Chesters, I may mention Bath, given as Akemannes ceaster and Bathan
ceaster in our old documents, so that it might have become
Achemanchester or Bathceter in the course of ordinary changes.
Canterbury, again, the Roman Durovernum, dropped through Dorobernia
into Dorwit ceaster, which would no doubt have turned into a third
Dorchester, to puzzle our heads by its likeness to Dorne ceaster in
Dorsetshire, and to Dorce ceaster near Oxford; while Chesterton in
Huntingdonshire, which was once Dorme ceaster, narrowly escaped
burdening a distracted world with a fourth. Happily, the colloquial
form Cantwara burh, or Kentmen's bury, gained the day, and so every
trace of Durovernum is now quite lost in Canterbury. North Shields was
once Scythles-ceaster, but here the Chester has simply dropped out.
Verulam, or St. Albans, is another curious case. Its Romano-British
name was Verulamium, and Bæda calls it Verlama ceaster. But the early
English in Sleswick believed in a race of mythical giants, the
Wætlingas or Watlings, from whom they called the Milky Way 'Watling
Street.' When the rude pirates from those trackless marshes came over
to Britain and first beheld the great Roman paved causeway which ran
across the face of the country from London to Caernarvon, they seemed
to have imagined that such a mighty work could not have been the
handicraft of men; and just as the Arabs ascribe the rock-hewn houses
of Petra to the architectural fancy of the Devil, so our old English
ancestors ascribed the Roman road to the Titanic Watlings. Even in our
own day, it is known along its whole course as Watling Street. Verulam
stands right in its track, and long contained some of the greatest
Roman remains in England; so the town, too, came to be considered as
another example of the work of the Watlings. Bæda, in his Latinised
Northumbrian, calls it Vætlinga ceaster, as an alternative title with
Verlama ceaster; so that it might nowadays have been familiar to us all
either as Watlingchester or Verlamchester. This is one of the numerous
cases where a Roman and English name lived on during the dark period
side by side. In some of Mr. Kemble's charters it appears as Walinga
ceaster. But when Offa of Mercia founded his great abbey on the very
spot where the Welsh martyr Alban had suffered during the persecution
of Diocletian, Roman and English names were alike forgotten, and the
place was remembered only after the British Christian as St. Albans.
There are other instances where the very memory of a Roman city seems
now to have failed altogether. For example, Bæda mentions a certain
town called Tiowulfinga ceaster--that is to say, the Chester of the
Tiowulfings, or sons of Tiowulf. Here an English clan would seem to
have taken up its abode in a ruined Roman station, and to have called
the place by the clan-name--a rare or almost unparalleled case. But its
precise site is now unknown. However, Bæda's description clearly points
to some town in Nottinghamshire, situated on the Trent; for St.
Paulinus of York baptized large numbers of converts in that river at
Tiowulfinga ceaster; and the site may therefore be confidently
identified with Southwell, where St. Mary's Minster has always
traditionally claimed Paulinus as its founder. Bæda also mentions a
place called Tunna ceaster, so named from an abbot Tunna, who exists
merely for the sake of a legend, and is clearly as unhistorical as his
piratical compeer Hrof--a wild guess of the eponymic sort with which we
are all so familiar in Greek literature. Simeon of Durham speaks of an
equally unknown Delvercester. Syddena ceaster or Sidna cester--the
earliest see of the Lincolnshire diocese--has likewise dropped out of
human memory; though Mr. Pearson suggests that it may be identical with
Ancaster--a notion which appears to me extremely unlikely. Wude cester
is no doubt Outchester, and other doubtful instances might easily be
recognised by local antiquaries, though they may readily escape the
general archæologist. In one case at least--that of Othonæ in
Essex--town, site, and name have all disappeared together. Bæda calls
it Ythan ceaster, and in his time it was the seat of a monastery
founded by St. Cedd; but the whole place has long since been swept away
by an inundation of the Blackwater. Anderida, which is called
Andredes-ceaster in the _Chronicle_, becomes Pefenesea, or Pevensey,
before the date of the Norman Conquest.
It must not be supposed that the list given here is by any means
exhaustive of all the Casters and Chesters, past and present,
throughout the whole length and breadth of Britain. On the contrary,
many more might easily be added, such as Ribbel ceaster, now
Ribchester; Berne ceaster, now Bicester; and Blædbyrig ceaster, now
simply Bladbury. In Northumberland alone there are a large number of
instances which I might have quoted, such as Rutchester, Halton
Chesters, and Little Chesters on the Roman Wall, together with
Hetchester, Holy Chesters, and Rochester elsewhere--the county
containing no less than four places of the last name. Indeed, one can
track the Roman roads across England by the Chesters which accompany
their route. But enough instances have probably been adduced to
exemplify fully the general principles at issue. I think it will be
clear that the English conquerors did not usually change the names of
Roman or Welsh towns, but simply mispronounced them about as much as we
habitually mispronounce Llangollen or Llandudno. Sometimes they called
the place by its Romanised title alone, with the addition of Ceaster;
sometimes they employed the servile British form; sometimes they even
invented an English alternative; but in no case can it be shown that
they at once disused the original name, and introduced a totally new
one of their own manufacture. In this, as in all other matters, the
continuity between Romano-British and English times is far greater than
it is generally represented to be. The English invasion was a cruel and
a desolating one, no doubt; but it could not and it did not sweep away
wholly the old order of things, or blot out all the past annals of
Britain, so as to prepare a _tabula rasa_ on which Mr. Green might
begin his _History of the English People_ with the landing of Hengest
and Horsa in the Isle of Thanet. The English people of to-day is far
more deeply rooted in the soil than that: our ancestors have lived
here, not for a thousand years alone, but for ten thousand or a hundred
thousand, in certain lines at least. And the very names of our towns,
our rivers, and our hills, go back in many cases, not merely to the
Roman corruptions, but to the aboriginal Celtic, and the still more
aboriginal Euskarian tongue.
THE END.
HENDERSON & SPALDING, LTD., 3 & 5, MARYLEBONE LANE, W.