places in an exceptional fashion. It was subjecting them to a special
tax in the form of an _auxilium_ or _donum_. This fact we may take as
the starting point for our researches. Now if we read the unique Pipe
Roll of Henry I.'s reign and the earliest Pipe Rolls of Henry II.'s we
observe that an 'aid' or a 'gift' is from time to time collected from
the 'cities and boroughs,' and if we put down the names of the towns
which are charged with this impost, we obtain a remarkable result[701].
Speaking broadly we may say that the only towns which pay are 'county
towns.' For a large part of England this is strictly true. We will
follow the order of Domesday Book, beginning however with its second
zone. If London is in Middlesex[702], it is Middlesex's one borough. In
Hertfordshire is Hertford. In Buckinghamshire is Buckingham, but no aid
can be expected from it. In Oxfordshire is Oxford. In Gloucestershire is
Gloucester, but Winchcombe also asserts its burghal rank. In
Worcestershire is Worcester, while Droitwich appears occasionally with a
small gift. Hereford is the one borough of Herefordshire. Turning to the
third zone, we pass rapidly through Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire,
Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire; each has its borough. This will be
true of Leicestershire also; but Leicester is by this time so completely
in the hands of its earl that the king gets nothing from it. Nor, it
would seem, does he get anything from Warwick. Half in Warwickshire,
half in Staffordshire lies Tamworth; Stafford also pays. At times
Bridgenorth appears beside Shrewsbury. Nothing is received from Chester,
for it is the head of a palatinate. Derby, Nottingham and York are the
only representatives of their shires. Lincolnshire has Stamford on its
border as well as Lincoln in its centre. Norfolk has Thetford as well as
Norwich; but Suffolk has only Ipswich and Essex only Colchester.
[Aid-paying boroughs in the south.]
In the southern zone matters are not so simple. Kent contains Canterbury
and Rochester; Surrey contains Guildford and Southwark; Sussex only
Chichester. Hampshire has Winchester; Southampton is receiving special
treatment. Wallingford represents Berkshire. When we get to Wiltshire
and Dorset we are in the classical land of small boroughs. There are
various little towns whose fate is in the balance; Marlborough and Calne
seem for the moment to be the most prominent. In Somersetshire, whatever
may have been true in the past, Ilchester is standing out as the one
borough that pays an aid. Exeter has now no second in Devonshire. If
there is a borough in Cornwall, it makes no gift to the king.
[List of aids.]
We may obtain some notion of the relative rank of these towns if we set
forth the amounts with which they are charged in 1130 and in 1156,
though the materials for this comparison are unfortunately incomplete.
Pipe Roll Pipe Roll
31 Hen. I 2 Hen. II
£ £
London 120 120
Winchester 80
Lincoln 60 60
York 40 40
Norwich 30 33-1/3
Exeter 20
Canterbury 20 13-1/3
Colchester 20[2] 12-2/3[703]
Oxford 20 20
Gloucester 15 15
Wallingford 15
Worcester 15
Cambridge 12 12
Hereford 10
Thetford 10
Northampton 10
Rochester 10
Nottingham} 15 15
Derby }
Wiltshire boroughs 17
Calne 1
Dorset boroughs 15
Huntingdon 8 8
Ipswich 7 3-1/3
Guildford 5 5
Southwark 5 5
Hertford 5
Stamford 5
Bedford 5 6-2/3
Shrewsbury 5
Droitwich 5
Stafford 3-1/3 3-1/3
Winchcombe 3 5
Tamworth 2-3/4 1-1/4[704]
Ilchester 2-1/2
Chichester[705]
[Value of the list.]
Now we are not putting this forward as a list of those English towns
that were the most prosperous in the middle of the twelfth century. We
have made no mention of flourishing seaports, of Dover, Hastings,
Bristol, Yarmouth. Nor is this a list of all the places that are
casually called _burgi_ on rolls of Henry II.'s reign. That name is
given to Scarborough, Knaresborough, Tickhill, Cirencester and various
other towns. New tests of 'burgality' (if we may make that word) are
emerging and old tests are becoming obsolete. We see too that some towns
are dropping out of the list of aid-paying boroughs. In 1130 Wallingford
has thrice failed to pay its aid of £15 and the whole debt of £45 must
be forgiven to the burgesses _pro paupertate eorum_[706]. So Wallingford
drops out of this list. Probably Buckingham has dropped out at an
earlier time for a similar reason. But still this list, especially in
the form that it takes in Henry I.'s time, is of great importance to
those who are going to study the boroughs of Domesday Book. It looks
like a traditional list. It deals out nice round sums. It is
endeavouring to keep Wallingford on a par with Gloucester and above
Northampton. It is retaining Winchcombe.
[The boroughs in Domesday.]
If we make the experiment, we shall discover that this catalogue really
is a good prologue to Domesday Book. We will once more visit the
counties which form the second zone. The account that our record gives
of Hertfordshire has a preface. That preface deals with the borough of
Hertford and precedes even the list of the Hertfordshire tenants in
chief. Buckingham in Buckinghamshire and Oxford in Oxfordshire are
similarly treated. In Gloucestershire the city of Gloucester and the
borough of Winchcombe are described before the body of the county is
touched. In Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Cambridgeshire,
Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire,
Warwickshire, Staffordshire[707], Shropshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire[708] and Yorkshire the same procedure is adopted: the
account of the shire's city or borough precedes the account of the
shire. In Lincolnshire the description of the county is introduced by
the description of Lincoln and Stamford; also of Torksey, which had
been a place of military importance and seems to have been closely
united with the city of Lincoln by some governmental bond[709].
Convenient arrangement is not the strong point of 'Little Domesday'; but
what is said therein of Colchester is said at the very end of the survey
of Essex, while Norwich, Yarmouth and Thetford stand at the end of the
royal estates in Norfolk, and Ipswich stands at the end of the royal
estates in Suffolk.
[Southern boroughs in Domesday.]
If now we enter the southern zone and keep in our minds the scheme that
we have seen prevailing in the greater part of England, we shall observe
that the account of Kent has a prologue touching Dover, Canterbury and
Rochester. In Berkshire an excellent account of Wallingford precedes the
rubric _Terra Regis_. Four places in Dorset are singled out for
prefatory treatment, namely, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and
Shaftesbury. In Devon Exeter stands, if we may so speak, above the line,
and stands alone, though Barnstaple, Lidford and Totness are reckoned as
boroughs. Of the other counties there is more to be said. If we compare
the first page of the survey of Somerset with the first pages that are
devoted to its two neighbours, Dorset and Devon, we shall probably come
to the conclusion that the compilers of the book scrupled to put any
Somerset vill on a par with Exeter, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and
Shaftesbury. In each of the three cases the page is mapped out in
precisely the same fashion. The second column is headed by _Terra
Regis_. A long way down in the first column begins the list of tenants
in chief. The upper part of the first column contains in one case the
account of Exeter, in another the account of the four Dorset boroughs,
but in the third case, that of Somerset, it is left blank. In Wiltshire
Malmesbury and Marlborough stand above the line; but, if we look to the
foot of the page, we shall suspect that the compilers can not easily
force their general scheme upon this part of the country. In Surrey no
place stands above the line. Guildford is the first place mentioned on
the _Terra Regis_; Southwark seems to be inadequately treated on a later
page. The case of Sussex is like that of Somerset; the list of the
tenants in chief is preceded by a blank space. In Hampshire a whole
column is left blank. On a later page the borough of Southampton has a
column to itself; in the next column stands the _Terra Regis_ of the
Isle of Wight. And now let us turn back to the Middlesex that we have as
yet ignored. Nearly two columns, to say nothing of some precedent pages,
are void[710].
[The boroughs and the plan of Domesday Book.]
Now we must not be led away into speculations which would be vain. We
must not, for example, inquire whether the information that had been
obtained touching London and Winchester was too bulky to fill a room
that had been left for it. We must not inquire whether something was to
be said of Chichester or Hastings, of Ilchester or of Bristol that has
not been said. But apparently we may attribute to King William's
officials a certain general idea. It is an idea which suits the greater
part of England very well, though they find difficulties in their way
when they endeavour to impose it on some of the counties that lie south
of the Thames. The broad fact stands clear that throughout the larger
part of England the commissioners found a town in each county, and in
general one town only, which required special treatment. They do not
locate it on the _Terra Regis_; they do not locate it on any man's land.
It stands outside the general system of land tenure.
[The borough on no man's land.]
For a while, then, let us confine our attention to these county towns,
and we shall soon see why it is that they are rarely brought under any
rubric which would describe them as pieces of the king's soil or pieces
of some one else's soil. The trait to which we allude we shall call (for
want of a better term) the tenurial heterogeneity of the burgesses. In
those boroughs that are fully described we seldom, if ever, find that
all the burgesses have the same landlord. Of course there is a sense in
which, according to the view of the Domesday surveyors and of all later
lawyers, every inch of borough land is held of one landlord, namely, the
king; but in that sense every inch of England has the same landlord. The
fact that we would bring into relief is this, that normally the
burgesses of the borough do not hold their burgages immediately of one
and the same lord; they are not 'peers of a tenure'; the group that they
constitute is not a tenurial group. Far rather we shall find that,
though there will be some burgesses holding immediately of the king,
there will be others whose titles can be traced to the king only through
the medium of other lords. And the mesne lord will often be a very great
man, some prelate or baron with a widespread honour. Within the borough
he will, to use the language of Domesday Book, 'have' or 'hold' a small
group of burgesses, and sometimes they will be reckoned as annexed to or
as 'lying in' some manor distant from the town. It seems generally
expected that the barons of the county should have a few burgages apiece
in the county town. This arrangement does not look new. Seemingly the
great men of an earlier day, the _antecessores_ of the Frenchmen, have
owned town-houses: not so much houses for their own use, as houses or
'haws' (_hagae_) in which they could keep a few 'burgesses.'
[Heterogeneous tenures in the boroughs.]
Some examples of this remarkable arrangement should be given. First we
will look at Oxford. The king has many houses; the Archbishop of
Canterbury has 7; the Bishop of Winchester 9; the Bishop of Bayeux 18;
the Bishop of Lincoln 30; the Bishop of Coutances 2; the Bishop of
Hereford 3; the Abbot of St Edmund's 1; the Abbot of Abingdon 14; the
Abbot of Eynsham 13. And so with the worldly great:--the Count of
Mortain has 10; Count Hugh has 7; the Count of Evreux 1; Robert of
Ouilly 12; Roger of Ivry 15; Walter Giffard 17:--but we need not repeat
the whole long list[711].
It is so at Wallingford; King Edward had 8 virgates on which were 276
houses, and they paid him £11 rent; Bishop Walkelin of Winchester has
27, which pay 25 shillings; the Abbot of Abingdon has two acres, on
which are 7 houses paying 4 shillings; Milo Crispin has 20 houses, which
pay 12 shillings and 10 pence; and so forth[712]. Further, it is said
that the Bishop's 27 houses are valued in Brightwell; and, turning to
the account of Brightwell, there, sure enough, we find mention of the 25
shillings which these houses pay[713]. Milo's 20 houses are said to 'lie
in' Newnham; he has also in Wallingford 6 houses which are in Hazeley, 1
which is in Stoke, 1 which is in Chalgrove, one acre with 6 houses which
is in Sutton, one acre with 11 houses which is in Bray; 'all this land'
we are told 'belongs to Oxfordshire, but nevertheless it is in
Wallingford.' Yes, Milo's manor of Chalgrove lies five, his manor of
Hazeley lies seven miles from Wallingford; nevertheless, houses which
are physically in Wallingford are constructively in Chalgrove and
Hazeley. That we are not dealing with a Norman novelty is in this case
extremely plain. Wallingford is a border town. We read first of the
Berkshire landowners who have burgesses within it. There follows a list
of the Oxfordshire 'thegns' who hold houses in Wallingford. Archbishop
Lanfranc and Count Hugh appear in this context as 'thegns' of
Oxfordshire.
[Examples of heterogeneity.]
When we have obtained this clue, we soon begin to see that what is true
of Oxford and Wallingford is true even of those towns of which no
substantive description is given us. Thus there are 'haws' or
town-houses in Winchester which are attached to manors in all corners of
Hampshire, at Wallop, Clatford, Basingstoke, Eversley, Candover,
Strathfield, Minstead and elsewhere. Some of the manors to which the
burghers of London were attached are not, even in our own day, within
our monstrous town; there are some at Banstead and Bletchingley in
Surrey, at Waltham and Thurrock in Essex. But in every quarter we see
this curious scheme. At Warwick the king has in his demesne 113 houses,
and his barons have 112[714]. Of the barons' houses it is written:
'These houses belong to the lands which the barons hold outside the
borough and are valued there.' Or turn we to a small town:--at
Buckingham the barons have 26 burgesses; no one of them has more than
5.[715] The page that tells us this presents to us an admirable contrast
between Buckingham and its future rival. Aylesbury is just an ordinary
royal manor and stands under the rubric _Terra Regis_. Buckingham is a
very petty townlet; but it is a borough, and Count Hugh and the Bishop
of Coutances, Robert of Ouilly, Roger of Ivry, Arnulf of Hesdin and
other mighty men have burgesses there. As a climax we may mention the
case of Winchcombe. The burgages in this little town were held by many
great people. About the year 1100 the king had 60; the Abbot of
Winchcombe 40; the Abbot of Evesham 2; the Bishop of Hereford 2; Robert
of Bellême 3; Robert Fitzhamon 5, and divers other persons of note had
some 29 houses among them[716]. However poor, however small Winchcombe
may have been, it radically differed from the common manor and the
common village.
[Burgesses attached to manors.]
We have seen above how in the Conqueror's day the Abbey of Westminster
had a manor at Staines[717] and how that manor included 48 burgesses who
paid 40_s._ a year. Were those burgesses really in Staines, and was
Staines a borough? No, they were in the city of London. The Confessor
had told his Middlesex thegns how he willed that St Peter and the
brethren at Westminster should have the manor (_cotlif_) of Staines with
the land called Staninghaw (_mid ðam lande Stæningehaga_) within London
and all other things that had belonged to Staines[718]. Is not the guess
permissible that Staining Lane in the City of London[719], wherein stood
the church of St Mary, Staining, was so called, not 'because stainers
lived in it,' but because it once contained the haws of the men of
Staines? We must be careful before we find boroughs in Domesday Book,
for its language is deceptive. Perhaps we may believe that really and
physically there were forty-six burgesses in the vill of St Albans[720];
but, after what we have read of Staines, can we be quite sure that these
burgesses were not in London? The burgesses who de iure 'are in' one
place are often _de facto_ in quite another place.
[Tenure of the borough and tenure of land within the borough.]
We may for a moment pass over two centuries and turn to the detailed
account of Cambridge given to us by the Hundred Rolls, the most
elaborate description that we have of any medieval borough. Now in one
sense the 'vill' or borough of Cambridge belongs to the king, and, under
him, to the burgesses, for they hold it of him _in capite_ at a fee-farm
rent. But this does not mean that each burgess holds his tenement of the
corporation or _communitas_ of burgesses, which in its turn holds every
yard of land of the king in chief. It does not even mean that each
burgess holds immediately of the king, the _communitas_ intervening as
farmer of the king's rents[721]. No, the titles of the various burgesses
go up to the king by many various routes. Some of them pay rents to the
officers of the borough who are the king's farmers; but many of them do
not. The Chancellor and Masters of the University, for example, hold
three messuages in the vill of Cambridge; 'but' say the sworn burgesses
'what they pay for the same, we do not know and can not discover[722].'
How could it be otherwise? Domesday Book shows us that the Count of
Britanny had ten burgesses in Cambridge[723]. Count Alan's houses will
never be held in chief of the crown by any burgess: they will form part
of the honour of Richmond to the end of time. We may take another
example which will show the permanence of proprietary arrangements in
the boroughs. From an account of Gloucester which comes to us from the
year 1100 or thereabouts we learn that there were 300 houses in the
king's demesne and 313 belonging to other lords. From the year 1455 we
have another account which tells of 310 tenements paying landgavel to
the king's farmers and 346 which pay them nothing[724].
[The king and other landlords.]
Perhaps no further examples are needed. But this tenurial heterogeneity
seems to be an attribute of all or nearly all the very ancient boroughs,
the county towns. In some cases the king was the landlord of far the
greater number of the burgesses. In other cases the bishop became in
course of time the lord of some large quarter of a town in which his
cathedral stood. At Canterbury and Rochester, at Winchester and
Worcester, this process had been at work from remote days; the bishops
had been acquiring land and 'haws' within the walls[725]. But we can see
that in Henry I.'s day there were still four earls who were keeping up
their interest in their burgesses at Winchester[726]. In the later
middle ages we may, if we will, call these places royal boroughs and the
king's 'demesne boroughs,' for the burgesses derive their 'liberties'
directly from the king. But we must keep these ancient boroughs well
apart from any royal manors which the king has newly raised to burghal
rank. In the latter he will be the immediate landlord of every burgess;
in the former a good deal of rent will be paid, not to him, nor to the
community as his farmers, but to those who are filling the shoes of the
thegns of the shire.
[The oldest burh.]
This said, we will turn back our thoughts to the oldest days. The word
that deserves our best attention is _burh_, the future _borough_, for
little good would come of an attempt to found a theory upon the Latin
words, such as _civitas_, _oppidum_ and _urbs_ which occur in some of
those magniloquent land-books[727]. Now it seems fairly clear that for
some long time after the Germanic invasions the word _burh_ meant merely
a fastness, a stronghold, and suggested no thick population nor any
population at all. This we might learn from the map of England. The
hill-top that has been fortified is a _burh_. Very often it has given
its name to a neighbouring village[728]. But, to say nothing of hamlets,
we have full two hundred and fifty parishes whose names end in _burgh_,
_borough_ or _bury_, and in many cases we see no sign in them of an
ancient camp or of an exceptionally dense population. It seems a mere
chance that they are not _tons_ or _hams_, _worths_ or _thorpes_. Then
again, in Essex and neighbouring shires it is common to find that in the
village called _X_ there is a squire's mansion or a cluster of houses
called _X-bury_. Further, we can see plainly from our oldest laws that
the palisade or entrenchment around a great man's house is a _burh_.
Thus Alfred: The king's _burh-bryce_ (the sum to be paid for breaking
his _burh_) is 120 shillings, an archbishop's 90 shillings, another
bishop's 60 shillings, a twelve-hundred man's 30 shillings, a
six-hundred-man's 15 shillings, a ceorl's edor-bryce (the sum to be paid
for breaking his hedge) 5 shillings[729]. The ceorl, whose _wer_ is 200
shillings, will not have a _burh_, he will only have a hedge round his
house; but the man whose _wer_ is 600 shillings will probably have some
stockade, some rude rampart; he will have a _burh_.
[The king's burh.]
We observe the heavy _bót_ of 120 shillings which protects the king's
_burh_. May we not see here the very first stage in the legal history of
our boroughs? We pass over some centuries and we read in a statement of
the Londoners' customs that a man who is guilty of unlawful violence
must pay the king's _burh-bryce_ of five pounds[730]. And then the
Domesday surveyors tell us how at Canterbury every crime committed in
those streets which run right through the city is a crime against the
king, and so it is if committed upon the high-roads outside the city for
the space of one league, three perches and three feet[731]. This curious
accuracy over perches and feet sends us to another ancient
document:--'Thus far shall the king's peace (_grið_) extend from his
_burhgeat_ where he is sitting towards all four quarters, namely, three
miles, three furlongs, three acre-breadths, nine feet, nine
hand-breadths, nine barley-corns[732].' And then we remember how Fleta
tells us that the verge of the king's palace is twelve leagues in
circumference, and how within that ambit the palace court, the king's
most private court, has jurisdiction[733].
[The special peace of the burh.]
Has not legal fiction been at work since an early time? Has not the
sanctity of the king's house extended itself over a group of houses? The
term _burh_ seems to spread outwards from the defensible house of the
king and with it the sphere of his _burh-bryce_ is amplified. Within the
borough there reigns a special peace. This has a double meaning:--not
only do acts which would be illegal anywhere become more illegal when
they are done within the borough, but acts which would be legal
elsewhere, are illegal there. King Edmund legislating against the
blood-feud makes his _burh_ as sacred as a church; it is a sanctuary
where the feud may not be prosecuted[734]. If in construing such a
passage we doubt how to translate _burh_, whether by _house_ or by
_borough_, we are admitting that the language of the law does not
distinguish between the two. The Englishman's house is his castle, or,
to use an older term, his _burh_; the king's borough is the king's
house, for his house-peace prevails in its streets[735].
[The town and the burh.]