[Sidenote: "Chesters."]
[Sidenote: Coalescence of towns to fortified boroughs.]
What, then, was the origin of the English borough or city? In the days
when Roman legions occupied for a long time certain military stations in
Britain, their camps were apt to become centres of trade and thus to
grow into cities. Such places were generally known as _casters_ or
_chesters_, from the Latin _castra_, "camp," and there are many of them
on the map of England to-day. But these were exceptional cases. As a
rule the origin of the borough was as purely English as its name. We
have seen that the town was originally the dwelling-place of a
stationary clan, surrounded by palisades or by a dense quickset hedge.
Now where such small enclosed places were thinly scattered about they
developed simply into villages. But where, through the development of
trade or any other cause, a good many of them grew up close together
within a narrow compass, they gradually coalesced into a kind of
compound town; and with the greater population and greater wealth, there
was naturally more elaborate and permanent fortification than that of
the palisaded village. There were massive walls and frowning turrets,
and the place came to be called a fortress or "borough.
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