92
THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
tenements formerly tenanted by burgesses had been unjustly
taken from them {sibi injuste ablatas) by such aggressors,1
which means that they had ceased to contribute to the customs
for which the king held the burgesses responsible. At
Gloucester some twenty-five houses which had rendered
custom in 1066 were paying none twenty years later,2 at
Colchestcr only two out of sixty-six rendered full custom,3
and at Exeter there is frequent mention of custom withheld
(retenta) d Such cases were put on record at the instance of
the burgess jurors who no doubt hoped that the king would be
stirred up to reclaim his rights.5 Norman usurpation, how-
ever, will not account for facts which conflict with that sharp
distinction between terra Consuetudinaria and thegnland which
the Chester county court drew after the Conquest. Most of
tiɪe Colchester houses on the terra baronum in 1086 had been
held by external lords, thegns and others, in юбб, and a third
of the number are expressly recorded to have been appurtenant
to rural manors, yet they had, without exception, rendered
all customs of burgesses. They had either been granted to
these lords on condition of continued payment of customs or
perhaps more probably the burgesses had merely commended
themselves to them, and commendation, as we have seen in the
cases of Norwich and Thetford, left the king’s customs prac-
tically unaffected. This is what seems to have happened at
Buckingham where the barons of Iθ86 had burgesses who were
still rendering to the king money payments averaging about
3d. as well as larger rents to their Norman lords, as they had
done to King Edward and the English thegns whom the
Normans succeeded.6 They are usually described as the
“ men ” of the thegns, and this distinctly points to com-
mendation. An absolutely clear instance is that of the
twelve burgesses of Ipswich over whom the thegn Phin had
nothing T.R.E. but commendation, and who “ dwelt on their
own land and rendered all custom in the borough.” 7 Such
tenements in the pre-Conquest borough formed a middle term
ɪ D.B. i. 132a, ɪ. On the other hand, a house, once a burgess's, given
by the king to Harduin de Scalers, still rendered all custom. For a transfer
of a tenant by Henry I “de Consuetudine régis in terram Rad. Roselli "
see Liber Winton, in D.B. iv. 535a. The record of a gift of houses in Exeter
by William I to Baldwin the sheriff (ibid. i. 105b, 2, iv. 293) says nothing of
the custom. 2 Ibid. i. 162a, ι.
3 Ibid. ii. 106b, 107. 4 See p. 91, n. I.
s Nor were they wholly disappointed, for the expressed purpose of the
survey of Winchester ordered by Henry I was the recovery of such lost
revenue (D.B. iv. 531a). β Ibid. f. 143a, ι. 7 Ibid. ii. 393a.
THE “CUSTOM OF BURGESSES”
93
between land over which the king alone had lordship, domi-
nium in the Norman sense and thegnland ■ free of custom as
defined in the Chester ruling, but by Iθ86 it had been almost
eliminated,1 either by royal grants of exemption or, much
more commonly, by baronial non-payment of customs.
In the case of commended tenements, then, there is no
need for surprise when we find burgesses on the land of thegns,
rendering customs to the king, even, exceptionally, in Iθ86.
The “ thegnland ” of the Cheshire doomsmen,2 on the contrary,
was land for which it was claimed that it was not “ cus-
tomary ” and therefore not borough land, though locally in
the borough. In other words, Robert of Rhuddlan had
maintained that the land in dispute did not merely “ belong ”
to his manor of West Kir[k]by in the usual sense that it yielded
a revenue to it, but was actually part and parcel of it, manorial
not burghal land. Such a pretension was probably a novel
Norman attempt at encroachment.
More difficult, at first sight, to reconcile with the Chest e
ruling that the burgess was one who rendered custom to ths
king and earl is the presence of burgesses upon land in boroughs
which was legally quit of such custom. The two great ehureheɛ
of Canterbury, for instance, had large numbers of burgesse
in the city, appurtenant to rural manors,3 though by ancient
privilege they took all customs on their land, the king receiving
nothing.4 The explanation seems to be that when burgess
tenements were granted to churches and lay magnates along
with the customs due from them, the customary tenure was
not altered and the tenants would remain burgesses. An
interesting confirmation comes from Lincoln. In 1086 the
bishop’s maneriolum and eighty-one houses were quit of all
custom save danegeld.8 But the “little manor” of Willing-
thorpe or Westgate is described as “ burgum de Willigtorp ” in
a papal bull of 1126,β and this was no mere slip, for some forty
years later the bishop’s court decided that four mansiones
there were free of all service “ prêter burgagium.” 7 Clearly
1 See p. 92.
i See above, p. 88.
3 E.g. ninety-seven belonged to the Christ Church manor of Northwood
(D.B. i. 5a, ɪ).
1 Ipsae aecclesiae suas Consuetudines quietas habuerunt R.E. tempore
(ibid. f. 2a, i ; Inq. St. August., p. 7). iD.B. i. 336a, ι.
6 Reg. Antiquiss., ed. C. W. Foster (Lincs. Rec. Soc.), i. r88 ff. Domes-
day speaks of the " bishop’s borough ” at Chester which gelded with the
city (D.B. i. 262b, l).
’ F. M. Stenton, Danelaw Charters (Brit. Acad.), p. 343.
H