General phase:1086-1216/1227

Levels of burghal status

• royal boroughs - directly held by the King through officers appointed by the King
• mediatised boroughs - originally directly held by the King, but alienated in full or in part by the King - Leicester - part alienated to the earls of Leicester as the earl's third penny and then completely into the earl's hands - development then depended on relationships between the lord and the borough
• seignorial or mesne boroughs - held from their origins privately by lords below the King - these lords issued the charters and negotiated the privileges - where the lord was lay the borough might achieve greater independence - where the lord was religious the degree of independence or development might be restricted - the borough might be recognised as such, but a brake placed on its development and independence - example of Wells held by the Bishop of Bath and Wells - disputes between Bishop and burgesses: the King acted as guarantor - where the borough held by a religious house, the recognition and development of the borough might be severely restricted: Abbey of Bury St Edmunds kept tight control over Bury St Edmunds preventing corporate development - Cirencester Abbey refused to recognise burghal status of Cirencester - religious houses wanted the benefits of burgage tenure and trading privileges without conceding burghal development - resulted in continuous conflict: Dunstable Priory and the burgesses of Dunstable; Cirencester Abbey and Cirencester; Abbey of Bury St Edmunds and Bury St Edmunds, particularly in 1327 and late 14^th century.

Constitutional developments in the 12^th century:

• commune
• gild merchant
• fiscal separation of the borough
• the portmoot
• granting of liberties in charters - culminating in status of liber burgus and reflected in affiliation

• Commune - propounded by Tait as a formative influence in the late 12^th century - from the activities of the commune developed the notion of the communitas - the commune as a sworn association had wrested privileges from lords in France - Tait considered that the commune was instrumental in three developments in English boroughs: the election of mayors; regular councils; and the beginnings of incorporation. Through the 12^th century the principal officers of the borough were the King's agents: bailiffs or reeves, not responsible to the burgesses or elected by them. Tait regarded the office of mayor as analogous to the maires of the French communes. Tait also regarded the incipient use of seals - at Gloucester, York, Northampton and Oxford in the late 12^th century as the actions of communes, a nascent form of informal corporate activity. Little actual evidence of communes as opposed to communal activity: London commune in 1141; London commune and mayor in 1191; Henry II's suppression of communes of Gloucester and York -- other problems: in some cases the mayor developed out of the gild merchant as at Leicester -- in the mid 13^th century the alderman of the gild merchant became the mayor; some boroughs, even royal boroughs, had no mayor until very late (Nottingham 12⁸³/₈₄). In the first extant constitutional arrangement, that for Ipswich in 1200, the principal officers of the burgesses were the two bailiffs -- there was no mayor - Ipswich didn't have mayors through the middle ages.

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• Gild merchant - essentially the gild represented the commercial interest of the borough, the admission of burgesses to the freedom and the protection and regulation of trading privileges. Gild merchants were in existence in Burford in the late 11^th century (seignorial charter of 1088x1107) and presumably at Oxford since the charter referred to that at Oxford. Gilds developed in York and Beverly by the reign of Henry I. In the early 13^th century such gilds were established at Leicester, Lewes, Chichester, Wilton, Winchester, Lincoln, Wallingford and Southampton. The gild at Leicester was the recipient of privileges from the earl of Leicester before 1118. Since the portmoot and its officers were the representatives of the King, the gild became the representative of the burgesses' wider aspirations, not just their trading privileges. It was an organic expression of informal constitutional development -- evidence: gild merchant rolls of Leicester of 1196 and Shrewsbury of 1209 -- expressions of communal burghal organisation and activity.

• Fiscal separation: important 12^th-century process. In 1086, the royal revenues from boroughs - aids and tolls - were collected by the portreeves, the King's agents in the boroughs and delivered to the sheriff of the county. The farm of the borough - firma burgi - was thus just part of the farm of the county - firma comitatus. There is just one possible exception in DB - Northampton. There were two principal developments in the process of separation in the 12^th century:

• Questions about feefarm: (a) did the grant of feefarm imply that the officers who traditionally collected it - bailiffs and reeves - were not the community's own officers rather than the King's and were they now elected by the burgesses? Difference of perception of Tait and Stephenson: Tait thought they must be; Stephenson believed that the burgesses could collect the revenues and hand them over.

• Burgage tenure - Beresford and Finberg employ burgage tenure as the lowest limit of burghality, as a definition of a borough - to put this into perspective: whereas Ballard and Tait enumerated about 200 places which received charters, B & F add over 400 more places which they define as boroughs principally on the mention of burgage tenure, although they do take into account other criteria (use of the term burgus, taxation boroughs, parliamentary boroughs etc). Questions: is a single reference to a burgage sufficient to define a borough? What about places called boroughs which didn't have burgage tenure (Castle Donington, Derby - the latter a form of feefarm, the former customary tenure)? What about places with burgages not reputed to be boroughs (Atherstone)? There is debate about whether burgage tenure existed as a technical sense in DB (largely objections raised by Stephenson) - it seems clear that the status of liberum burgagium conferred by Henry I, as on Beverley, equated with burgage tenure - characteristics: freedom of alienation; heritable; freedom of devise under will; fixed money rent (landgable or hawgable) - Bateson pointed to the influence of the laws of Breteuil with its fixed rent of 12d., but any level of fixed rent might be involved.