ιp6
LIBER BURGUS
steadily accumulated by charter either from the Crown or
in a less degree from mesne lords, such as the gild merchant
and exemption from tolls without the borough. Here, though
without naming him, Ballard is challenging the extreme
opposite view developed by Gross in his Gild Merchant. In
the notion of free borough, according to Gross, was compre-
hended every privilege that was conferred on boroughs up
to and including the firma burgi and the return of writs which-
together secured the almost complete emancipation of the
borough from the shire organization. But as these privileges
did not come into existence all at once, and were granted in
very varying measure to boroughs that differed widely in
size and importance, liber burgus was necessarily “ a variable
generic conception.” 1 Burgage tenure is regarded in this
view as a very minor ingredient of the conception and relegated
to a footnote, because it does not appear in the charters of
the greater boroughs ; in their case it is taken for granted.
Things that are taken for granted are apt to be among the
most fundamental, and a variable conception offends the
logical mind, but it would certainly be strange if the extensive
privileges won by the great towns in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries formed no part of the contemporary concep-
tion of a borough. We say borough simply because, as will
be seen later, Ballard was right in denying that “ free borough "
implied any class distinction between boroughs.2 All boroughs
were free, though their share of privilege varied within very
wide limits. A decision between the opposing views pro-
pounded by Ballard and Gross can only be reached by a close
1 Gild Merchant, i. 5. His view is accepted in the latest discussion of
the term by Mr. T. Bruce Dilks in Proc. Somerset Archceol. and Nat. Hist.
Soc. Ixiii. (1917), 34 ff. Mr. Dilks was, however, misled by my insufficiently
qualified reproduction of Maitland's dictum in Mediceval Manchester (ρ. 62)
into regarding it as intended as a general definition.
2 Such a distinction might be thought to be implied in the answer to
a Quo warranto writ of 1292, addressed to " the bailiffs and community ”
of Liverpool, that they had now no bailiff of their own, Edmund de
Lancaster, lord of the town, having refused to renew the lease of their
farm and to allow them to have a free borough, Placita de Quo Warranto,
p. 381 ; Muir and Platt, Hist, of Municipal Government in Liverpool, pp.
397-8. But, though financial autonomy was not enjoyed by every borough,
it was no essential ingredient in the concept of free borough. Liverpool
itself ranked as a free borough for nearly a quarter of a century before
receiving its first lease of its farm in 1229. The burgesses in 1292 were
probably only insisting that free borough in their case had included financial
autonomy. This would support Gross’s view of the extensibility of the
idea.
It is worth noting that the burgesses still claimed as their own several
liberties which did not contribute to the farm.
JOHN’S CHARTERS 197
scrutiny of the charters of the thirteenth century, and to this
we now proceed.
I
The free borough clause is first found in extant royal
charters at the beginning of the reign of King John. A
month after his accession in 1199, John granted to the bur-
gesses of Dunwich : “ quod burgum de Dunwichge sit liberum
burgum nostrum,” 1 and in 1200 to William Briwerrj lord of
Bridgewater, that that town should be a “ liberum burgum.”
In the next eight years the same clause was granted in the
case of six other towns.2 Of three of these, Helston (1201),
Stafford (1206), and Great Yarmouth (i208), the king was
lord; three, Wells (1201), Lynn (1204), and Chesterfield
(1204), belonged to mesne lords. Lynn, Stafford, and
Yarmouth received the grant inperpetuum. Dunwich,
Stafford, Great Yarmouth, Wells, and possibly Helston were
old boroughs, the rest new creations. The Bridgewater and
Wells charters not only conceded that the borough should
be free, but that the burgesses should be free too (sint Iiberi
burgenses).3
The most instructive of these cases, because the best
documented, are those of Lynn (now King’s Lynn) and Wells.
Lynn’s promotion to burghal rank required, or at least pro-
duced, three charters, two from the king and one from its
lord, the bishop of Norwich. They enable us to retrace every
step in the transaction. The bishop first asked that the vill
should be a free borough. John acceded to his request in
a charter of a single clause, recited in the Quare υolumus
with the addition : “ and shall have all liberties and free
customs which our free boroughs have in all things well and
in peace,” etc.4 This was less vague than it seems, for the
bishop tells us, in the charter he proceeded to grant to the
vill, that it gave him the option of choosing any borough in
1 Rot. Chart. 51b. The passage is incorrectly given in Ballard, British
Borough Charters, i. 3.
3 Seven, if Totnes should be included, but its charter is spurious as
it stands, though Ballard believed it to be based on a genuine grant (ibid.
I. xxxviιi.).
3 B.B.C. i. ιoι. This clause-was used alone in John’s charter to
Hartlepool (1201) in place of the liber burgus one.
1 Ibid. p. 31.