ANGLO-SAXON FORTIFICATIONS
We have pointed out in the preceding chapter that when it is asked
whether the earthworks of the moated mound-and-court type were the work
of the Anglo-Saxons, the question resolves itself into another, namely,
Did the Anglo-Saxons build castles?
As far as we know, they did not; and although to prove a negative we
can only bring negative evidence, that evidence appears to us to be
very conclusive. But before we deal with it, we will try to find out
what sort of fortifications the Anglo-Saxons actually did construct.
The first fortification which we read of in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_
is that of Bamborough, in Northumberland. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_
tells us that in 547 Ida began to reign in Northumberland, and adds
that he built "Bebbanburh," which was first enclosed with a hedge,
and afterwards with a wall. Unfortunately this celebrated passage is
merely the interpolation of a 12th-century scribe, and is consequently
of no authority whatever,[18] though there is nothing improbable in
the statement, and it is supported by Nennius.[19] Ida's grandson
Ethelfrith gave this fortress to his wife Bebba, from whom it received
the name of Bebbanburh, now Bamborough. It was built without doubt on
the same lofty insulated rock where the castle now stands; for when it
was attacked by Penda in 633, he found the situation so strong that
it was impossible to storm it, and it was only by heaping up wood on
the most accessible side that he was able to set fire to the wooden
stockade.[20] Modern historians talk of this fort as a castle, but all
the older authorities call it a town;[21] nor is there any mention
of a castle at Bamborough till the reign of William II. The area of
the basaltic headland of Bamborough covers 4-3/4 acres, a site large
enough for a city of Ida's day. The church of St Peter was placed on
the highest point. The castle which was built there in Norman times
does not seem to have occupied at first more than a portion of this
site,[22] though it is probable that eventually the townsmen were
expelled from the rock, and that thus the modern town of Bamborough
arose in the levels below. Although 4-3/4 acres may seem a small size
for an _urbs_, it was certainly regarded as such, and was large enough
to protect a considerable body of invaders.
Strange to say, this is the only record which we have of any
fortress-building by the invading Saxons. Until we come to the time
of Alfred, there is hardly an allusion to any fortification in use in
Saxon times.[23] It is mentioned in 571 that the Saxons took four
towns (_tunas_) of the Britons, and the apparent allusion to sieges
seems to show that these British towns had some kind of fortification.
The three _chesters_, which were taken by the Saxons in 577,
Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, prove that some Roman cities still
kept their defences. In 755 the slaughter of Cynewulf, king of the West
Saxons, by the etheling Cyneard, is told with unusual detail by the
_Chronicle_. The king was slain in a _bur_ (bower, or isolated women's
chamber[24]), the door of which he attempted to defend; but this _bur_
was itself enclosed in a _burh_, the gates of which were locked by the
etheling who had killed the king, and were defended until they were
forced by the king's avengers. Here it seems to be doubtful whether
the _burh_ was a town or a private enclosure resembling a stable-yard
of modern times. The description of the storming of York by the Danes
in 867 shows that the Roman walls of that city were still preserved.
These passages are the solitary instances of fortifications in England
mentioned by the _Chronicle_ before the time of Alfred.[25] The
invasions of the Danes led at last to a great fortifying epoch, which
preserved our country from being totally overwhelmed by those northern
immigrants.
The little Saxon kingdom of Wessex was the germ of the British Empire.
When Alfred came to the throne it had already absorbed the neighbouring
kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and the issue hanging in the
balance was whether this small English state would survive the
desolating flood of pagan barbarism which had already overwhelmed the
sister kingdoms of the Midlands and the North. It was given to Alfred
to raise again the fallen standard of Christendom and civilisation, and
to establish an English kingdom on so sound a basis that when, in later
centuries, it successively became the prey of the Dane and the Norman,
the English polity survived both conquests. The wisdom, energy, and
steadfastness of King Alfred and his children and grandchildren were
amongst the most important of the many factors which have helped to
build up the great empire of Britain.
We are concerned here with only one of the measures by which Alfred and
his family secured the triumph of Wessex in her mortal struggle with
the Danes, the fortifications which they raised for the protection of
their subjects. From the pages of the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ we might
be led to think that Alfred's son and daughter, Edward and Ethelfleda,
were the chief builders of fortifications. But there is ample evidence
that they only carried out a systematic purpose which had been
initiated by Alfred. We know that Alfred was a great builder. "What
shall I say," cries Asser, "of the cities and towns which he restored,
and of others which he built which had never existed before! Of the
royal halls and chambers, wonderfully built of stone and wood by his
command!"[26] The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ notices the restoration of
London (886),[27] about which two extant charters are more precise.[28]
It also mentions the building of a work (geweorc) at Athelney, and
another at Limene-muthan (doubtless a repair of the Roman fort at
Lympne), and two works built by Alfred on the banks of the river
Lea.[29] William of Malmesbury tells us that in his boyhood there was
a stone in the nunnery of Shaftesbury which had been taken out of
the walls of the town, which bore this inscription: "Anno dominicæ
incarnationis Alfredus rex fecit hanc urbem, DCCCLXXX, regni sui
VIII."[30] Ethelred, Alfred's son-in-law, built the _burh_ at Worcester
in Alfred's lifetime, as a most interesting charter tells us.[31]
It may be safely assumed, then, that when Edward came to the throne
he found Wessex well provided with defensive places, and that when he
and his sister signalised their conquests in the Midlands by building
strongholds at every fresh step of their advance, they were only
carrying out the policy of their father.
At the time of Alfred's death, and the succession of Edward the Elder
to the crown (901), Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, was the wife of
Ethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, who appears to have been a sort of
under-king of that province.[32] On the death of Ethelred in 912,[33]
Edward took possession of London and Oxford and "of all the lands
which owed obedience thereto"--in other words, of that small portion
of Eastern Mercia which was still in English hands; that is, not only
the present Oxfordshire and Middlesex, but part of Herts, part of
Bedfordshire, all Buckinghamshire, and the southern part of Northants.
The Watling Street, which runs north-west from London to Shrewsbury,
and thence north to Chester and Manchester, formed at that time the
dividing line between the English and Danish rule.[34] It would seem
from the course of the story that after Ethelred's death there was some
arrangement between Ethelfleda and her brother, possibly due to the
surrender of the territory mentioned above, which enabled her to rule
English Mercia in greater independence than her husband had enjoyed. Up
to this date we find Edward disposing of the _fyrd_ of Mercia;[35] this
is not mentioned again in Ethelfleda's lifetime. Nothing is clearer,
both from the _Chronicle_ and from Florence, than that the brother and
sister each "did their own," to use an expressive provincial phrase.
Ethelfleda goes her own way, subduing Western Mercia, while Edward
pushes up through Eastern Mercia and Essex to complete the conquest of
East Anglia. A certain concert may be observed in their movements, but
they did not work in company.
The work of fortification begun in Alfred's reign had been continued by
the restoration of the Roman walls of Chester in 908, by Ethelred and
his wife; and Ethelfleda herself (possibly during the lingering illness
which later chroniclers give to her husband) had built a _burh_ at
Bremesbyrig. During the twelve years which elapsed between Ethelred's
death and that of Edward in 924, the brother and sister built no less
than twenty-seven _burhs_, giving a total of thirty, if we add Chester
and Bremesbyrig, and Worcester, which was built in Alfred's reign. Now
what was the nature of these fortifications, which the _Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle_ uniformly calls _burhs_?
There is really not the slightest difficulty in answering this
question. The word is with us still; it is our word _borough_. It is
true we have altered the meaning somewhat, because a borough means
now an enfranchised town; but we must remember that it got that
meaning because the fortified towns, the only ones which were called
_burhs_ or _burgi_, were the first to be enfranchised, and while the
fortifications have become less and less important, the franchise has
become of supreme importance.
Bede, in the earliest times of our history, equated _burh_ with _urbs_,
a city; Alfred in his _Orosius_ translates _civitas_ by _burh_;[36]
the Anglo-Saxon gospels of the 11th century do the same;[36] and
the confederacy of five Danish towns which existed in Mercia in the
10th century is called in contemporary records _fif burga_, the five
boroughs.[37]
_Burh_ is a noun derived from the word _beorgan_, to protect.
Undoubtedly its primitive meaning was that of a _protective enclosure_.
As in the case of the words _tun_, _yard_, or _garth_, and _worth_
or _ward_, the sense of the word became extended from the protecting
bulwark to the place protected. In this sense of a _fortified
enclosure_, the word was naturally applied by the Anglo-Saxons to the
prehistoric and British "camps" which they found in Britain, such as
Cissbury. Moreover, it is clear that some kind of enclosure must have
existed round every farmstead in Saxon times, if only as a protection
against wolves. The illustrated Saxon manuscripts show that the hall
in which the thane dwelt, the ladies' bower, the chapel and other
buildings dependent on the hall, were enclosed in a stockade, and had
gates which without doubt were closed at night.[38] This enclosure may
have been called a _burh_, and the innumerable place-names in England
ending in _borough_ or _bury_[39] seem to suggest that the _burh_
was often nothing more than a stockade, as in so many of these sites
not a vestige of defensive works remains.[40] We may concede that
the original meaning of an _enclosure_ was never entirely lost, and
that it appears to be preserved in a few passages in the Anglo-Saxon
laws. Thus Edmund speaks of _mine burh_ as an asylum, the violation
of which brings its special punishment; and Ethelred II. ordains that
every compurgation shall take place in _thaes kyninges byrig_; and the
_Rectitudines Singularum Personum_ tells us that one of the duties of
the geneat was to build for his lord, and to hedge his _burh_.[41]
But it is absolutely clear that even in these cases a _burh_ was an
enclosure and not a tump; and it is equally clear from the general use
of the word that its main meaning was a _fortified town_. Athelstan
ordains that there shall be a mint in every _burh_; and his laws show
that already the _burh_ has its _gemot_ or meeting, and its _reeve_ or
mayor.[42] He ordains that all _burhs_ are to be repaired fourteen
days after Rogations, and that no market shall be held outside the
town.[43] In the laws of Edgar's time not only the borough-moot and
the borough-reeve are spoken of, but the _burh-waru_ or burgesses.[44]
_Burh_ is contrasted with wapentake as town with country.[45]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--ANGLO-SAXON MS. OF PRUDENTIUS.
If we wish to multiply proofs that a _burh_ was the same thing as
a borough, we can turn to the Anglo-Saxon illustrated manuscripts,
and we shall find that they give us many pictures of _burhs_, and
that in all cases they are fortified towns.[46] Finally, Florence of
Worcester, one of the most careful of our early chroniclers, who lived
when Anglo-Saxon was still a living language, and who must have known
what a _burh_ meant, translates it by _urbs_ in nineteen cases out
of twenty-six.[47] His authority alone is sufficient to settle this
question, and we need no longer have any doubt that a _burh_ was the
same thing which in mediæval Latin is called a _burgus_, that is a
fortified town, and that our word _borough_ is lawfully descended from
it.
It would not have been necessary to spend so much time on the history
of the word _burh_ if this unfortunate word had not been made the
subject of one of the strangest delusions which ever was imposed on the
archæological world. We refer of course to the theory of the late Mr G.
T. Clark, who contended in his _Mediæval Military Architecture_[48]
that the moated mound of class (_e_), which we have described in our
first chapter, was what the Anglo-Saxons called a _burh_. In other
words, he maintained that the burhs were Saxon castles. It is one
of the most extraordinary and inexplicable things in the history of
English archæology that a man who was not in any sense an Anglo-Saxon
scholar was allowed to affix an entirely new meaning to a very common
Anglo-Saxon word, and that this meaning was at once accepted without
question by historians who had made Anglo-Saxon history their special
study! The present writer makes no pretensions to be an Anglo-Saxon
scholar, but it is easy to pick out the word _burh_ in the _Chronicle_
and the Anglo-Saxon _Laws_, and to find out how the word is translated
in the Latin chronicles; and this little exercise is sufficient in
itself to prove the futility of Mr Clark's contention.
Sentiment perhaps had something to do with Mr Clark's remarkable
success. There is an almost utter lack of tangible monuments of our
national heroes; and therefore people who justly esteemed the labours
of Alfred and his house were pleased when they were told that the
mounds at Tamworth, Warwick, and elsewhere were the work of Ethelfleda,
and that other mounds were the work of Edward the Elder. It did not
occur to them that they were doing a great wrong to the memory of the
children of Alfred in supposing them capable of building these little
earthen and timber castles for their personal defence and that of their
nobles, and leaving the mass of their people at the mercy of the Danes.
Far other was the thought of Ethelfleda, when she and her husband
built the borough of Worcester. As they expressed it in their memorable
charter, it was not only for the defence of the bishop and the churches
of Worcester, but "TO SHELTER ALL THE FOLK."[49] And we may be sure
that the same idea lay at the founding of all the boroughs which were
built by Alfred and by Edward and Ethelfleda. They were to be places
where the whole countryside could take refuge during a Danish raid. The
_Chronicle_ tells us in 894 how Alfred divided his forces into three
parts, the duty of one part being to defend the boroughs; and from
this time forth we constantly find the men of the boroughs doing good
service against the Danes.[50] It was by defending and thus developing
the boroughs of England that Alfred and his descendants saved England
from the Danes.
Thus far we have seen that all the fortifications which we know to have
been built by the Anglo-Saxons were the fortifications of society and
not of the individual. We have heard nothing whatever of the private
castle as an institution in Saxon times; and although this evidence
is only negative, it appears to us to be entitled to much more weight
than has hitherto been given to it. Some writers seem to think that the
private castle was a modest little thing which was content to blush
unseen. This is wholly to mistake the position of the private castle
in history. Such a castle is not merely a social arrangement, it is a
political institution of the highest importance. Where such castles
exist, we are certain to hear of some of them, sooner or later, in the
pages of history.
We can easily test this by comparing Anglo-Saxon history with Norman
of the same period, after castles had arisen in Normandy. Who among
Saxon nobles was more likely to possess a castle than the powerful
Earl Godwin, and his independent sons? Yet when Godwin left the court
of Edward the Confessor, because he would not obey the king's order
to punish the men of Dover for insulting Count Eustace of Boulogne,
we do not hear that he retired to his castle, or that his sons
fortified their castles against the king; we only hear that they met
together at Beverstone (a place where there was no castle before the
14th century)[51] and "arrayed themselves resolutely."[52] Neither
do we hear of any castle belonging to the powerful Earl Siward of
Northumbria, or Leofric, Earl of Mercia. And when Godwin returned
triumphantly to England in 1052 we do not hear of any castles being
restored to him.
Now let us contrast this piece of English history, as told by the
_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, with the Norman history of about the same
period, the history of the rebellion of the Norman nobles against their
young duke, William the Bastard. The first thing the nobles do is to
put their castles into a state of defence. William has to take refuge
in the castle of a faithful vassal, Hubert of Rye, until he can safely
reach his own castle of Falaise. After the victory of Val-ès-Dunes,
William had to reduce the castles which still held out, and then to
order the destruction of all the castles which had been erected against
him.[53]
Or let us contrast the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ of 1051 with that of
1088, when certain Norman barons and bishops in England conspired
against the new king, William Rufus. The first thing told us is that
each of the head conspirators "went to his castle, and manned it and
victualled it." Then Bishop Geoffrey makes Bristol Castle the base of
a series of plundering raids. Bishop Wulfstan, on the other hand, aids
the cause of William by preventing an attempt of the rebels on the
castle of Worcester. Roger Bigod throws himself into Norwich Castle,
and harries the shire; Bishop Odo brings the plunder of Kent into his
castle of Rochester. Finally the king's cause wins the day through the
taking of the castles of Tonbridge, Pevensey, Rochester, and Durham.
If we reflect on the contrast which these narratives afford, it surely
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that if the chronicler never
mentions any Saxon castles it is because there were no Saxon castles
to mention. Had Earl Godwin possessed a stronghold in which he could
fortify himself, he would certainly have used it in 1051. And as the
Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor had already begun to build
castles in England, we can imagine no reason why Godwin did not do
the same, except that such a step was impossible to a man who desired
popularity amongst his countrymen. The Welshmen, we are told (that is
the foreigners, the Normans), had erected a castle in Herefordshire
among the people of Earl Sweyn, and had wrought all possible harm
and disgrace to the king's men thereabout.[54] The language of the
_Chronicle_ shows the unpopularity, to say the least of it, of this
castle-building; and one of the conditions which Godwin, when posing
as popular champion, wished to exact from the king, was that the
_Frenchmen who were in the castle_ should be given up to him.[55] When
Godwin returned from his exile, and the Normans took to flight, the
chronicler tells us that some fled west to Pentecost's castle, some
north to Robert's castle. Thus we learn that there were several castles
in England belonging to the Norman favourites.
It is in connection with these Norman favourites that the word _castel_
appears for the first time in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_. This is a
fact of considerable importance in itself; and when we weigh it in
connection with the expressions of dislike recorded above which become
much more explicit and vehement after the Norman Conquest, we cannot
but feel that Mr Freeman's conclusion, that the thing as well as the
word was new, is highly probable.[56] For the hall of the Anglo-Saxon
ealdorman or thane, even when enclosed in an earthwork or stockade,
was a very different thing from the castle of a Norman noble. A castle
is built by a man who lives among enemies, who distrusts his nearest
neighbours as much as any foe from a distance. The Anglo-Saxon noble
had no reason to distrust his neighbours, or to fortify himself against
them. Later historians, who were familiar with the state of things in
Norman times, tell us frequently of castles in the Saxon period; but
it can generally be proved that they misunderstood their authorities.
The genuine contemporary chroniclers of Saxon times never make the
slightest allusion to a Saxon castle.
The word _castellum_, it is true, appears occasionally in Anglo-Saxon
charters, but when it is used it clearly means a town. Thus Egbert of
Kent says in 765: "Trado terram intra castelli moenia supranominati,
id est Hrofescestri, unum viculum cum duobus jugeribus, etc.," where
_castellum_ is evidently the city of Rochester.[57] Offa calls
Wermund "episcopus castelli quod nominatur Hroffeceastre."[58] These
instances can easily be multiplied. Mr W. H. Stevenson remarks that "in
Old-English glosses, from the 8th century Corpus Glossary downwards,
_castellum_ is glossed by _wic_, that is town."[59] In this sense no
doubt we must interpret Asser's "castellum quod dicitur Werham."[60]
Henry of Huntingdon probably meant a town when he says that Edward the
Elder built at Hertford "castrum non immensum sed pulcherrimum." He
generally translates the _burh_ of the _Chronicle_ by _burgus_, and he
shows that he had a correct idea of Edward's work when he says that
at Buckingham Edward "fecit _vallum_ ex utraque parte aquæ"--where
_vallum_ is a translation of _burh_. The difference between a _burh_
and a castle is very clearly expressed by the _Chronicle_ in 1092,
when it says concerning the restoration of Carlisle on its conquest by
William Rufus, "He repaired the borough (burh) and ordered the castle
to be built."
The following is a table of the thirty boroughs built by Ethelfleda and
Edward, arranged chronologically, which will show that we never find a
_motte_, that is a moated mound, on the site of one of these boroughs
unless a Norman castle-builder has been at work there subsequently. The
weak point in Mr Clark's argument was that when he found a motte on a
site which had once been Saxon, he did not stop to inquire what any
subsequent builders might have done there, but at once assumed that the
motte was Saxon. Of course, if we invariably found a motte at _every_
place where Edward or Ethelfleda are said to have built a _burh_, it
would raise a strong presumption that mottes and burhs were the same
thing. But out of the twenty-five burhs which can be identified, in
only ten is there a motte on the same site; and in every case where a
motte is found, except at Bakewell and Towcester, there is recorded
proof of the existence of a Norman castle. In this list, the _burhs_
on both sides of the river at Hertford, Buckingham, and Nottingham
are counted as two, because the very precise indications given in
the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ show that each _burh_ was a separate
construction.
_Burhs of Ethelfleda._
Worcester 873-899 A motte and a Norman castle.
Chester 908 A motte and a Norman castle.
Bremesburh 911 Unidentified.
Scærgate 913 Unidentified.
Bridgenorth 913 No motte, but a Norman stone keep.
Tamworth 914 A motte and a Norman castle.
Stafford, N. of Sowe 914 No motte and no Norman castle.
Eddisbury 915 No motte and no Norman castle.
Warwick 915 A motte and a Norman castle.
Cyricbyrig (Monk's Kirby) 916 No motte and no Norman castle.
Weardbyrig 916 Unidentified.
Runcorn 916 No motte; a mediæval castle (?).
_Burhs of Edward the Elder._
Hertford, N. of Lea 913 No motte and no Norman castle.
Hertford, S. of Lea 913 A motte and a Norman castle.
Witham 914 No motte and no Norman castle.
Buckingham, S. of Ouse 915 No motte and no Norman castle.
Buckingham, N. of Ouse 915 A motte and a Norman castle.
Bedford, S. of Ouse 916 No motte and no Norman castle.
Maldon 917 No motte and no Norman castle.
Towcester 918 A motte.
Wigingamere 918 Unidentified.
Huntingdon 918 A motte and a Norman castle.
Colchester 918 No motte; an early Norman keep.
Cledemuthan 918 Unidentified.
Stamford, S. of Welland 919 No motte and no Norman castle.
Nottingham, N. of Trent 919 A motte and a Norman castle.
Thelwall 920 No motte and no Norman castle.
Manchester 920 No castle on the ancient site.
Nottingham, S. of Trent 921 No motte and no Norman castle.
Bakewell (near to) 921 A motte and bailey.
Out of this list of the _burhs_ of Ethelfleda and Edward, thirteen
are mentioned as boroughs in Domesday Book;[61] and as we ought to
subtract five from the list as unidentified, and also to reckon as
one the boroughs built on two sides of the river, the whole number
should be reduced to twenty-two. So that more than half the boroughs
built by the children of Alfred continued to maintain their existence
during the succeeding centuries, and in fact until the present day.
But the others, for some reason or other, did not take root. Professor
Maitland remarked that many of the boroughs of Edward's day became
rotten boroughs before they were ripe;[62] and it is a proof of the
difficulty of the task which the royal brethren undertook that, with
the exception of Chester, none of the boroughs which they built in the
north-western districts survived till Domesday. In all their boroughs,
except Bakewell, the purpose of defending the great Roman roads and the
main waterways is very apparent.
Our list is very far from being a complete list of all the Anglo-Saxon
boroughs existing in Edward's day. In the document known as the
"Burghal Hidage" we have another quite different list of thirty-two
boroughs,[63] which, according to Professor Maitland, "sets forth
certain arrangements made early in the 10th century for the defence
of Wessex against the Danish inroads."[64] Five at least on the list
are Roman chesters; twenty are mentioned as boroughs in Domesday
Book. There are two among them which are of special interest, because
there is reason to believe that the earthen ramparts which still
surround them are of Saxon origin: Wallingford and Wareham. Both these
fortifications are after the Roman pattern, the earthen banks forming a
square with rounded corners.[65] See Fig. 3.
To complete our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon fortification, we ought
to examine the places mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters as royal
seats, where possibly defensive works of some kind may have existed.
Unfortunately we are unable to learn that there are any such works,
except at one place, Bensington in Oxfordshire, where about a hundred
years ago "a bank and trench, which seem to have been of a square
form," were to be seen.[66]
[Illustration:FIG. 3. Wallingford, Berks. Wareham, Dorset.]
In the following chapter we shall deal in detail with such archæological
remains as still exist of the boroughs of Edward and Ethelfleda, but
here we will briefly summarise by anticipation the results to which
that chapter will lead. We see that sites defensible by nature were
often seized upon for fortification, as at Bamborough, Bridgenorth, and
Eddisbury; but that this was by no means always the case, as a weak
site, such as Witham, for example, was sometimes rendered defensible by
works which appear to have fulfilled their purpose. In only one case
(Witham) do we find an inner enclosure; and as it is of large size
(9-1/2 acres) it is more probable that the outer enclosure was for
cattle, than that the inner one was designed solely for the protection
of the king and his court. We are not told of stone walls more than
once (at Towcester); but the use of the word _timbrian_, which does
not exclusively mean to build in wood,[67] does not preclude walls of
stone in important places. In the square or oblong form, with rounded
corners, we see the influence which Roman models exercised on eyes
which still beheld them existing.
We see that the main idea of the borough was the same as that of the
prehistoric or British "camp of refuge," in that it was intended for
the defence of society and not of the individual. It was intended to be
a place of refuge for the whole countryside. But it was also something
much more than this, something which belongs to a much more advanced
state of society than the hill-fort.[68] It was a town, a place where
people were expected to live permanently and do their daily work. It
provided a fostering seat for trade and manufactures, two of the chief
factors in the history of civilisation. The men who kept watch and
ward on the ramparts, or who sallied forth in their bands to fight the
Danes, were the men who were slowly building up the prosperity of the
stricken land of England. By studding the great highways of England
with fortified towns, Alfred and his children were not only saving the
kernel of the British Empire, they were laying the sure foundations of
its future progress in the arts and habits of civilised life.