omenclative test. It is
not till after the Danish invasions that it becomes easier to draw a
distinction between the burhs that served as military strongholds for
national defence and the royal vills which served no such purpose. Some
of the royal vills eventually entered the class of boroughs, but by
another route, and for the present the private stronghold and the royal
dwelling may be neglected. It was the public stronghold and the
administrative centre of a dependent district which was the source of
the main features peculiar to the borough.

Many causes tended to create peculiar conditions in the boroughs built
for national defence. They were placed where artificial defence was most
needed, at the junction of roads, in the plains, on the rivers, at the
centres naturally marked out for trade, seldom where hills or marshes
formed a sufficient natural defence. The burhs drew commerce by every
channel; the camp and the palace, the administrative centre, the
ecclesiastical centre (for the mother-church of the state was placed in
its chief burh), all looked to the market for their maintenance. The
burh was provided by law with a mint and royal moneyers and exchangers,
with an authorized scale for weights and measures. Mercantile
transactions in the burhs or _ports_, as they were called when their
commercial rather than their military importance was accentuated, were
placed by law under special legal privileges in order no doubt to secure
the king's hold upon his toll. Over the burh or port was set a reeve, a
royal officer answerable to the king for his dues from the burh, his
rents for lands and houses, his customs on commerce, his share of the
profits from judicial fines. At least from the 10th century the burh had
a "moot" or court, the relation of which to the other courts is matter
of speculation. A law of Edgar, about 960, required that it should meet
three times a year, these being in all likelihood assemblies at which
attendance was compulsory on all tenants of the burghal district, when
pleas concerning life and liberty and land were held, and men were
compelled to find pledges answerable for their good conduct. At these
great meetings the borough reeve (_gerefa_) presided, declaring the law
and guiding the judgments given by the suitors of the court. The reeve
was supported by a group of assistants, called in Devon the "witan," in
the boroughs of the Danelaw by a group of (generally twelve) "lawmen,"
in other to