The name is absent

divergent conclusions have been based, seems to be needed.
Unluckily, the study of the problem has been somewhat let
and hindered by the variety of meanings which words took
on in the course of the rapid development of an early society.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of this feature is afforded
by the A.-S. tun, our “ town.” Originally, as we have seen,
applied to a single homestead, it came, without wholly losing
this meaning, to be used for an aggregation of homesteads, a
village, to use a post-Conquest word, especially 'as a local
unit of administration, for which Maitland devised the con-
venient term “ vill ” from its Latin equivalent villa, and it
ended in being restricted, save in remote corners of the land,
to the most highly specialised of such aggregations.

The interpretation of the word burh in the Laws of the
Anglo-Saxon kings, which, next to Domesday Book, are our
main source of information on the pre-Conquest borough,
is hampered by the fact that, since its original meaning was
simply “ fortification,” it could be applied to the fortified
houses of the king, as indeed of all above the rank of common
freeman, as well as to fortified towns. Counsel is still further
darkened when a burh appears as seemingly the seat of a court,
the area of whose jurisdiction is left vague, but cannot with
any probability be identified with that of a borough. It
is hardly surprising that a Norman translator of the Laws
into Latin, within half a century of the Conquest, came to
the conclusion that burh in these difficult passages must have
the derived sense of “ court ” and turned it by curia.¹ Modern
students of the Laws have found themselves equally em-
barrassed. Liebermann, who published his great work,
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, in sections between 1898 and
1916, changed his view more than once. At first he felt no
difficulty in translating burh in such contexts by “ town ”
(Stadt, Gerichtsstadt), but in his glossary (1912) substituted
“ king’s fortified house ” (in one instance) or “ court " (Gericht),
and in his final commentary (1916) suggested as a general
equivalent “ meeting place of a court ” (Gerichtsstatte).²

^lQuadriparhtus in Liebermann, Ges. i. 161, transiates “the to thære
byrig hiron " “qui ad earn curiam obediunt,” and again, op. cit. i. 389.
Also in a passage of later date, ibid. i. 324. See below, pp. 37, 41 n.

² Curiously he retained Gericht in one passage, but, apparently feeling
it inappropriate in its ordinary sense, explained it as Amtsprengel, " dis-
trict ” (Ges. i. 146, iɪi. 97). In this passage (I Atheist, ι), where the king’s
reeves in every burh are ordered to render tithes from his goods, it seems
more natural to take burh as a fortified house which was a centre of
royal domain. It is used even later for the king’s house as a sanctuary
(II Edm. 2), where Liebermann translates it “ festes haus ” (Ges. iii. 127).

THE PRE-DOMESDAY EVIDENCE

This does not seem to be an improvement upon his second
thoughts in the most important of these troublesome passages.

When King Athelstan ordains that the seniors (yldeslan
men) belonging to a burh shall go out (ridan) and put under
surety the man who has neglected repeated summons to the
gemot or confiscate the property of the persistent thief,¹ and
when the same seniors, acting as doomsmen, decide whether
one found guilty of arson or of secretly compassing murder
shall live or die,² the court is clearly not purely urban.
Maitland suggested that it was a shire court meeting in a
borough,³ but there is no evidence of shire courts before the
reign of Edgar and as ridan had then the general sense of
“ to go,” the fact that “ there was riding to be done ” does not
presume a very wide area.⁴ Professor Chadwick agrees with
Maitland in taking the meeting-place of the court to be a
borough in the ordinary sense, but sees in the passage con-
firmation of his theory that the Burghal Hidage represents a
re-division of the southern shires into administrative and
judicial districts round the new burhs fortified against the
Danes.⁵ But the Burghal Hidage, whether it is to be assigned
to the reign of Alfred or that of his son is, as we have seen,
a plan of defence not a settlement of local areas.® The wide
variations in the hidages and the position of the boroughs, in
Dorset, for instance, on northern border and sea coast only,
make it hard to believe that the scheme could have served as
the basis of local government. The mention in the Chronicle ⁷
under 918 (915) of the seniors of Bedford and Northampton
may seem to support Professor Chadwick’s view, but they do
not appear in any judicial capacity and the large districts
appendant to such boroughs in the still unshired Midlands
stand in strong contrast to the majority of those included
in the Burghal Hidage.

However this may be, it can be shown, I think, that the
gemot of Athelstan’s law, though a district court, was no innova-
tion of Edward’s reign, as Professor Chadwick supposes, but
belonged to a much older scheme of jurisdictional areas.
In Edgar’s revision of his grandfather’s law ⁸ the gemot is

¹II Atheist. 20, i.

² Liebermann, Ges. i. 388. The law is anonymous but the editor
^agrees that Thorpe was probably justified in attributing it to Athelstan
(ibid. iii. 228).

^s D.B. and B., p. 185.               * Liebermann, Ges. iii. 105.

⁵ A.S.I., pp. 21g fl.                   ⁸ See above, p. 18.

^, Ed. Plummer, i. ɪoo.             ⁸ III Edg. 7 ; Liebermann, i. 204.

<<   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   >>

More intriguing information