“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.”[38]
And he goes, indeed, so far as to assert that—
“There are nowhere any traces of clan nomenclature in any of the cities. They all retain their Celtic or Roman names.”[39]
Take, then, the case of Gloucester. Mr. Freeman and Prebendary Scarth undoubtedly represent, on these questions, the opposite extremes of thought. The former would minimise, and the latter would make the most of the survival of “Roman names,” yet on this point they are at one. “A few great cities,” says Mr. Freeman,
“and a few great natural objects, London on the Thames and Gloucester on the Severn, still retain names older than the English Conquest.”[40]
“London and Lincoln,” says Prebendary Scarth,
“and Gloster are noteworthy examples of places retaining, like many others, the Latinised forms of still earlier names.”[41]
And yet, as Mr. Allen most truly observes—
“To say that Glevum is now Gloucester is to tell only half the truth; until we know that the two were linked together by the gradual steps of Glevum castrum, Gleawan ceaster, Gleawe cester, Gloucester, and Gloster, we have not really explained the words at all.”[42]
It is the advantage of an unflinching analysis such as this that we are immediately confronted in black and white with a form of which the existence is necessarily involved, though hitherto surely overlooked. That form is “Glevum castrum.” This then is the question that we have to ask: was “Glevum castrum” ever the name of Gloucester? “Glevum” we know, and “Gleawan ceaster;” but if we cannot demonstrate the existence of a form “Glevum castrum,” the continuity of the chain is severed; there is between them a missing link.