[721] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 636.
[722] Rot. Hund. ii. 361.
[723] D. B. i. 189.
[724] Rental of Gloucester, ed. W. H. Stevenson: Gloucester, 1890, p. x.
[725] There are many examples in Kemble’s Codex.
[726] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. p. 41: ‘Vicecomes reddit compotum de £80 de auxilio civitatis.... Et in perdonis.... Comiti de Mellent 25 sol.... Comiti de Lerecestria 35 sol.... Comiti de Warenna 16 sol.... Comiti Gloecestriae 116 sol. et 8 den.’ See also the Liber Wintoniae, D. B. iv. 531 ff.
[727] In the A.-S. land-books the word civitas is commonly applied to Worcester, Winchester, Canterbury, and other such places, which are both bishops’ sees and the head places of large districts. But (K. v. p. 180) Gloucester is a civitas, and for some time after the Conquest it is rather the county town than the cathedral town that bears this title. Did any one ever speak of Selsey or Sherborne as a civitas? In 803 (K. v. p. 65) the bishops of Canterbury, Lichfield, Leicester, Sidnacester, Worcester, Winchester, Dunwich, London and Rochester style themselves bishops of civitates, while those of Hereford, Sherborne, Elmham and Selsey do not use this word. But an inference from this would be rash.
[728] An interesting example is this. In 779 Offa conveys to a thegn land at Sulmonnesburg. The boundaries mentioned in the charter are those of the present parish of Bourton-on-the-Water. ‘Sulmonnesburg ... is the ancient camp close to Bourton which gave its name to the Domesday Hundred of Salmanesberie, and at a gap in the rampart of which a Court Leet was held till recently.’ See C. S. Taylor, Pre-Domesday Hide of Gloucestershire, Trans. Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæol. Soc. vol. xviii. pt. 2. As regards the names of hills and of villages named from hills there may occasionally be some difficulty in marking off those which go back to beorh (berry, berrow, barrow) from those which go back to burh (burgh, borough, bury). Mr Stevenson tells me that in the West of England the termination -borough sometimes represents -beorh.
[729] Alfred, 40; Ine, 45.
[730] Aethelr. IV. 4. The Quadripartitus is our only authority for these Instituta; but Dr Liebermann (Quadrip. p. 138) holds that the translator had in front of him a document written before the Conquest. Schmid would read borh-bryce; see p. 541; but this emendation seems needless. Has not the sum been Normanized? The king’s burh-bryce used to be 120 (i.e. in English ‘a hundred’) shillings, and a hundred Norman shillings make £5. So according to the Berkshire custom (D. B. i. 56 b) he who by night breaks a civitas pays 100 shillings to the king and not (it is noted) to the sheriff.