2l6
LIBER BURGUS
at Pontefract by the gift to his burgesses of “ liberty and free
burgage and their tofts to be held of me and my heirs in fee
and inheritance.” 1
If more direct proof of the equivalence of this formula with
the later one of “ free borough ” be needed, it is not wanting.
Dunwich, for instance, which was the first town to receive
the liber burgus clause, had a later charter from John in 1215,
in which that clause did not appear and was replaced by a
grant of free burgage.2 Much later still, in the parallel state-
ments of their baronial privileges made by two Cheshire
magnates, Henry of Lancaster claims to hold Halton and
Congleton as free boroughs and to have there free burgesses,3
but Hamon de Massey claims to hold the vill of Altrincham
libero burgagio and to have free burgesses there.4 As Massey’s
charter (c. 1290) had made Altrincham a free borough, the
two phrases are clearly identical in meaning even at the end
of the thirteenth century.
The Beverley town charters show that the privileged status
of a great and ancient town like York could be summed up in
the same term “ free burgage ” as was applied to new mesne
boroughs, though in the first case no grant to that effect was
producible. Madox has adduced clear evidence that in the
fourteenth century royal towns, including York and London,
were accounted as held of the Crown by free burgage (in liberum
burgagium).s He restricts this status to those boroughs which
had grants of fee farm and so paid their rents, etc., in a fixed
sum to the Exchequer. But the validity of this limitation
may perhaps be questionable. We have already seen the
burgesses of a mesne borough, Drogheda in Meath, enfeoffed
for themselves and their heirs with that vill as well as their
individual burgages and the customs of Breteuil in libero
burgagio, though here the money service was a render from
each burgage, not a lump sum from the town. If we may
argue from this case and from general probabilities, any grant
to the burgesses of a new borough in fee and inheritance, with
reservation of a money rent only, must have been in free
burgage.
The motive which dictated the substitution of Hber burgus
for liberum burgagium in charters of creation from John’s reign
1 B.B.C. ɪ. 41. 2 Ibid. p. 45.
3 Ormerod, Hist, of Cheshire, i. 703. 4 Ibid. p. 526.
6 Firma Burgi, pp. 21-3. For an earlier London formula, see above,
p. 107, and below, p. 218.
DR. STEPHENSON ON LIBER BURGUS 217
onwards is sufficiently obvious. The same idea was expressed
in a more concise and concrete form and the grant of borough
liberties by a general formula, which did not tie the grantee to
a particular model, was made possible. We ought perhaps to
note that Ballard had already suggested that “ the term {liber
burgus) was introduced by the lawyers of John’s reign to
shorten the verbiage of charters,” but verbiage is too strong
a word in this connexion, and he did not realize that the term
had a definite predecessor not much longer, though less
convenient for practical use. Both devices had the advantage
of enabling a small borough, which could not face the cost of
a long enumeration of liberties, to obtain a short and com-
paratively inexpensive charter. Such brevity had indeed its
dangers, as the burgesses of Huntingdon were to discover.
Their first charter, in 1205, though it did not contain the Hber
burgus clause, granted them the liberties and free customs of
the other royal free boroughs and free burgesses of England
and nothing else but the fee farm of their borough and a clause
excluding the sheriff.1 In 1348 it was found necessary to get
a charter specifying their liberties, their right to them under
the general terms of the earlier charter being disputed.2
ADDITIONAL NOTE
In Borough and Town (pp. 138 ff.) Dr. Stephenson criticizes
my conclusions on Liber Burgus in the light of his view that,
for the most part, “ free burgage ” and the “ free borough ”
1B.B.C., pp. 15, 122, 230. There is one of John’s charters, that to
Ipswich in 1200 (Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 115), which, after reciting a detailed
list of liberties and free customs, describes them as having been or being
enjoyed by the other (ceteri) burgesses of the royal free boroughs of England.
With the exception of a merchant gild and the protection of their general
freedom from toll throughout the king’s land and its seaports by a fine
instead of the right of distress, these were London liberties, occurring with
little verbal difference in the charter of n55 to that city and described
as such in charters rather similar to that of Ipswich granted by Richard I
to Northampton, Lincoln, and Norwich. The divergences mentioned above
doubtless suggested the use of the new general formula. In spite of ap-
pearances, it clearly did not mean that every royal free borough had all
the liberties copfirmed to Ipswich, for not all had a merchant gild or the
same custom with regard to illegal tolls. The formula could mean no more
than that all were liberties possessed by some royal boroughs. In his
Huntingdon charter then, John was not granting a foreknown set of
liberties and still less all the liberties enjoyed by such boroughs. Less
ambiguous is his Stafford charter of 1206 (B.B.C. i. 15) creating the town
a free borough with the liberties, etc., of any free borough of England.
2 Cal. Chart, Bolls, v. 94-5.