86 THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
2. The “ Custom of Burgesses ”
Recent scholarship insists that in the normal Domesday
borough bιιrgensis means no more than inhabitant of a walled
town and has no reference to legal status. Domcsday indeed
mentions here and there besides burgesses classes with other
names, lawmen, sokemen, villeins, bordars, cottars, and even
serfs, but it is claimed that all these were burgesses, too, and
that it is only the caprice of the compilers which usually
reserves the name for the richer, landholding inhabitants.1
This, however, is pure conjecture, for save in two ambiguous
cases 2 Domesday never applies burgess and any one of these
other terms interchangeably to a single person or group of
persons. It is obviously risky to identify the “ poor burgess ”
of one borough as of the same status as the villein or bordar
of another. On the other hand, Domesday not infrequently
distinguishes burgesses from some of these classes, from
lawmen at Stamford,3 from villeins at Nottingham,4 from
bordars at Norwich 5 and Huntingdon.6 The same distinction
is clearly implied in the statements that the bishop of Lincoln's
houses in that city 7 and the abbot of Malmesbury’s nine
cottars (coscez) outside the walls of that borough 8 “ gelded
with the burgesses.” It can be seen, too, in the singling out
of two or three of the fifty odd baronial houses at Hertford
as having formerly belonged to burgesses.8
Wherein lay this distinction ? The bishop of Lincoln’s
houses in his see town will give us a starting-point. They were
exempt from all burghal “ customs ” and their tenants there-
fore did not rank as burgesses, though they were assessed
with them to the (dane)geld.1° No more did the abbot of
Malmesbury’s rural cottars or the hundred bordars at
1 Above, p. 78.
2That of the " serf-burgess ” at Ipswich (above, p. 84) and that of
a lawman included among burgesses (below, p. 87, n. 5).
3 Lagemanni et burgenses habent cclxxii acras sine omni Consuetu-
dine (D.B. i. 336b, 2).
4 Ibid. f. 280 : fuerunt T.R.E. clxxiii burgenses et xix villani.
δ Ibid. ii. 116b : modo sunt in burgo dclxv burgenses Anglici et con-
Stictudines reddunt et cccclxxx bordarii qui propter pauperiem nullam
reddunt Consuetudinem.
β Ibid. i. 203a, I : In duobus ferlingis T.R.E. fuerunt et sunt modo
cxvi burgenses Consuetudines omnes et geldum regis reddentes et sub eis
sunt c bordarii qui adjuuant eos ad persolutionem geldi.
’ Ibid. f. 336a, 1. β Ibid. f. 64b, i, 11 Ibid. f. 132a, 1.
iaIbid. f. 336a, 1. Remigius episcopus habet, 1 maneriolum . . . cum
saca et soca et cum thol et theim super ... et super Ixxviii mansiones
praeter geldum regis quod dant cum burgensibus.
THE “CUSTOM OF BURGESSES” 87
Huntingdon who were under the burgesses {sub eis) and
helped them in payment of the geld.
It would seem then that a burgess was not any resident in
a borough, but one whose tenement was assessed to the borough
customs or, as we should say, rates, though the eleventh-century
customs' cover a rather different range of payments. More
direct statements of the burgess qualification come from Col-
chester and York. At Colchester, in 1086, Eudo dapifer was
in possession of five houses which in 1066 had been held
by burgesses, “ rendering all custom of burgesses.” 1 At
York, apart from the archbishop, who had one of the seven
“ shires ” of the city with all customs, it is noted that but one
great thegn, four judges (for life only) and the canons had
their houses on any freer terms than as burgesses {nisi sicut
bur gens e s) .i Here the customs had been little decreased by
alienation. Even the bishop of Durham’s house, for which
full exemption was claimed in 1086, was declared by the bur-
gesses not to have been more quit than a burgess house twenty
years before, except that St. Cuthbert had the toll of himself
and his men.3 With these statements may be compared the
Winchester evidence as to twelve persons dispossessed for
the building of the Conqueror’s new house ; “ these held houses
and were burgesses and did {faciebant) custom.” 4
We seem now in a position to explain the distinction
drawn at Stamford between the lawmen and the burgesses who
shared 272 acres of arable land. The lawmen here as at
Lincoln had extensive immunities.6 So, too, had the sokemen
who held seventy-seven mansiones here, and it may well be
doubted whether they ranked as burgesses, despite Professor
Stenton’s opinion to the contrary.®
The number of burgesses could be depleted by inability
to render custom as well as by special exemptions. The 480
bordarii at Norwich in 1086, who rendered nothing, had clearly
once been burgesses, but were now impoverished cottagers.7
The “ minor burgesses ” of Derby,8 the “ poor burgesses ”
1 D.B. ii. 106, 106b. 3 Ibid. i. 298a, ι.
3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. iv. 534a.
6 One of the three burgesses of Lincoln who, according to the Lincoln-
shire " Clamores ” (D.B. i. 376a, 2), were mortgagees T.R.E. of land in
Lawress hundred, was indeed Godred, a lawman of the city, but the others
were not and a rural hundred court would not make fine distinctions.
β The Lincolnshire Domesday, ed. C. W. Foster and T. Longley (Lincs.
Rec. Soc. 19), pp. xxxiv-xxxv.
, See p. 69 ; borde, '' small house,” ‘‘cottage ” in Old French.
β D.B. i. 280a, 2.