IV
THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
Over-emphasis upon the agricultural aspect of the Anglo-
Saxon borough and inadequate appreciation of its character
as a port are not the only questionable features in the picture
which Dr. Stephenson has drawn from Domesday Book. With
Professor Stenton he has been so much impressed by the
apparent variety of condition among its burgesses disclosed
in the survey as to deny that burgensis was a technical term
or had any reference to personal status.1 Professor Stenton
sees nothing more definite in it than “ dweller in a borough.” 2'
Dr. Stephcnson would add “ or contributory thereto,” perhaps
to cover the case of that very doubtful class (at this date) of
burgenses ruremanentes.3 He is in full agreement, however,
with Professor StentoiTs statement that “ there may have
existed as much variety between the different burgesses of
a borough as existed between the different classes of free tenant
upon a manor in the open country.” 4 Indeed he would go
much further, for in his opinion a burgess might be landless
and economically dependent on a landowner or even personally
unfree. The uniform burgage tenure of the twelfth century
could not exist in such conditions and was in fact a Norman
innovation.8
Professor Stenton’s view, though insufficiently founded
on the one case of the Stamford sokemen,β who are not clearly
proved to have been reckoned as burgesses, has some support
from the East Anglian boroughs, but the tenurial variations
found there, inconsistent as they are with the neatness of
later burgage tenure, do not exclude common features which
distinguish the burgess not only from the country freeholder,
1 E.H.R. xlv. 180 ; Borough and Town, pp. 77 ff.
2 Lincolnshire Domesday, ed. C. W. Foster, Introd., pp. xxxiv-xxxv.
3 I cannot find in Domesday evidence of those groups of “ foreign ”
burgesses of which Miss Bateson made so much (E.H.R. xx. 148 f.).
4 Lincolnshire Domesday, loc. cit.
6 Op. cit. pp. 188-90. β See p. 80.
78
SOCIAL STATUS OF BURGESSES 79
but also from other inhabitants of the borough and so invalidate
his definition of burgeιιsis.
The more sweeping conclusions of Dr. Stephenson from the
Domesday evidence are too largely based upon that portion of
it which immediately applies to the state of things in 1086
after twenty years of baronial exploitation. A close investi-
gation of what is definitely reported for the age before the
Conquest will, I think, show that the most essential features
of burgage tenure, free holding of building plots, with small
agricultural appurtenances, at low and more or less uniform
rents, subject to various public services, was substantially in
existence at that date. Before entering upon this inquiry,
however, it will be well to see what light Domesday and the
Anglo-Saxon sources have to throw upon the personal con-
dition of the pre-Conquest burgesses.
i. Social Status of the Anglo-Saxon Burgesses
As might be expected from their numbers and the severe
condensation of the survey, especially in Great Domesday,
burgesses are seldom mentioned by name. Even in the much
more expansive Little Domesday, the list of some 276 king’s
burgesses of Colchester,1 already mentioned, stands quite alone.
Lists of this kind may indeed have been prepared in other
cases and omitted in the final compilation. From such
a list may very likely have been derived the names of the
burgesses of Winchester and their holdings T.R.E. which are
recorded in the survey of the city drawn up under Henry I.2
Even when one or two burgesses are subjects of specific
mention they are not named except in Little Domesday and
there but rarely. An Edstan is mentioned at Norwich as
the only king’s burgess who could not alienate his land without
royal license.3 Among the holders of churches at Ipswich in
1086 one Cullingus is distinguished as a burgess.4 Another
burgess of that borough, Aluric, is entered elsewhere as having
inherited from his father Rolf, 12 acres in the neighbouring
village of Thurlston.5
1 See above, p. 73. 2 D.B. iv. 531 fi.
a Ibid. ii. ɪ 16. He was an important person and very probably the
king’s reeve (W. Hudson, Records of Norwich, ɪ. ι). His land was, it may
be suggested, official reeveland.
A distinction not easily reconciled with the explanation of burgensis
proposed by Professors Stenton and Stephenson (above, p. 78).
I>.B,∖i. 446, FortwoorthreenamedburgessesofLincoln,cf.p. 87,n. 5.