Part 24

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.]

As a rule, quite half of the burgesses in any of those county towns that are fully described in the survey are the king's own burgesses, and in some cases his share is very large. This suggests that the land on which the borough stands has been royal land and that the king provided the shire thegns with sites for their haws. For their haws they have sometimes been paying him small rents. On the other hand, at Leicester, though the king has some 40 houses, the great majority belong to Hugh of Grantmesnil. He has about 80 houses which pertain to 17 different manors and which may in the past have been held by many different thegns; but he also holds 110 houses which are not allotted to manors and which have probably come to him as the representative of the earls and ealdormen of an older time[774]. This looks as if in this case the soil had been not royal but 'comital' land at the time when the place was fortified and when the landowners of the shire, including perhaps the king, were obliged to build houses within the wall. But though we fully admit that each of our boroughs has lived its own life, our evidence seems to point to the conclusion that in those truly ancient boroughs of which we have been speaking, though there might be many inhabitants who held and who cultivated arable land lying without the walls, there were from a remote time other burgesses who were not landowners and were not agriculturists and yet were men of importance in the borough. If we look, for example, at the elaborate account of Colchester we shall first read the names of the king's burgesses. 'Of these 276 burgesses of the king, the majority have one house and a plot of land of from one to twenty-five acres; some possess more than one house and some have none; they had in all 355 houses and held 1296 acres of land[775]'. But these were not the only burgesses. Various magnates had houses which were annexed to their rural manors. Count Eustace (to name a few) had 12, Geoffrey de Mandeville 2, the Abbot of Westminster 4, the Abbess of Barking 3, and seemingly to these houses no strips in the arable fields were attached[776]. Thus, though many of the burgesses may till the soil, the borough community is not an agrarian community. We can not treat it as a village community that has prospered and slowly changed its habits. A new principle has been introduced, an element of heterogeneity. The men who meet each other in court and market, the men who will hereafter farm the court and market, are not the shareholders in an agricultural concern.

[Burgage tenure.]

That tenurial heterogeneity of which we have been speaking had another important effect. When in later days a rural manor is being raised to the rank of a _liber burgus_, the introduction of 'burgage tenure' seems to be regarded as the very essence of the enfranchisement[777]. Probably this feature had appeared in many boroughs at an early date. The lord with lands in Oxfordshire may have been bound to keep a few houses and retainers in Oxford. If, however, the commercial element in the town began to get the better of the military element, if Oxford became a centre of trade, then a house in Oxford could be let for a money rent. In Domesday Book the barons are drawing rents from their borough houses. If any return is to be made by the occupier to the owner it will take the form of a money rent; it can hardly take another form. Thus tenure at a money rent would become the typical tenure of a burgage tenement. It will be a securely heritable tenure, because the landlord is an absentee and has too few tenants in the town to require the care of a resident reeve. But there may have been many dwellers in some of the boroughs who were bound to help in the cultivation of a stretch of royal or episcopal demesne that lay close to the walls. In the west some of the king's burgesses seem to have been holding under onerous terms. At Shrewsbury, which lies near the border of Wales where every girl's marriage gave rise to an _amobyr_, a maid had to pay ten, a widow twenty shillings when she took a husband, and a relief of ten shillings was due when a burgess died[778]. At Hereford the reeve's consent was necessary when a burgage was to be sold, and he took a third of the price. When a burgess died the king got his horse and arms (these Hereford burgesses were fighting men); if he had no horse, then ten shillings 'or his land with the houses.' Any one who was too poor to do his service might abandon his tenement to the reeve without having to pay for it. Such an entry as this seems to tell us that the services were no trivial return for the tenement[779].

[Eastern and western boroughs.]