[771] Stockport, Langport, Amport, Newport-Pagnell, Milborne Port, Littleport are instances. But a very small river might be sufficient to make a place a haven.
[772] Seemingly if this O.-E. port is not Lat. portus, it is Lat. porta, and there is some fascination about the suggestion that the burh-geat, or in modern German the Burg-gasse, in which the market is held, was described in Latin as porta burgi. In A.D. 762 (K. i. p. 133) we have a house ‘quae iam ad Quenegatum urbis Dorouernis in foro posita est.’ In A.D. 845 (K. ii. p. 26) we find a ‘publica strata’ in Canterbury ‘ubi appellatur Weoweraget,’ that is, the gate of the men of Wye. But what we have to account for is the adoption of port as an English word, and if our ancestors might have used geat, they need not have borrowed. In A.D. 857 (K. ii. p. 63) the king bestows on the church of Worcester certain liberties at a spot in the town of London, ‘hoc est, quod habeat intus liberaliter modium et pondera et mensura sicut in porto mos est ad fruendum.’ To have public weights and measures is characteristic of a portus (= haven). The word may have spread outwards from London. Dr Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 439) gives a weighty vote for porta; but the continental usage deserves attention. Pirenne, Revue historique, lvii. 75: ‘Toutes les villes anciennes [en Flandre] s’y forment au bord des eaux et portent le nom caractéristique de portus, c’est-à-dire de débarcadères. C’est de ce mot portus que vient le mot flamand poorter, qui désigne le bourgeois.’ See D. B. i. 181 b: ‘in Hereford Port.’
[773] D. B. i. 143.
[774] D. B. i. 230.
[775] Cutts, Colchester, 65; Round in The Antiquary, vol. vi. (1882) p. 5.
[776] D. B. ii. 106–7. See Round, op. cit., p. 252.
[777] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 629.
[778] D. B. i. 252.
[779] D. B. i. 179. So at Chester (i. 262 b) it is considered possible that the heir will not be able to pay the relief of ten shillings and will forfeit the tenement.
[780] D. B. i. 336.