Ancient borough

At the end of the 9th century and beginning of the 10th century there is evidence of a systematic "timbering" of new burhs, with the object of providing strongholds for the defence of Wessex against the Danes, and it appears that the surrounding districts were charged with their maintenance. It is not until after the Danish invasions that it becomes easier to draw a distinction between the burhs that served as military strongholds for national defence and the royal vills which served no such purpose. Some of the royal vills eventually entered the class of boroughs, but by another route, and for the present the private stronghold and the royal dwelling may be neglected. It was the public stronghold and the administrative centre of a dependent district which was the source of the main features peculiar to the borough. Many causes tended to create peculiar conditions in the boroughs built for national defence. They were placed where artificial defence was most needed, at the junction of roads, in the plains, on the rivers, at the centres naturally marked out for trade, seldom where hills or marshes formed a sufficient natural defence.[2] Typically, the fortification of a burh consisted of earth ramparts faced with timber. Palisades were sometimes used.

The concept of a network of burhs as a defence in depth is usually attributed to Alfred.

The solution that Alfred devised for this apparently intractable predicament was nothing short of a revolution and that revolution began now in the 880s. If the Vikings could attack anywhere at any time, then the West Saxons had to be able to defend everywhere all the time. To make this possible Alfred ordered the construction of a network of defended centres across his kingdom, some built on refortified Roman and Iron Age sites, some built completely from scratch. These burhs were to be distributed so that no West Saxon was more than twenty or so miles – a day's march – from one of them.[4]

This network is described in a manuscript document which has survived in later iterations, named by scholars the Burghal Hidage, which lists thirty three burhs in Wessex and English Mercia. Most of these survived into the post Norman Conquest era and are the core of later Parliamentary Boroughs and municipal corporations.

Following the successful reconquest from the Vikings by Alfred's descendants Edward and Æthelstan, the latter made a series of reforms in law, the Codes issued at the Council of Grately, which gave additional impetus to the urban development of the burhs which hitherto had been mainly forts. The burhs drew commerce by every channel; the camp and the palace, the administrative centre, the ecclesiastical centre (for the mother-church of the state was placed in its chief burh), all looked to the market for their maintenance. The burh was provided by law with a mint and royal moneyers and exchangers, with an authorised scale for weights and measures. Mercantile transactions in the burhs or ports, as they were called when their commercial rather than their military importance was accentuated, were placed by law under special legal privileges in order no doubt to secure the king's hold upon his toll. Over the burh or port was set a reeve, a royal officer answerable to the king for his dues from the burh, his rents for lands and houses, his customs on commerce, his share of the profits from judicial fines.[2]

Edgar, King of England 959 to 975

At least from the 10th century the burh had a moot or court, the relation of which to the other courts is matter of speculation. A law of Edgar, about 960, required that it should meet three times a year, these being in all likelihood assemblies at which attendance was compulsory on all tenants of the burghal district, when pleas concerning life and liberty and land were held, and men were compelled to find pledges answerable for their good conduct. At these great meetings the borough reeve (gerefa) presided, declaring the law and guiding the judgments given by the suitors of the court. The reeve was supported by a group of assistants, called in Devon the witan, in the boroughs of the Danelaw by a group of (generally twelve) " lawmen," in other towns probably by a group of aldermen, senior burgesses, with military and police authority, whose office was in some cases hereditary. These persons assisted the reeve at the great meetings of the full court, and sat with him as judges at the subordinate meetings which were held to settle the unfinished cases and minor causes. There was no compulsion on those not specially summoned to attend these extra meetings. At these subordinate jurisdictional assemblies, held in public, and acting by the same authority as the annual gathering of all the burh-wara, other business concerning borough administration was decided, at least in later days, and it is to these assemblies that the origin of the town council may in many cases be ascribed.[2]

In the larger towns the division into wards, with a separate police system, can be traced at an early time, appearing as a unit of military organisation, answerable for the defence of a gate of the town. The police system of London is described in detail in a record of 930–940. Here the free people were grouped in associations of ten, each under the superintendence of a headman. The bishops and reeves who belonged to the "court of London" appear as the directors of the system, and in them we may see the aldermen of the wards of a later time. The use of the word bertha for ward at Canterbury, and the fact that the London wardmoot at a later time was used for the frankpledge system as well as for the organisation of the muster, point to a connexion between the military and the police systems in the towns.[2]

In charters of the Anglo-Saxon period a haw, or enclosed area within a burh, was often conveyed by charter as if it were an apanage of the lands in the neighbourhood with which it was conveyed; the Norman settlers who succeeded to lands in the county succeeded therewith to houses in the burhs, for a close association existed between the thegns of the shire and the shirestow, an association partly perhaps of duty and also of privilege. The king granted borough haws as places of refuge in Kent, and in London he gave them with commercial privileges to his bishops. What has been called the heterogeneous tenure of the shirestow, one of the most conspicuous characteristics of that particular type of borough, was further increased by the liberty which some burgesses enjoyed to "commend" themselves to a lord of their own choosing, promising to that lord suit and service and perhaps rent in return for protection. Over these burgesses the lords could claim jurisdictional rights, and these were in some cases increased by royal grants of special rights within certain sokes. The great boroughs were honeycombed with sokes, or areas of seignorial jurisdiction, within which the royal reeve's authority was greatly restricted while that of the lord's reeve took precedence. Even the haws, being "burhs" or strongholds within a stronghold, enjoyed a local "peace" which protected from official intrusion.[2]

Besides heterogeneity of tenure and jurisdiction in the borough, there was also heterogeneity of status; there were burh-thegns and cnihts, mercatores, burgesses of various kinds, the three groups representing perhaps military, commercial and agricultural elements. The burh generally shows signs of having been originally a village settlement, surrounded by open fields, of which the borough boundary before 1835 will suggest the outline. This area was as a rule eventually the area of borough jurisdiction. There is some evidence pointing to the fact that the restriction of the borough authority to this area is not ancient, but due to the Norman settlement.[2]

As noted by Stenton, the practice evident in the Norman period whereby lords living in country manors owned houses in the nearest borough was a continuation of a custom developed earlier by the Anglo-Saxons:

It is clear from the Domesday Book that in 1086 a piece of borough property – a messuage, a house, or a group of houses – was often annexed to a manor in the open country. At Leicester, for example, 134 houses were thus attached, singly or in groups, to 27 different manors. So far as can be seen the borough property was treated as a profit-yielding appendage of the manor. It provided the lord with a lodging when he came to the borough on business and with a place of refuge in time of trouble.... Most of the evidence which illustrates this practice relates to the time after the conquest, but it can be traced far back into the Anglo-Saxon period, and the Anglo-Saxon kings had encouraged it.[5]

A borough was usually, though perhaps not invariably, the companion of a Norman castle. In some cases a French bourg was created by the side of an English borough, and the two remained for many generations distinct in their laws and customs: in other cases a French bourg was settled by the side of an English village. A large number of the followers of the Norman lords had been almost certainly town-dwellers in their own country, and lost none of their burghal privileges by the migration. Every castle needed for its maintenance a group of skilled artisans, and the lords wished to draw to the castle gates all kinds of commodities for the castle's provision. The strength of the garrison made the neighbourhood of the castle a place of danger to men unprotected by legal privilege; and to invite to its neighbourhood desirable settlers, legal privileges similar to those enjoyed in Norman or English boroughs were guaranteed to those who would build on the plots which were offered to colonists. A low fixed rental, release from the renders required of villeins, release from the jurisdiction of the castle, and the creation of a separate borough jurisdiction, with or without the right to choose their own officers, rules fixing the maximum of fees and fines, or promising assessment of the fines by the burgesses themselves, the cancelling of all the castellan's rights, especially the right to take a forced levy of food for the castle from all within the area of his jurisdiction, freedom from arbitrary tallage, freedom of movement, the right to alienate property and devise land, these and many other privileges named in the early seignorial charters were what constituted the Norman liber burgus of the seignorial type.[6]

Not all these privileges were enjoyed by all boroughs; some very meagre releases of seignorial rights accompanied the lord's charter which created a borough and made burgesses out of villeins. However liberal the grant, the lord or his reeve still remained in close personal relation with the burgesses of such places, and this character, together with the uniformity of their tenure, continued to hold them apart from the boroughs of the old English type, where all varieties of personal relationship between the lords and their groups of tenants might subsist. The royal charters granting the right to retain old customs prevented the systematic introduction into the old boroughs of some of the incidents of feudalism. Rights of the king took precedence of those of the lord, and devise with the king's consent was legal. By these means the lords' position was weakened, and other seignorial claims were later evaded or contested. The rights which the lords failed to keep were divided between the king and the municipality; in London, for instance, the king obtained all escheats, while the borough court secured the right of wardship of burgess orphans. From Norman times the yearly profit of the royal boroughs was as a rule included in the general "farm" rendered for the county by the sheriff; sometimes it was rendered by a royal farmer apart from the county-farm. The king generally accepted a composition for all the various items due from the borough. The burgesses were united in their efforts to keep that composition unchanged in amount, and to secure the provision of the right amount at the right time for fear that it should be increased by way of punishment.[6]

The levy of fines on rent arrear, and the distraints for debt due, which were obtained through the borough court, were a matter of interest to the burgesses of the court, and first taught the burgesses co-operative action. Money was raised, possibly by order of the borough court, to buy a charter from the king giving the right to choose officers who should answer directly to the exchequer and not through the sheriff of the county. The sheriff was in many cases also the constable of the castle, set by the Normans to overawe the English boroughs; his powers were great and dangerous enough to make him an officer specially obnoxious to the boroughs. Henry I about 1131 gave the London citizens the right to choose their own sheriffs and a justiciar answerable for keeping the pleas of the crown. In 1130 the Lincoln citizens paid to hold their city in chief of the king. By the end of the 12th century many towns paid by the hand of their own reeves, and John's charters began to make rules as to the freedom of choice to be allowed in the nomination of borough officers and as to the royal power of dismissal.[6]

In Richard I's reign London imitated the French communes in styling the chief officer a mayor; in 1208 Winchester also had a mayor, and the title soon became no rarity. The chartered right to choose two or more citizens to keep the pleas of the crown gave to many boroughs the control of their coroners, who occupied the position of the London justiciar of earlier days, subject to those considerable modifications which Henry II's systematisation of the criminal law had introduced. Burgesses who had gone for criminal and civil justice to their own court in disputes between themselves, or between themselves and strangers who were in their town, secured confirmation of this right by charter, not to exclude the justices in eyre, but to exempt themselves from the necessity of pleading in a distant court. The burgess, whether plaintiff or defendant, was a privileged person, and could claim in this respect a "benefit" somewhat similar to the benefit of clergy. In permitting the boroughs to answer through their own officers for his dues, the king handed over to the boroughs the farming of his rents and a large number of rights which would eventually prove to be sources of great profit. No records exist showing the nature of municipal proceedings at the time of the first purchase of charters. Certain it is that the communities in the 12th century became alive to the possibilities of their new position, that trade received a new impulse, and the vague constitutional powers of the borough court acquired a new need for definition. At first the selection of officers who were to treat with the exchequer and to keep the royal pleas was almost certainly restricted to a few rich persons who could find the necessary securities. Nominated probably in one of the smaller judicial assemblies, the choice was announced at the great Michaelmas assembly of the whole community, and it is not till the next century that we hear of any attempt of the vulgus to make a different selection from that of the magnates. The vulgus were able to take effective action by means of the several craft organisations, and first found the necessity to do so when taxation was heavy or when questions of trade legislation were mooted.[6]

The taxation of the boroughs in the reign of Henry II was assessed by the king's justices, who fixed the sums due per capita; but if the borough made an offer of a gift, the assessment was made by the burgesses. In the first case the taxation fell on the magnates. In the levy per communam the assessment was made through the wardmoots (in London) and the burden fell on the poorer class. In Henry II's reign London was taxed by both methods, the barones majores by head, the barones minores through the wardmoot. The pressure of taxation led in the 13th century to a closer definition of the burghal constitutions; the Commons sought to get an audit of accounts, and (in London) not only to hear but to treat of municipal affairs. By the end of the century London had definitely established two councils, that of the mayor and aldermen, representing the old borough court, and a common council, representing the voice of the commonalty, as expressed through the city wards. The choice of councillors in the wards rested probably with the aldermen and the ward jury summoned by them to make the presentments. In some cases juries were summoned not to represent different areas but different classes; thus at Lincoln there were in 1272 juries of the rich, the middling and the poor, chosen presumably by authority from groups divided by means of the tax roll. Elsewhere the several groups of traders and artisans made of their gilds all-powerful agencies for organising joint action among classes of commons united by a trade interest, and the history of the towns becomes the history of the struggle between the gilds which captured control of the council and the gilds which were excluded therefrom.[7]

Many municipal revolutions took place, and a large number of constitutional experiments were tried all over the country from the 13th century onward. Schemes which directed a gradual co-optation, two to choose four, these six to choose more, and so in widening circles from a centre of officialdom, found much favour throughout the Middle Ages. A plan, like the London plan, of two companies, alderman and council, was widely favoured in the 14th century, perhaps in imitation of the Houses of Lords and Commons. The mayor was sometimes styled the "sovereign" and was given many prerogatives. Great respect was paid to the "ancients," those, namely, who had already held municipal office. Not till the 15th century were orderly arrangements for counting "voices" arrived at in a few of the most highly developed towns, and these were used only in the small assemblies of the governing body, not in the large electoral assemblies of the people. In London in the 13th century there was a regular system for the admission of new members to the borough "franchise," which was at first regarded not as conferring any form of suffrage but as a means to secure a privileged position in the borough court and in the trade of the borough. Admission could be obtained by inheritance, by purchase or gift, in some places by marriage, and in London, at least from 1275, by a municipal register of apprenticeship. The new freeman in return for his privileges was bound to share with the other burgesses all the burdens of taxation, control, &c., which fell upon burgesses. Personal service was not always necessary, and in some towns there were many non- resident burgesses. When in later times admission to this freedom came to be used as means to secure the parliamentary franchise, the freedom of the borough was freely sold and given.[8]

The elections in which the commons of the boroughs first took interest were those of the borough magistrates. Where the commons succeeded for a time in asserting their right to take part in borough elections they were rarely able to keep it, not in all cases perhaps because their power was feared, but sometimes because of the riotous proceedings which ensued. These led to government interference, which no party in the borough desired. The possibility of a forfeiture of their enfranchised position made the burgesses on the whole fairly submissive. In the 13th century London repeatedly was "taken into the king's hand," subjected to heavy fines and put under the constable of the Tower.[8]

The later Stuarts abandoned this method, and the few new boroughs made by the Georges were not made for political reasons. The object of the later Stuarts was to control the corporations already in existence, not to make new ones. Charles II, from the time of his restoration decided to exercise a strict control of the close corporations to secure not only submissive parliaments, but also a pliant executive among the borough justices, and pliant juries, which were impanelled at the selection of the borough officers. In 1660 it was made a rule that all future (town) Charters should reserve expressly to the crown the first nomination (naming) of the aldermen, recorder and town-clerk, and a proviso should be entered placing with the common council the return of the member of parliament. The Corporation Act of 1661 gave power to royal commissioners to settle the composition of the town councils, and to remove all who refused the sacraments of the Church of England or were suspected of disaffection, even though they offered to take the necessary oaths. Even so, the difficulty of securing submissive juries was again so great in 1682 that a general attack on the borough franchises was begun by the crown. A London jury having returned a verdict hostile to the crown and taxation, after various attempts to bend the city to his will, Charles II issued a quo warranto against the mayor and commonalty to charge the citizens with illegal encroachments beyond their chartered rights. The way this was analogous to well-precedented Crown rights to regulate the actions of organised groups of men such as rebels, made it easy for the crown judges to find legally flawed actions of the boroughs, and also made it possible for the Londoners to argue that no execution could be taken against the mayor, commonalty and citizens, a "body politic invisible"; that the indictment lay only against every particular member of the governing body; and that the corporation as a corporation was incapable of suffering a forfeiture or of making a surrender. The judges gave a judgment for the king, the charters were forfeited and the government placed with a court of aldermen of the king's own choosing. Until James II yielded, there was no common council in London. The novelty of the proceedings of Charles II and James II lay in using the weapon of the quo warranto systematically to ensure a general revocation of charters. The new charters which were then granted required the king's consent for the more important appointments, and gave him power to remove officers without reason given.[9]

Under James II in 1687 six commissioners were appointed to "regulate" the corporations and remove from them all persons who were opposed to the abolition of the penal laws against Catholics. The new appointments were made under a writ which ran, "We will and require you to elect" (a named person). When James II sought to withdraw from his disastrous policy, he issued a proclamation restoring to the boroughs their ancient charters. The governing charter thenceforth in many boroughs, though not in all, was the charter which had established a close corporation, and from this time on to 1835 the boroughs made no progress in constitutional growth.[10]

• Abingdon, Agardsley, Aldborough, Andover, Appleby, Arundel, Axbridge, Aylesbury
• Bamborough, Banbury, Barnard Castle, Barnstaple, Baschurch, Basingstoke, Bath, Bedford, Berkhamsted, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Beverley, Bewdley, Bideford, Bishop's Castle, Blandford Forum, Bodmin, Boston, Brading, Bradninch, Bridgwater, Bridgnorth, Bridport, Bristol, Buckingham, Burford, Bury St Edmunds
• Calne, Cambridge, Camelford, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chard, Chester, Chesterfield, Chichester, Chippenham, Chipping Campden, Chipping Norton, Chipping Sodbury, Christchurch, Cirencester, Clitheroe, Clun, Colchester, Colnbrook, Colyford, Congleton, Coventry, Cricklade
• Dartmouth, Daventry, Derby, Devizes, Doncaster, Dorchester, Dover, Droitwich, Dunheved (near Launceston), Great Dunmow, Dunster, Dunwich, Durham
• Evesham, Exeter, Eye
• Farnham, Faversham, Folkestone, Fordwich, Frodsham
• Gainsborough, Gloucester, Godalming, Godmanchester, Grampound, Grantham, Gravesend, Grimsby, Guildford
• Hadleigh (Suffolk), Hartlepool, Harwich, Hastings, Hedon, Helston, Hemel Hempstead, Henley-on-Thames, Hereford, Hertford, Higham Ferrers, Huntingdon, Hythe (Kent)
• Ilchester, Ilfracombe, Ipswich
• Kendal, Kidderminster, King's Lynn, Kingston upon Hull, Kingston upon Thames, Knutsford
• Lancaster, Langport (formerly Langport Eastover), Launceston, Leeds (Yorks), Leicester, Leominster, Lichfield, Lincoln, Liskeard, Liverpool, London, Looe (East), Looe (West, also known as Porthbychan), Lostwithiel, Louth, Ludlow, Lydd, Lyme Regis
• Macclesfield, Maidenhead, Maidstone, Maldon, Malmesbury, Marazion, Marlborough, Melcombe Regis, Milborne Port
• Nantwich, Newark-on-Trent, Newbury, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newcastle upon Tyne, Newport (Isle of Wight), Newport (Shropshire), Newtown (Isle of Wight), Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham
• Okehampton, Orford, Ormskirk, Oswestry, Oxford
• Penryn, Penzance, Pevensey, Plymouth, Plympton, Pontefract, Poole, Portsmouth, Preston
• Queenborough
• Ravenser Odd, Reading, Retford (East), Richmond (Yorks), Ripon, Roby, Rochester, Romney (New), Romsey, Ruyton, Rye
• Saffron Walden, St Albans, St Briavels, St Ives (Cornwall), Salisbury, Saltash, Sandwich, Scarborough, Seaford, Shaftesbury, Sheffield, Sherbourne, Shrewsbury, Southampton, South Molton, Southwark, Southwell, Southwold, Stafford, Stamford, Stockton-on-Tees, Stratford-upon-Avon, Sudbury, Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield
• Tamworth, Taunton, Tenterden, Tewkesbury, Thaxted, Thetford, Tintagel, Tiverton, Torksey, Torrington, Totnes, Tregony, Truro
• Ulverston
• Wainfleet, Wallingford, Walsall, Warwick, Wells (Somerset), Wenlock, Weymouth, Whitchurch (Hampshire), Whitchurch Canonicorum (Dorset), Wigan, Wilton, Winchester, Windsor, Wisbech, Wokingham, Woodstock, Wootton Bassett, Worcester, Wycombe
• Great Yarmouth, Yarmouth (Isle of Wight), York

• Aberystwyth
• Cardigan
• Cefnllys
• Flint
• Lampeter
• Mawddwy[13]
• Tenby