9б THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
grown in the next twenty years into a town of 236 burgesses
and 178 “ poor men.” 1 Of course such a class of non-burgesses
is found in most, if not all, boroughs throughout the Middle
Ages and later.
It is even more misleading to convert the great majority
of the burgesses of Maldon into such poor burgesses, because
(in 1086) they “ held nothing beyond their houses in the
borough.” 2 This was a case of a borough with a very small
appendage of agricultural land, and houses of course stand here
for messuages in the town. Maldon was an early case of a
borough with practically no agricultural “ shell.” 3 It is there-
fore on late and irrelevant evidence that Professor Stephenson
arrives at his conclusion that burgensis in the Anglo-Saxon
period “ meant nothing more than an inhabitant or con-
tributory to a borough.” d This period, so far as the Domesday
evidence relating to it goes, knew no burgesses who were not
holders of messuages either rendering customs to the king or
some other lord or to both or in rare cases expressly exempt
from payment.
3. Tenure by Customs and Burgage Tenure
If the pre-Conquest burgess was a freeman who held a
messuage and house in a borough, with or without a share in
its fields, by the render of customs of which a money-rent or
landgable was the most vital, the general likeness of his tenure
to the burgage tenure of the twelfth century seems sufficiently
obvious. Dr. Stephenson, however, with his conception of
the ordinary Anglo-Saxon borough as only a piece of the
countryside walled off and exhibiting the same patchwork
of tenure, refuses to see any resemblance save in a few ex-
ceptional boroughs. Burgage tenure, in his opinion, was as
French in origin as in name. He rejects the late Dr.
Hemmeon’s argument from the continuity of the landgable
in burgage tenure on the ground that it was equally the rent
payable by the geneat of the Rectitudines who was subject to
all kinds of onerous services as well as the gable. “ Really
to mark burgage tenure,” he says, “ landgable must be a
heritable money rent in return for all service.” 5 If that be
1 D.B. ii. 311b. 2 Ibid. f. 5b.
3 See above, p. 71. 1See p. 78.
iE.H.R. xlv (1930), ι86. Hemmeon did not claim that the fully
developed burgage tenure existed before the Conquest, but insisted on
the presence of its most essential feature in the landgable : “ the lands
CUSTOMARY TENURE AND BURGAGE
97
so there was as little real burgage tenure in the early years
0f the twelfth century as before the Conquest. The Winchester
survey of Henry ɪ notes no change in the several Consuetudines,
in addition to landgable, for which the burgess was liable under
Edward the Confessor. It was the king’s expressed intention
to have them all enforced.1 They included other monetary
dues than the landgable, the brugeld or brewing money 2 and
the fripeni 3 together with personal services, not merely the
town watch (wata),i but carrying duty (avra, avera) 5 and
feeding prisoners (pascere prisonem).i The landgable itself
was paid, if paid at all, not at the uniform rate characteristic
of new Norman boroughs, but at the various rates which had
obtained in Iθ66, of which 6d. per house is the most prominent.
In other respects, too, there was actually less uniformity than
there had been half a century before, at any rate in the heart
of the city. Two-thirds of the houses in the High Street which
had been inhabited by burgesses rendering full customs had
passed into other hands and were paying nothing. “ Boni
cives,” it was complained in some cases, had been replaced
by “ pauperes.” 7 Nothing had been done and nothing of
course could be done to get rid of the old church sokes which
were the greatest obstacles to the unitary development of
the city. Still, untidy as were Winchester arrangements
under Henry I, judged by the standard of small Norman
bourgs, there is every reason to believe that it could already
be described as having burgage tenure. There is no likelihood
that contemporary York showed more uniformity and fewer
survivals of the past, yet Henry in the last decade of his
reign confirmed to the men of Beverley “ liberum burgagium
in the boroughs were held not by leases nor in base tenure, but by this
fixed heritable money rent and seldom by any additional services. This
is burgage tenure " (Burgage Tenure in England, p. 162).
1 Henricus rex uolens scire quid rex Edwardus habuit omnibus modis
Wintonie in suo dominico . . . volebat enim illud inde penitus habere
(D.B. iv. 531).
2 This was a Hereford custom in 1066 (ibid. i. 179a, ι). It was closely
associated with the landgable (ibid. iv. 531a, 539b). It appears (as
brugable) in the same association at Oxford under Stephen (Salter, Early
Oxford Charters, no. 66) and as brugavel and brithengavel at Exeter
throughout the Middle Ages (J. W. Schopp and R. C. Easterling, The Anglo-
Norman Custumal of Exeter (1925), pp. 21, 30). It was abolished at Marl-
borough in 1204 (B.B.C. i. 151). Cf. the aletol of Rye (ibid. p. 97).
2 The tithing penny of the frankpledge system. See N. Neilson,
Customary Rents, pp. 170-1 (Oxford Studies, ed. Vinogradoff).
* E.g. D.B. iv. 534b. 6 Ibid. p. 533a.
Ibid. p. 537b. Henry I exempted the citizens of Rouen from this
(Round, Cal. of Docs, in France, p. 32). ’ D.B. iv. p. 532.