94
THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE'
some part, at least, of the “ manor ” was held of the bishop
by burgage rent. All this may seem to conflict with the state-
ment of Domesday that the bishops’ houses merely gelded
with the burgesses, which almost seems to imply that their
tenants were not burgesses. But here, as in the Chester
judgement, burgesses must be taken in the restricted sense of
royal burgesses whose customs formed the king’s revenue.
The borough jurors and the Domesday commissioners were not
specially interested in houses or burgesses which by privilege
did not contribute to that revenue, which were not “ in
Consuetudine régis.” If the king’s custom was being illegally
withheld, it was another matter.
Such complete exemptions as were enjoyed by the
Canterbury and Lincoln churches and by the archbishop of
York,1 who had all the customs in one of the seven “ shires ”
of the city, and a third of those of a second, were of course
exceptional. Not all churches were so highly favoured.
Of Ramsey abbey’s thirty-two burgesses at Huntingdon,
twelve were indeed quit of all custom save (dane)geld, but the
rest paid lθd. each yearly to the king, all the other customs
going to the abbot.2 The abbot of Peterborough’s privileges
in the Northamptonshire ward of Stamford included land-
gable and toll, but the other customs were the king’s.3 Great
thegns like Merlesuain at York and Tochi at Lincoln might
have their halls quit of all custom, but the full privilege did
not extend to any other houses they might possess. Tochi
had landgable from thirty, but the king retained toll and
forfeiture, if the burgesses swore truly in Iθ86.4 On the other
hand, three thegns of Kent shared with Queen Edith and the
great churches the right to all customs on their tenements
in Canterbury.5 The Queen also had seventy houses in Stam-
ford free of everything except baker’s custom ((consιιetudo)
panificis).6
In all these cases, the tenure of the houses remained cus-
tomary burghal tenure whether the whole or only part of the
customs were alienated by the crown. The houses might
revert to it, Queen Edith’s being held only for life were certain
to do so. The revenue from the houses was assigned towards
1 D.B. ɪ. 298a, i. 2 Ibid. f. 203a, i.
a Ibid. f. 336b, 2. For burgesses rendering full customs to the king
though on the abbot of Winchester’s demesne in that city, see D.B. iv. 534a.
4 Ibid. i. 336a, i. s Ibid. f. 2a, ɪ ; Inq. St. August, p. 9.
c D.B. i. 336b, 2.
THE “CUSTOM OF BURGESSES”
95
her dower, just as two-thirds of the revenue of Exeter was
earmarked for it.1
To trace an institution beyond the Norman Conquest is
to find oneself in an atmosphere of dimmer conceptions and
less well-defined boundaries than prevailed afterwards, but
it is at least clear that the division of really practical impor-
tance in the pre-Conquest borough was not between king’s
land and land held by churches and thegns, but between land
which paid custom in whole or in part to the king and earl and
land that was wholly exempt. King’s land might be, though
it rarely was, exempt2 and, as we have seen, land held by
subjects quite commonly rendered full customs. Domesday’s
sharp distinction between terra régis and terra baronum in
boroughs was a result of the Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon
king, like his Norman successor, was chiefly interested in the
land that rendered custom to him, but in his time the land
“ in Consuetudine régis ” was not, as it had virtually become
by 1086, identical with the land over which he had sole lordship,
the land of his demesne, in Norman language.
As the whole administration of the Anglo-Saxon borough
turned upon the customs and these were “ the customs of the
burgesses,” who are distinguished from episcopal tenants and
other classes of men living in some boroughs, it is impossible to
agree with Professors Stenton and Stephenson that burgensis
before the Conquest had no technical meaning. In main-
taining that the term was without reference to legal status,
Dr. Stephenson relies chiefly on the mention in some Domesday
boroughs of considerable numbers of landless burgesses,
poor men, villeins and bordars, even a serf. But, as we have
seen,3 none of these, save a few villeins,4 existed before the
Conquest. They were mostly the result of disturbances set
up by that great change. Nor are they called burgesses in
Iθ86, unless they contributed something to the king’s custom,
if it were only a penny on their heads. In one case this element
was actually created by the rapid growth of a borough after
the Conquest. Dunwich with its 120 burgesses in Iθ66 had
1 D.B. ɪ. ɪooa, i.
2 There were two such houses at Winchester: one held T.R.E. by
Stenulf the priest, and the other by Aldrectus frater Odonis {D.B. iv. 533b).
3 Above, pp. 84, 88.
4 The nineteen villeins at Nottingham in 1066 are distinguished from
the burgesses and were probably the predecessors of the eleven villeins
who were cultivating in 1086 the ploughland once belonging to King Edward
W∙B. i. 280a, ι), the nine villeins mentioned at Derby (ibtd. col. 2) were
°n the adjacent royal manor of Litchurch.