Take, then, the case of Gloucester. Mr. Freeman and Prebendary Scarth undoubtedly represent, on these questions, the opposite extremes of thought. The former would minimise, and the latter would make the most of the survival of “Roman names,” yet on this point they are at one. “A few great cities,” says Mr. Freeman, “and a few great natural objects, London on the Thames and _Gloucester_ on the Severn, still retain names older than the English Conquest.”[40] “London and Lincoln,” says Prebendary Scarth, “and _Gloster_ are noteworthy examples of places retaining, like many others, the Latinised forms of still earlier names.”[41] And yet, as Mr. Allen most truly observes-- “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.”[42] It is the advantage of an unflinching analysis such as this that we are immediately confronted in black and white with a form of which the existence is necessarily involved, though hitherto surely overlooked. That form is “Glevum castrum.” This then is the question that we have to ask: _was “Glevum castrum” ever the name of Gloucester?_ “Glevum” we know, and “Gleawan ceaster;” but if we cannot demonstrate the existence of a form “Glevum castrum,” the continuity of the chain is severed; there is between them a missing link. Now for this form, although, as I have said, it is a necessary postulate to the accepted theory, there is absolutely, we may at once assert, no evidence whatever. Indeed, as in this same article Mr. Allen has himself observed,-- “The new comers could not have learned to speak of a ceaster or chester from Welshmen who called it a caer; nor could they have adopted the names Leicester or Gloucester from Welshmen who knew those towns only as Kair Legion or Kair Gloui.”[43] Thus, then, as the Roman name was “Glevum,” and _not_ “Glevum castrum,” we see that “Gloucester,” the English name, is _not_ the “Roman name” preserved--is not even, though Mr. Freeman would admit it, “older than the English Conquest.” But as yet we have only ascertained that “Gloucester” (that is to say, “Gleawan Ceaster”) was a new, an English, name. We have still to learn how it was evolved, and what the name really meant in the mouths of “the English conquerors.”