Finally, on the very borders of Wales, and of that
Damnonian country which was once known to our fathers as West Wales, we
get the very abbreviated forms Wroxeter, Uttoxeter, and Exeter, of
which the second is colloquially still further shortened into Uxeter.
Sometimes these tracts approach very closely to one another, as on the
banks of the Nene, where the two halves of the Roman Durobrivae have
become castor on one side of the river, and Chesterton on the other;
but the line can be marked distinctly on the map, with a slight outward
bulge, with as great regularity as the geological strata. It will be
most convenient here, therefore, to begin with the _casters_, which
have undergone the least amount of rubbing down, and from them to pass
on regularly to the successively weaker forms in _chester_, _cester_,
_ceter_, and _eter_.

Nothing, indeed, can be more deceptive than the common fashion, of
quoting a Roman name from the often blundering lists of the
Itineraries, and then passing on at once to the modern English form,
without any hint of the intermediate stages. 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. By beginning with the least corrupt forms
we shall best be able to see the slow nature of the change, and we
shall also find at the same time that a good deal of incidental light
is shed upon the importance and extent of the English settlement.

Doncaster is an excellent example of the simplest form of
modernisation. It appears in the Antonine Itinerary and in the _Notitia
Imperii_ as Danum. This, with the ordinary termination affixed, becomes
at once Dona ceaster or Doncaster. The name is of course originally
derived in either form from the river Don, which flows beside it; and
the Northumbrian invaders must have learnt the names of both river and
station from their Brigantian British serfs. It shows the fluctuating
nature of the early local nomenclature, however, when we find that Baeda
('the Venerable Bede') describes the place in his Latinised vocabulary
as Campodonum--that is to say, the Field of Don, or, more
idiomatically, Donfield, a name exactly analogous to those of
Chesterfield Macclesfield, Mansfield, Sheffield, and Huddersfield in
the neighbouring region. The comparison of Doncaster and Ch