"Nevertheless, the habit of naming towns for English towns remained for a while, especially in Massachusetts. The planting of Worcester in 1684 showed it still continuing. A tradition lingered that this name was a gesture of defiance against Charles II, to preserve in Massachusetts the name of that city where he suffered defeat and afterwards had to flee across the southern counties, doubling like a hunted fox. But Worcester in England was a good royalist city, not a symbol of Puritanism. If it was reproduced in defiance, the gesture was a very timorous one indeed. More likely it was thought only another good English name."
-from "Names on the Land, A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States" by George R. Stewart, page 119.
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