64
BOROUGH AND COURT
its own. Taking the country over, such a court is a normal
burghal feature, but the smaller boroughs of the south-west
are exceptions both before and after the Norman Conquest.
The “ borough by prescription,” without special jurisdiction,
remains always a bar to easy generalization.
The separate court is only one of the features which have
been investigated as possible criteria of the borough. In
a useful table 1 Ballard has enumerated from Domesday and
coin lists, seventy-three Anglo-Saxon boroughs possessing
one or more of the following four features : (ɪ) a court co-
ordinate with the rural hundred court, “ the burhgemot of
Edgar’s law”; (2) heterogeneous tenure, “where different
tenants paid their rents to different lords ” ; (3) payment of
one-third of the royal revenue from the borough (the “ third
penny ”) to the local earl or (occasionally) sheriff ; (4) a mint.
He finds 46 Iiundredal boroughs, 64 with heterogeneous
tenure, 39 subject to the third penny, and 56 with pre-Conquest
mints. All four features are found in 22 boroughs, three in
a further 22. But for omissions in Domesday, known or sus-
pected, these figures would be higher. London and Winchester,
for instance, being only casually mentioned in the survey,
are credited merely with mixed tenure and early mints.
Were any of these features fundamental ? A court, as
we have just seen, was apparently not. Nor, it would seem,
was heterogeneous tenure. It was rather a natural and very
general, but not universal, result of burghal growth than
the essential pre-requisite implied in the “ garrison ” theory
of Maitland and Ballard. Mints, again, were not an invariable
feature of Anglo-Saxon boroughs, and in the eleventh century
at any rate are recorded in places which were never recognized
as boroughs.
More likely than any of these internal features to have
been characteristic of all new boroughs, and of no other kind
of vill, might seem the third penny. The Domesday figure is
low, but there was often no occasion to mention this feature.2
Luckily it tells us that the simplest of south-western boroughs,
without separate court, heterogeneous tenure, mint or ap-
parently even burgesses, were subject to this payment. Of
course, they must have once had burgesses, if indeed their
seeming absence is not merely one of Domesday’s omissions,
ɪ The English Borough in the Twelfth Century, pp. 43-5. Cf. p. 37.
’ This is perhaps the reason why nothing is said of it at Cambridge
and Bedford, where it is known to have been paid. But cf. p. 49.
THE DOMESDAY EVIDENCE
65
and their places might yet be filled. It is plain in any case
that we have not yet reached the minimum feature or features
which distinguished the borough from any other royal vill
and gave to it or maintained the public character implied in
the earl’s right to share its revenue with the king. Originally
no doubt, leaving the older walled towns aside, this character
would be imparted by the fortification of an open vill or
group of vills for the defence of the surrounding population,
and the earl’s share would be the reward of his co-operation
in the work. After the re-conquest of the Danelaw, however,
the defensive aspect became secondary and the borough
primarily a centre of local trade and administration. It
is even possible that a few new centres of this kind were set
up and called boroughs, though they were not fortified. At
all events, there is no evidence that the minutest of the
Somerset boroughs in 1066, Bruton, Frome, and Milverton,
had ever been fortresses.1
Except at Bath, which had a mint, the revenues of the
Somerset boroughs which were subject to the earl’s third
were apparently confined to the rents of the burgesses and the
profits of markets. Unfortunately no markets are recorded
at Axbridge, Bruton, and Langport and, as we have seen, no
burgesses at Frome and Milverton, while no rent is assigned
to the five burgesses at Bruton. However this may be
accounted for, whether by Domesday omissions or by the
lumping of borough revenues with those of the manors in
which they were imbedded, it seems very unlikely that Axbridge
and Langport, which were afterwards full-fledged municipali-
ties, or even Bruton which was less fortunate, can have been
without a market at this date, while Frome 2 and Milverton,
with apparently no burgesses, possessed one.
Despite these difficulties, the Somerset evidence on the
whole suggests that tenements held by rent alone and a market
were enough to constitute a borough in the middle of the
eleventh century. A market by itself was not sufficient, for
Domesday records some thirty in places which were not,
then at any rate, reckoned as boroughs, and though some
certainly and perhaps most of these were Norman creations,
1 This seems very likely too (above p. 54) in the case of a much more
important borough, Droitwich, which is known to have been a market
or salt as early as the eighth century.
As the revenue from Frome market in ro86 was /2 6s. 8<f. and the
hVi 1^ircl.on∣y 5-s∙ (Eyton, Somerset Domesday, pp. 2, 4), it would seem
e*y that its profits had increased since 1066.