursions, induced the English to seek the safety that fortresses alone could afford in troubled times. In many cases they naturally turned to the old Roman cities, for the local advantages which had in the first instance recommended their sites to the Romans would be present to the minds of their successors, while their ruins furnished materials for the restoration of the walls. There is evidence that by the beginning of the seventh century 6 the Saxons were already utilizing the Roman walls of at any rate some towns; the walls of Colchester, originally a 1 Sir L. Gomme, The Making of London (1912), 77, 92, contends that London derived its institutions from Roman sources. * Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 490. J. M. Kemble, Saxons in England (1876), ii. 297. J. R. Green, The Making of England (1897), i. 161. F. Haverfield, Romanization of Roman Britain (1912), 63. A. Ballard, Domesday Boroughs (1904), 104. E. L. Cutts, Colchester (1888), 1, 5, 33. British stronghold and the first town to be built in Roman Britain, have retained a large part of the Roman masonry. At Winchester 1 coins and vases, utensils and masonry, still survive in proof of a Roman settlement, and doubtless its position at the junction of six roads helped to save it from complete neglect and oblivion. The influence of Christian missionaries also told in favour of the old urban centres, and the earliest bishops settled there 2, an indication that Roman towns were not completely destroyed by the Saxon Conquest. advan Another group of towns rose on sites entirely unasso- Natural ciated with Roman or British traditions; they were purely tages. English settlements which owed their importance to the natural advantages of their situation3. In early times the place where a river could be forded was of considerable importance, and Oxford 4, as the name indicates, grew where cattle - drovers could cross the stream with ease and safety. Cambridge 5, again, is situated where two roads meet, and its position on rising ground enabled it to control the passage of the river. Aylesbury also stands at the cross roads, and on this account its toll in Domesday Book was worth no less than ten pounds. Bristol sprang up at the point where the Avon was spanned by a bridge, and its prosperity was due to its harbour by which it became the greatest trading centre and seaport of the west, and the second town in England. Exeter, built on a hill, owed its prominence to the mouth of the Exe, which afforded anchorage for trading vessels and communication with the Channel. It stands, indeed, in a class by itself; it was a Roman city which apparently preserved its life from the earliest days without any breach of continuity, for it did not pass into English possession until the 7 1 G. W. Kitchin, Winchester (1890), 2. A. Ballard, The English Borough in the Twelfth Century (1914), 72. E. A. Freeman, Exeter (1887), 3. 4 C. W. Boase, Oxford (1887), I. see Parker, Early History of Oxford, App. B. J. W. Clark, Cambridge (1890), 8. Vict. County Hist. Buckinghamshire, i. 222. 7 W. Hunt, Bristol (1887), I, 2, 5. Freeman, Exeter, 6. On the derivation of the name Oxford, 9 Haverfield, Roman Britain, 64. Churches violence of the Saxon Conquest had abated. The importance rapidly attained by the Cinque Ports 1 on the south-east coast is accounted for by their situation on the direct line of intercourse with the continent, and similarly the importance of Lincoln 2 is explained by its position on the Fosse Way, the high road between the north and the south. On the Severn, famous for its fisheries, rose Gloucester and Worcester, while Yarmouth, Grimsby and Scarborough were also havens of fishermen. 66 A third group of towns developed round monasteries and castles. and castles, under whose walls the townsfolk gained shelter and protection, and to the needs of whose inhabitants they ministered. Durham was the seat of an episcopal church, and other towns grew up at the gates of monasteries. We are told in Domesday Book, for instance, that ten traders dwelt in front of the door of the church" at Abingdon, while St. Albans held forty-six burgesses, who were worth to the abbey in toll and other revenues an annual sum of nearly twelve pounds 5. But the most notable example in Domesday of the way in which towns were growing up by the side of monastic houses to provide their wants is Bury St. Edmunds. It contained "bakers, ale-brewers, tailors, washerwomen, shoemakers, robe-makers, cooks, porters, and agents. And all these daily wait upon the Saint, and the Abbot, and the Brethren". There is no question that churches and famous shrines contributed to the development of town-life by bringing together large gatherings of pilgrims and disciples, dependents and traders. These influences were at work also in Scotland, where the church of St. Andrews attracted so many people that Queen Margaret erected dwellings on both sides of the Firth of Forth for the reception of pilgrims, and provided means for their gratuitous conveyance across the river7. At other times a royal castle or fortress formed the nucleus for a town settlement, and Domesday again affords an 1 Freeman, Exeter, 3. 2 K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (1888), i. 38. Ibid. i. 35. Ibid. i. 135 b. • Domesday Book, i. 58 b. • Ibid. ii. 372. 7 W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (1877), ii. 351. example in Berkhampstead, where the count of Mortain had fifty-two burgesses, who rendered in toll four pounds 1. The growth of towns by the side of castles is specially marked in Herefordshire 2, where the dangers of the border concentrated urban settlers round the walls of fortresses, and most of the Welsh boroughs are said to owe their origin to the castle 3. In many cases, of course, a combination of forces must have operated. Stratford developed round a monastery at the point where a Roman road led to a ford across the Avon, while the growth of Oxford was due not only to its ford but to the great monastic houses of St. Frideswide and Osney. Cambridge, apart from the advantages already enumerated, was situated immediately where the line of communication between the eastern counties and the Midlands crosses the river; it is also supposed to have been the site of a Roman town, and in any case apparently originated in the union of two distinct communities 5. There is still much controversy over one theory of the The 'garrison' origin of towns known as the 'garrison' theory. A large theory. number of Domesday boroughs are characterized by what is termed 'tenurial heterogeneity'; their burgesses were not peers of a tenure', but held their land of different lords, and the houses in the borough were appurtenant to rural manors. Thus Chichester contained 142 houses attached to 44 manors, and Canterbury had 161 houses contributed by II manors. The problem has arisen, how we are to explain this 'tenurial heterogeneity', and what was the nature of the tie which connected houses in a borough with particular rural properties. The solution has been found in the Domesday account of Oxford, where the king has twenty mural houses", so called "because if need be, and the king command, they repair the town "8. " 1 Domesday Book, i. 136 b. 2 Round in Vict. County Hist. Herefordshire, i. 300, 306. E. A. Lewis, The Mediaeval Boroughs of Snowdonia (1912), 13. S. Lee, Stratford-on-Avon (1890), 10, 11, 12. Maitland, Township and Borough, 52. • Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 178 et passim (a section which grew out of an article in the English Hist. Review, xi. 13-19), and Ballard, Domesday Boroughs. ' Ballard, op. cit. 11, 17. 8 Domesday Book, i. 154 a. |
