great (but he need not be a very great) man. Early in the tenth century,
however, the word had already acquired a new meaning. In Æthelstan's day
it seems to be supposed by the legislator that a moot will usually be
held in a _burh_. If a man neglects three summonses to a moot, the
oldest men of the _burh_ are to ride to his place and seize his
goods[736]. Already a _burh_ will have many men in it. Some of them will
be elder-men, aldermen. A moot will be held in it. Very possibly this
will be the shire-moot, for, since there is riding to be done, we see
that the person who ought to have come to the moot may live at a
distance[737]. A little later the _burh_ certainly has a moot of its
own. Edgar bids his subjects seek the _burh-gemót_ as well as the
_scyr-gemót_ and the _hundred-gemót_. The borough-moot is to be held
thrice a year[738]. At least from this time forward, the borough has a
court. An important line is thus drawn between the borough and the mere
_tún_. The borough has a court; the village has none, or, if the
villages are getting courts, this is due to the action of lords who
have sake and soke and is not commanded by national law. National law
commands that there shall be a moot thrice a year in every _burh_.
[The building of boroughs.]
The extension of the term _burh_ from a fortified house to a fortified
group of houses must be explained by those who are skilled in the
history of military affairs. It is for them to tell us, for example, how
much use the Angles and Saxons in the oldest days made of the entrenched
hill-tops, and whether the walls of the Roman towns were continuously
repaired[739]. Howbeit, a time seems to have come, at latest in the
struggle between the Danish invaders and the West-Saxon kings, when the
establishment and maintenance of what we might call fortified towns was
seen to be a matter of importance. There was to be a cluster of
inhabited dwellings which as a whole was to be made defensible by ditch
and mound, by palisade or wall. Edward the Elder and the Lady of the
Mercians were active in this work. Within the course of a few years
burgs were 'wrought' or 'timbered' at Worcester, Chester, Hertford,
Witham in Essex, Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick, Eddisbury,
Warbury, Runcorn, Buckingham, Towcester, Maldon, Huntingdon[740].
Whatever may be meant by the duty of repairing burgs when it is
mentioned in charters coming from a somewhat earlier time, it must for
the future be that of upholding those walls and mounds that the king and
the lady are rearing. The land was to be burdened with the maintenance
of strongholds. The land, we say. That is the style of the land-books.
Land, even though given to a church, is not to be free (unless by
exceptional favour) of army-service, bridge-work and borough-bettering
or borough-fastening. Wall-work[741] is coupled with bridge-work; to the
duty of maintaining the county bridges is joined the duty of
constructing and repairing the boroughs. Shall we say the 'county
boroughs'?
[The shire and its borough.]
Let us ask ourselves how the burden that is known as _burh-bót_, the
duty that the Latin charters call _constructio_, _munitio_,
_restauratio_, _defensio_, _arcis_ (for _arx_ is the common term) will
really be borne. Is it not highly probable, almost certain, that each
particular tract of land will be ascript to some particular _arx_ or
_castellum_[742], and that if, for instance, there is but one _burh_ in
a shire, all the lands in that shire must help to better that _burh_.
Apportionment will very likely go further. The man with five hides will
know how much of the mound or the wall he must maintain, how much
'wall-work' he must do. We see how the old bridge-work becomes a burden
on the estates of the county landowners. From century to century the
Cambridgeshire landowners contribute according to their hidage to repair
the most important bridge of their county, a bridge which lies in the
middle of the borough of Cambridge. Newer arrangements, the rise of
castles and of borough communities, have relieved them from the duty of
'borough-fastening;' but the bridge-work is apportioned on their lands.
[Military geography.]
The exceedingly neat and artificial scheme of political geography that
we find in the midlands, in the country of the true 'shires,' forcibly
suggests deliberate delimitation for military purposes. Each shire is to
have its borough in its middle. Each shire takes its name from its
borough. We must leave it for others to say in every particular case
whether and in what sense the shire is older than the borough or the
borough than the shire: whether an old Roman chester was taken as a
centre or whether the struggles between Germanic tribes had fixed a
circumference. But a policy, a plan, there has been, and the outcome of
it is that the shire maintains the borough[743].
There has come down to us in a sadly degenerate form a document which we
shall hereafter call 'The Burghal Hidage[744].' It sets forth, so we
believe, certain arrangements made early in the tenth century for the
defence of Wessex against Danish inroads. It names divers strongholds,
and assigns to each a large number of hides. A few of the places that it
mentions we have not yet found on the map. Beginning in the east of
Sussex and following the order of the list, we seem to see Hastings,
Lewes, Burpham (near Arundel), Chichester, Porchester, Southampton,
Winchester, Wilton, Tisbury (or perhaps Chisenbury), Shaftesbury,
Twyneham, Wareham, Bredy, Exeter, Halwell near Totness, Lidford,
Barnstaple, Watchet, Axbridge; then Langport and Lyng (which defend the
isle of Athelney), Bath, Malmesbury, Cricklade, Oxford, Wallingford,
Buckingham, Eastling near Guildford, and Southwark. Corrupt and
enigmatical though this catalogue may be, it is of the highest
importance. It shows how in the great age of burg-building the
strongholds had wide provinces which in some manner or another were
appurtenant to them, and it may also give us some precious hints about
places in Wessex which once were national burgs but which forfeited
their burghal character in the tenth century. Guildford seems to have
risen at the expense of Eastling and Totness at the expense of Halwell,
while Tisbury, Bredy and Watchet (if we are right in fancying that they
are mentioned) soon lost caste. Lyng is not a place which we should have
named among the oldest of England's burgs, and yet we have all read how
Alfred wrought a 'work' at Athelney. In Wessex burgs rise and fall
somewhat rapidly. North of the Thames the system is more stable. Also it
is more artificial, for north of the Thames civil and military geography
coincide.
[The shire's wall-work.]
Let us now look once more at the Oxford of Domesday Book. The king has
twenty 'mural houses[745]' which belonged to Earl Ælfgar; they pay
13_s._ 2_d._ He has a house of 6_d._ which is constructively at Shipton;
one of 4_d._ at Bloxham; one of 30_d._ at Risborough and two of 4_d._ at
Twyford in Buckinghamshire. 'They are called mural houses because, if
there be need and the king gives order, they shall repair the wall.'
There follows a list of the noble houseowners, an archbishop, six
bishops, three earls and so forth. 'All the above hold these houses free
because of the reparation of the wall. All the houses that are called
"mural" were in King Edward's time free of everything except army
service and wall-work.' Then of Chester we read this[746]:--'To repair
the wall and the bridge, the reeve called out one man from every hide
in the county, and the lord whose man did not come paid 40_s_. to the
king and earl.' The duty of maintaining the bulwark of the county's
borough is incumbent on the magnates of the county. They discharge it by
keeping haws in the borough and burgesses in those haws[747].
[Henry the Fowler and the German burgs.]
We may doubt whether the duty of the county to its borough has gone no
farther than mere 'wall-work.' A tale from the older Saxony may come in
well at this point. When the German king Henry the Fowler was building
burgs in Saxony and was playing the part that had lately been played in
England by Edward and Æthelflæd, he chose, we are told, the ninth man
from among the _agrarii milites_; these chosen men were to live in the
burgs; they were to build dwellings there for their fellows
(_confamiliares_) who were to remain in the country tilling the soil and
carrying a third of the produce to the burgs, and in these burgs all
_concilia_ and _conventus_ and _convivia_ were to be held[748]. Modern
historians have found in this story some difficulties which need not be
noticed here. Only the core of it interests us. Certain men are clubbed
together into groups of nine for the purpose of maintaining the burg as
a garrisoned and victualled stronghold in which all will find room in
case a hostile inroad be made.
[The shire thegns and their town houses.]
Turning to England we shall not forget how in the year 894 Alfred
divided his forces into two halves; half were to take the field, half to
remain at home, besides the men who were to hold the burgs[749]; but at
all events we shall hardly go astray if we suggest that the thegns of
the shire have been bound to keep houses and retainers in the borough of
their shire and that this duty has been apportioned among the great
estates[750]. We find that the baron of Domesday Book has a few
burgesses in the borough and that these few burgesses 'belong' in some
sense or another to his various rural manors. Why should he keep a few
burgesses in the borough and in what sense can these men belong some to
this manor and some to that? To all appearance this arrangement is not
modern. King Edmund conveyed to his thegn Æthelweard an estate of seven
hides at Tistead in Hampshire and therewith the haws within the burg of
Winchester that belonged to those seven hides[751]. When the Bishop of
Worcester loaned out lands to his thegns, the lands carried with them
haws in the 'port' of Worcester[752]. We have all read of the ceorl who
'throve to thegn-right.' He had five hides of his own land, a church and
a kitchen, a bell-tower and a _burh-geat-setl_, which, to our thinking,
is just a house in the 'gate,' the street of the _burh_[753]. He did not
acquire a town-house in order that he might enjoy the pleasures of the
town. He acquired it because, if he was to be one of the great men of
the county, he was bound to keep in the county's _burh_ retainers who
would do the wall-work and hoard provisions sent in to meet the evil day
when all men would wish to be behind the walls of a _burh_.
[The knights in the borough.]
We have it in our modern heads that the medieval borough is a sanctuary
of peace, an oasis of 'industrialism' in the wilderness of 'militancy.'
Now a sanctuary of peace the borough is from the very first. An
exceptional and exalted peace reigns over it. If you break that peace
you incur the king's _burh-bryce_. But we may strongly suspect that the
first burg-men, the first _burgenses_, were not an exceptionally
peaceful folk. Those _burhwaras_ of London who thrashed Swegen[754] and
chose kings were no sleek traders; nor must we speak contemptuously of
'trained bands of apprentices' or of 'the civic militia.' In all
probability these burg-men were of all men in the realm the most
professionally warlike. Were we to say that in the boroughs the knightly
element was strong we might mislead, for the word _knight_ has had
chivalrous adventures. However, we may believe that the _burgensis_ of
the tenth century very often was a _cniht_, a great man's _cniht_, and
that if not exactly a professional soldier (professional militancy was
but beginning) he was kept in the borough for a military purpose and was
perhaps being fed by the manor to which he belonged. These knights
formed gilds for religious and convivial purposes. At Cambridge there
was a gild of thegns, who were united in blood-brotherhood. We can not
be certain that all these thegns habitually lived in Cambridge. Perhaps
we should rather say that already a Cambridgeshire club had its
head-quarters in Cambridge and there held its 'morning-speeches' and its
drinking bouts. These thegns had 'knights' who seem to have been in some
sort inferior members of the gild and to have been bound by its
rules[755]. Then we hear of 'knight-gilds' at London and Canterbury and
Winchester[756]. Such gilds would be models for the merchant-gilds of
after-days, and indeed when not long after the Conquest we catch at
Canterbury our first glimpse of a merchant-gild, its members are calling
themselves knights: knights of the chapman-gild[757]. Among the knights
who dwelt in the burg such voluntary societies were the more needful,
because these men had not grown up together as members of a community.
They came from different districts and had different lords. In this
heterogeneity we may also see one reason why a very stringent peace, the
king's own house-peace, should be maintained, and why the borough should
have a moot of its own. When compared with a village there is something
artificial about the borough.
[_Buhr-bót_ and castle-guard.]
This artificiality exercised an influence over the later fate of the
boroughs. The ground had been cleared for the growth of a new kind of
community, one whose members were not bound together by feudal,
proprietary, agricultural ties. But the strand that we have been
endeavouring to trace is broken at the Conquest. The castle arises. It
is garrisoned by knights who are more heavily armed and more
professionally militant than were their predecessors. The castle is now
what wants defending; the knights who defend it form no part of the
burghal community, and perhaps 'the castle fee' is in law no part of the
borough. And yet let us see how in the twelfth century the king's castle
at Norwich was manned. It was manned by the knights of the Abbot of St
Edmund's. One troop served there for three months and then was relieved
by another, and those who were thus set free went home to the manors
with which the abbot had enfeoffed them and which they held by the
service of castle-guard[758]. Much in this arrangement is new; the
castle itself is new; but it is no new thing, we take it, that the
_burh_ should be garrisoned by the knights of abbots or earls. And who
built the castles, who built the Tower of London? Let us read what the
chronicler says of the year 1097:--Also many shires which belonged to
London for work[759] were sorely harassed by the wall that they wrought
around the tower, and by the bridge, which had been nearly washed away,
and by the work of the king's hall that was wrought at Westminster.
There were shires or districts which from of old owed this work or work
of this kind to London-bury[760].
[Borough and market.]
Long before the Conquest, however, a force had begun to play which was
to give to the boroughs their most permanent characteristic. They were
to be centres of trade. We must not exclude the hypothesis that some
places were fortified and converted into burgs because they were already
the focuses of such commerce as there was. But the general logic of the
process we take to have been this:--The king's _burh_ enjoys a special
peace: Even the men who are going to or coming from it are under royal
protection: Therefore within its walls men can meet together to buy and
sell in safety: Also laws which are directed against theft command that
men shall not buy and sell elsewhere: Thus a market is established:
Traders begin to build booths round the market-place and to live in the
borough. A theory has indeed been brilliantly urged which would find the
legal germ of the borough rather in a market-peace than in the peace of
a burg[761]. But this doctrine has difficulties to meet. A market-peace
is essentially temporary, while the borough's peace is eternal. A market
court, if it arises, will have a jurisdiction only over bargains made
and offences committed on market-days, whereas the borough court has a
general competence and hears pleas relating to the property in houses
and lands. Here in England during the Angevin time the 'franchise,' or
royally granted right, of holding a market is quite distinct from the
legal essence of the borough. Lawful markets are held in many places
that are not boroughs; indeed in the end by calling a place 'a mere
market-town' we should imply that it was no borough. Already in Domesday
Book this seems to be the case. Markets are being held and market-tolls
are being taken in many vills which are not of burghal rank[762].
Perhaps also we may see the borough-peace and the market-peace lying
side by side. In the Wallingford of the Confessor's day there were many
persons who had sake and soke within their houses. If any one spilt
blood and escaped into one of those houses before he was attached, the
owner received the blood-wite. But it was not so on Saturdays, for then
the money went to the king 'because of the market[763].' Thus the king's
borough-peace seems to be intensified on market-days; on those days it
will even penetrate the houses of the immunists. So at Dover some
unwonted peace or 'truce' prevailed in the town from St. Michael's Day
to St. Andrew's: that is to say, during the herring season[764].
[Establishment of markets.]
The establishment of a market is not one of those indefinite phenomena
which the historian of law must make over to the historian of economic
processes. It is a definite and a legal act. The market is established
by law. It is established by law which prohibits men from buying and
selling elsewhere than in a duly constituted market. To prevent an easy
disposal of stolen goods is the aim of this prohibition. Our
legislators are always thinking of the cattle-lifter. At times they seem
to go the full length of decreeing that only in a 'port' may anything be
bought or sold, unless it be of trifling value; but other dooms would
also sanction a purchase concluded before the hundred court. He who buys
elsewhere runs a risk of being treated as a thief if he happens to buy
stolen goods[765]. Official witnesses are to be appointed for this
purpose in every hundred and in every _burh_: twelve in every hundred
and small _burh_, thirty-three in a large _burh_[766]. Here once more we
see the _burh_ co-ordinated with the hundred. A by-motive favours this
establishment of markets. Those who traffic in the safety of the king's
_burh_ may fairly be asked to pay some toll to the king. They enjoy his
peace; perhaps also the use of royal weights and measures, known and
trustworthy, is another part of the valuable consideration that they
receive. First and last throughout the history of the boroughs toll is a
matter of importance[767]. It gives the king a revenue from the borough,
a revenue that he can let to farm. Also, though we do not think that the
borough court was in its origin a mere market court, the disputes of the
market-place will provide the borough court with plentiful litigation,
and in this quarter also the king will find a new source of income.
Among the old land-books that which speaks most expressly of the profits
of jurisdiction as the subject-matter of a gift is a charter which
concerns the town of Worcester. Æthelred and Æthelflæd, the ealdorman
and lady of the Mercians, have, at the request of the bishop, built a
_burh_ at Worcester, and they declare that of all the rights that
appertain to their lordship both in market (_on ceapstowe_) and in
street, within the _burh_ and without, they have given half to God and
St. Peter, with the witness of King Alfred and all the wise of Mercia.
The lord of the church is to have half of all, be it land-fee, or
fiht-wite, stealing, wohceapung (fines for buying or selling contrary to
the rules of the market) or borough-wall-scotting[768]. Quite apart
from the rent of houses, there is a revenue to be gained from the
borough.
[Moneyers in the burh.]
Another rule has helped to define the borough, and this rule also has
its root among the regalia. No one, says King Æthelstan, is to coin
money except in a port; in Canterbury there may be seven moneyers, four
of the king, two of the bishop, one of the abbot; in Rochester three,
two of the king, one of the bishop; in London-borough eight; in
Winchester six; in Lewes two; in Hastings one; in Chichester one; in
Hampton two; in Wareham two; in Exeter two; in Shaftesbury two, and in
each of the other boroughs one[769]. Already, then, a _burh_ is an
entity known to the law: every _burh_ is to have its moneyer.
[_Burh_ and _port_.]
We have thus to consider the _burh_ (1) as a stronghold, a place of
refuge, a military centre: (2) as a place which has a moot that is a
unit in the general, national system of moots: (3) as a place in which a
market is held. When in the laws this third feature is to be made
prominent, the _burh_ is spoken of as a _port_, and perhaps from the
first there might be a _port_ which was not a _burh_[770]. The word
_port_ was applied to inland towns. To this usage of it the _portmoot_
or _portmanmoot_ that in after days we may find in boroughs far from the
coast bears abiding testimony. On the other hand, except on the seaside,
this word has not become a part of many English place names[771]. If, as
seems probable, it is the Latin _portus_, we apparently learn from the
use made of it that at one time the havens (and some of those havens may
not have been in England) were the only known spots where there was much
buying and selling. But be it remembered that a market-place, a
_ceap-stow_, does not imply a resident population of buyers and
sellers; it does not imply the existence of retailers[772].
[Military and commercial elements in the borough.]
We can not analyse the borough population; we can not weigh the
commercial element implied by _port_ or the military element implied by
_burh_; but to all seeming the former had been rapidly getting the upper
hand during the century which preceded the making of Domesday Book. If
we are on the right track, there was a time when the thegns of the shire
must have regarded their borough haws rather as a burden than as a
source of revenue. They kept those haws because they were bound to keep
them. On the other hand, the barons of the Conqueror's day are deriving
some income from these houses. Often it is very small. Count Hugh, for
example, has just one burgess at Buckingham who pays him twenty-six
pence a year[773]. All too soon, it may be, had the boroughs put off
their militancy. Had they retained it, England might never have been
conquered. Houses which should have been occupied by 'knights,' were
occupied by chapmen.
[The borough and agriculture.]
But this is not the whole difficulty. Even if we could closely watch the
change which substitutes a merchant or shopkeeper for a 'knight' as the
typical burg-man or burgess, we should still have to investigate an
agrarian problem. Very likely we ought to think that even on the eve of
the Conquest the group of men which dwells within the walls is often a
group which by tilling the soil produces a great part of its own food,
though some men may be living by handicraft or trade and some may still
be supported by those manors to which they 'belong.' In one case the
institutions that are characteristic of _burh_ and _port_ may have been
superimposed upon those of an ancient village which had common fields.
In another an almost uninhabited spot may have been chosen as the site
for a stronghold. In the former and, as we should fancy, the commoner
case a large choice is open to the constructive historian, for he may
suppose that the selected village was full of serfs or full of free
proprietors, that the soil was royal demesne or had various landlords.
In one instance he may think that he sees the coalescence of several
little communities that were once distinct; in another the gradual
occupation of a space marked out by Roman walls. The one strong hint
that is given to us by Domesday Book and later documents is that our
generalities should be few and that, were this possible, each borough
should be separately studied.
[Burgesses as cultivators.]