288 CASTERS AND C11ESTERS. 



be employed by the new occupants of the districts about 

 the Wall. 



No name in Britain, however, is more interesting than 

 that of Rochester, which admirably shows us how so 

 many other Roman names have acquired a delusively 

 English form, or have been mistaken for memorials 

 of the English conquest. The Eoman town was known 

 as Durobrivae, which does not in the least resemble 

 Rochester ; and what is more, Baeda distinctly tells us 

 that Justus, the first bishop of the West Kentish see, 

 was consecrated * in the city of Dorubrevi, which the 

 English call Hrofaes ceaster, from one of its former 

 masters, by name Hrof.' If this were all we knew about 

 it, we should be told that Bseda clearly described the 

 town as being called Hrof's Chester, from an English 

 conqueror Hrof, and that to contradict this clear state- 

 ment of an early writer was presumptuous or absurd. 

 Fortunately, however, we have the clearest possible 

 proof that Hrof never existed, and that he was a pure 

 creation of Baeda's own simple etymological guesswork. 

 King Alfred clearly knew better, for he omitted this wild 

 derivation from his English translation. The valuable 

 fragment of a map of Roman Britain preserved for us 

 in the mediaeval transcript known as the Peutinger 

 Tables, sets down Rochester as Rotibis. Hence it is 

 pretty certain that it must have had two alternative 

 names, of which the other was Durobrivae. Rotibis 

 would easily pass (on the regular analogies) into Rotifi 

 ceaster, and that again into Hrofi ceaster and Rochester ; 

 just as Rhutupiae or Ritupse passed into Rituf burh, and 

 so finally into Richborough. Moreover, in a charter of 



