2б
ORIGINS OF THE BOROUGH
burhs of the ninth and tenth centuries. “ Borough ” became
a technical term which covered walled and unwalled towns
alike. Must we therefore conclude with Maitland that forti-
fication was the vital moment in the origin of the borough ?
We may certainly agree that it gave an urgent and widespread
impulse to urban aggregation, which would otherwise have
been a slower process, even if peace and quiet had obtained,
and that it provided shelter for the trader and artisan. In
an age of constant warfare walls were everywhere a necessary
condition of urban growth. But Maitland’s conjectural
picture of the typical tenth-century burh as first and foremost
a fortress garrisoned by the landowners of its district, who
kept houses and warrior “ boroughmen ” (burgware) in it
for its defence and wall-repair, has failed to secure general
assent.1 It leaves out of account the early settled civitas
like Canterbury and the general predominance of royal
domain in the borough which is so evident in Domesday.
It is essentially based upon a supposed foreign parallel of
more than doubtful pertinence and the bold assumption that
the burgesses who were paying rent to rural lords in Iθ66
represented armed retainers of the predecessors of these lords
less than a century and a half before. It is not supported
by the solitary contemporary piece of evidence on the incidence
of wall-repair which has come down to us,2 and two important
charters show that within less than twenty years after Edward’s
death a haw in a neighbouring borough was regarded as a
profitable appurtenance of a rural estate, not as an acquittal
of a military obligation.3
ɪ A short list of the chief Contiibutions to the contro∖ersy over this
garrison theory may be of use I. In support F. W Maitland, EHR
xι. (1896), 16-17 ; D B and B !1897), pp 186 if ; Township and Boiough,
pp 44 f , 210 f ; A Ballard, The Domesday Boioughs (1904), pp n-40 ,
“ The Walls of Malmesbury,” EHR xxι (1906), 98 ff , “ The Burgesses
of Domesday,” ibid , pp 699 ff , " Castle-Guaid and Barons' Houses,”
ibid xxv. (1910), 712 ff , H M Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon In-
stitutions (1905), pp 220 ff , R R Reid, EHR xxxn (1917), 489 n
II. Against. J Tait, EHR xιι (1897), 772 ff , M Bateson, ibid xx.
(1905), 143 ff , 416 , ,' The Burgesses of Domesday and the Malmesbury
Wall,” ibid XXi (1906), 709 ff , C Petit Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary
to Stubbs' Constitutional History (1908), pp 78 ff , J H Round,
Burhbot ’ and ' Bngbot ’ ” in Family Origins, ed W Page (1930),
pp 252 ff , C Stephenson, " Γhe Anglo-Saxon Borough ” in EHR
xlv (1930), 183, 203, Borough and Town, pp 17 f
2 See above, p 20.
3 In C S 757, 11 483 (a 940) a grant of ten hides in Wily, Wilts, to the
thegn Ordwald, there is a note that a certain meadow, the haw in Wilton
that belongs to Wily, the town-hedge bot at Giovely and every third tree
ɪn Monnespol wood weιe all appurtenant to WHv, to Ordwald's tun C S.
AFTER FORTIFICATION
27
Maitland’s over-emphasis of the military aspect of the
borough—we may now conveniently use the later form of
burh—involved an underestimate of its trading importance
and a one-sided theory of the origin of the borough court.
The enumeration of offences punishable at Worcester lends
no support to his suggestion that the court was called into
existence to repress the turbulence of a military population.
It is likely indeed, as we shall see, that the purely urban
court did not come until the military aspect had waned after
the conquest of the Danelaw and that up to then the only
courts meeting in boroughs had jurisdiction over wider areas.
Dr. Stephenson rejects the “ garrison ” theory, but his
conception of the late Anglo-Saxon borough is equally one-
sided in another direction. The normal borough, he holds,
differed only from the country round in being a place of de-
fence and therefore a natural centre of royal administration.
Its trade was negligible, its social and economic system just
as aristocratic and agricultural as elsewhere. Mint and
market were there merely for the shelter of its walls. It is
difficult, however, to reconcile this view with the legislation
of Edward and Athelstan. When Edward in his first law,
passed certainly before his conquests were complete and
perhaps before they were begun, forbade all buying and selling
outside fixed centres,1 he did not call them burhs but ports,
a term with none but trading implications and, as we have
seen, already familiar in the pre-Danish period? The chief
town officer, who is normally to witness all such transactions,
is not burhgerefa, but portgerefa, “ portreeve,” a title which was
to have a long burghal history. Athelstan, again, ordered
that (m Kent and Wessex) no man should mint money except
in a port. Twelve of these ports are named in a further clause,
with the number of moneyers authorized for each ; 'ζ for
the other burhs, the list concludes, ‘ one each.’ 3 The use of
burh here as equivalent to port seems to imply that the former
was losing its military significance and coming to mean little
more than ‘ town,’ although an ordinance just above requires
that every burh should be repaired by a fortnight after the
Rogation days.”
From the list just mentioned and the British Museum
7$6, iɪ 529, a 943 (cf 765, iɪ 495), after granting seven hides at Tisted,
Hants, to a thegn, adds the haws within the borough of Winchester which
belong to these seven hides, with the same immunities as the land.
ɪ Liebermann, Ges 1 138, 111 93
2Seeabove, p 9. 3Liebermann,! 158.