ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
places were fortified and converted into burgs because they
were already the focuses of such commerce as there was,” 1
Maitland’s theory found practically no supporter but the late
Adolphus Ballard, whose exaggerated development of it and
illogical attempts to link it up with the Norman castle-guard
did not tend to secure its acceptance. With the death of
most of the protagonists the controversy subsided without
producing an alternative theory, fully worked out.
It was not until 1930 that the problem was attacked again,
by an American scholar, Dr. Carl Stephenson, in an im-
portant article,2 in which the whole evidence is reviewed and
a conclusion reached which has features both of agreement
and disagreement with Maitland’s view. Dr. Stephenson
rejects the “ garrison theory,” but goes much further in
emphasizing the military character of the early boroughs.
For him the normal borough remained primarily a fortress
and administrative centre until the Norman Conquest. He
claims to have established from the old English laws and from
Domesday that, except for a few sea-ports of the south-east,3
the Anglo-Saxon borough had no really urban character.
Its market, like its mint, was official, its court only a unit of
the general system of hundred courts. Its population was
a microcosm of the countryside, containing all its social
ranks from thegn down to slave. There was no land tenure
peculiar to boroughs, no burgage tenure as we know it after
the Conquest. Burgenses (burgware, burhwaru) meant no more
than inhabitants of a walled centre. There was little trade
and that local. For their subsistence the burgesses mainly
depended on the borough fields, which the majority of them
cultivated for the benefit of a wealthy land-owning minority.
Free communal life did not yet exist. It was first called forth
by the settlement of French traders in the old boroughs and
in new ones created by Norman barons. Uniform burgage
tenure was introduced and a rapid succession of other privi-
leges was embodied in charters from the reign of Henry I.
The origin of our municipal towns is thus found not in legal
criteria, such as the possession of a separate court, but in the
1 D.B. and B., p. 192 ; of. p. 195.
2 E.H.R. xl v. 177 ft. Since my article was written, Professor Stephenson
has restated his thesis more fully and with some notable modifications in
his book : Boraugh and Town : a Study of Urban Origins in England
(Medieval Academy of America, 1933).
’ In his later work the large populations of York, Lincoln, and Norwich
are recognized as evidence of Scandinavian trade. See below, p. 131,
BEFORE THE DANES CAME
development of a mercantile community, whose chief instru-
ment was the merchant gild. It was essentially a social, not a
legal, change.
This change, Dr. Stephenson goes on, falls into its place
in the general growth of town life in Western Europe created
by the revival of trade in the eleventh century. In England,
as on the Continent, the burgus was a small lifeless unit until
the age of mercantile settlement. This is of course the view
for which, as regards the origin of continental towns, Professor
Pirenne has secured wide acceptance. The great cities of
the Netherlands are traced by him to the settlements of traders
in poorts under the shelter of burgs fortified, like the English
burhs, for defence against the Northmen. While reserving
judgement on Dr. Stephenson’s conception of the Anglo-
Saxon borough until we have reconsidered the evidence, it
may be well to note here that the parallel which he suggests
is by no means exact. The boroughs founded by Alfred and
his family—not to speak of the old Roman towns early re-
occupied, were themselves called ports1 from the first in
virtue of their markets. The king’s reeve in the borough was
portreeve not boroughreeve. While the few dozen ministeri-
al, with the household serfs, of the burg in the Low Countries
were consumers only, it was, we shall see, the definite policy
of Edward and Athelstan to restrict trading as far as possible
to the borough-ports. The Northmen here, but not in the
Netherlands, settled down as active traders. It is only as
royal and revenue-yielding creations that these early markets
can be called “ official,” 2 and the crown continued to retain
control of the creation of markets after the Norman Conquest.
Again, English boroughs were usually much larger than the
burgs of the Netherlands.3
2. Before the Danish Invasions
It seems clear that urban life in its most general sense, the
ag≡regation of exceptional numbers at certain points, began
ɪn this country with the re-occupation of the old Roman
walled towns which for a while had stood wholly or practically
1 Professor Pirenne himself notes this early parallel. Below, p. 2i, n. ɜ.
2 There is no evidence, Professor Pirenne says, of official markets in the
t>urgs of the Low Countries. Stephenson, Borough and Town, p. 213 n.
s With the 25 acres of the vieux-bourg of Ghent, cf. the 80 acres of
Oxford, Wallingford, and Wareham, boroughs of middle size.