xford was in Old English _Oxenford_,
or "ford of the oxen."

Towns whose names end in _borough_ are often very old, but not so old
as some of those ending in _ham_ and _ford_. There were _burhs_ in the
first days of the English Conquest, but generally they were only
single fortified houses and not villages. We first hear of the more
important _burghs_ or _boroughs_ in the last hundred years or so
before the Norman Conquest. _Edinburgh_, which was at first an English
town, is a very early example. Its name means "Edwin's borough or
town," and it was so called because it was founded by Edwin, who was
king of England from 617 to 633.

The special point about boroughs was that they were really free towns.
They had courts of justice of their own, and were free from the
Hundred courts, the next court above them being the Shire court, ruled
over by the sheriff. So we know that most of the towns whose names end
in _burgh_ or _borough_ had for their early citizens men who loved
freedom, and worked hard to win their own courts of justice.

There are other endings to the names of towns which go back to the
days before the Norman Conquest, but which are not really English. If
a child were told to pick out on the map of England all the places
whose names end in _by_ or _thwaite_, he or she would find that most
of them are in the eastern part of England. The reason for this might
be guessed, perhaps, by a very thoughtful child. Both _by_ and
_thwaite_ are Danish words, and they are found in the eastern parts of
England, because it was in those parts that the Danes settled down
when the great King Alfred forced them to make peace in the Treaty of
Wallingford. After this, of course, the Danes lived in England for
many years, settling down, and becoming part of the English people.
Naturally they gave their own names to many villages and towns, and
many of these remain to this day to remind us of this fierce race
which helped to build up the English nation.

The Normans did not make many changes in the names of places when they
won England, and most of our place-names come down to us from Roman
and old English times. The places have changed, but the names have
not. But though towns and counties have had their names from those
times, it is to be noticed that the names of our rivers and hills come
down to us from Celtic times. To the Britons, living a more or less
wild life, these things were of the greatest importance. There are
seve