I об THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
doubtedly anticipates the mere Iandgable of burgage tenure,
but in these very free eastern boroughs where before the Con-
quest we find the id. Iandgable at Lincoln and a possibility
of it at Norwich itself, there is not much evidence of onerous
custom. It is noteworthy that the id. at Mancroft was due
not only from the burgesses on the demesne reserved for the
king and earl, but also from the knights to whom lands were
assigned and who had burgesses under them. This was a
recognition of the ownership originally of the earl alone and
later of king and earl jointly. Dr. Stephenson invokes the
authority of Miss Bateson for his view. He seems, however,
to put something of a strain upon her obiter dictum as to the
influence of the Anglo-Norman seignorial boroughs “ in re-
shaping the older conception of the borough ” when he says
that she was inclined to believe that burgage tenure was, at
least in large part, a French importation.
Her actual words were that the term burgage tenure could
only have arisen in the boroughs with real unity of tenure
under a single lord, and from them the term might easily spread
to those other boroughs where already in the king’s “ gafol ”
there was a low payment made by each house which could not
easily be differentiated from a rent.1 This is not altogether
clear, but it surely suggests that a new name was applied to
an old state of things, having a strong resemblance to the later
development, not that any really vital alteration was intro-
duced. It may even be doubted whether Miss Bateson’s
premiss is sound. She was clearly thinking of a uniformity
consisting in tenure of urban houses by fixed and more or less
equal rents, not of the wider privileges understood by burgage
tenure in its full sense. Yet it was precisely in this wider
sense that the term burgagium seems to have been first applied
both to the older boroughs and the new. The “ free burgage ”
which Archbishop Thurstan bestowed upon the men of Beverley
and which Henry I confirmed is defined not in terms of ten-
ure but as “ the free laws and customs (not in the Domesday
sense of course) of the burgesses of York.” 2 In similar terms
Henry II granted “free burgage ”to William, earl of Albemarle,
for his burgesses of Hedon, York or Lincoln to serve as model.3
1 E.H.R. xvi. 344-5. Hemmeon, from his different point of view, also
regards the passage as asserting that burgage tenure was an institution
of Norman origin (op. cit. p. 167).
2 Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. Farrer, i. 92.
8 B.B.C. i. 38 (where the heading ', Grants of Burgages ” is misleading
in such cases as this).
CUSTOMARY TENURE AND BURGAGE 107
Abbot Richard of Whitby granted that town in “ free burgage”
and to its burgesses “ Iibertatem burgagiae et leges libéras
Iiberaque jura.” 1 No doubt the free tenement was at the root
of this abstract conception of “ free burgage,” but it was only
derivatively and gradually that “ burgage ” came to be used
concretely for “ tenement ” and then almost exclusively in
new boroughs. As the old English borough already possessed
a large measure of uniformity in its group of burgesses enjoying
greater advantages and rendering less onerous, because mainly
pecuniary, customs than the inhabitants of the agricultural
vill, it seems unnecessary to suppose, with Miss Bateson, that
the newcomers could not find a word to express its nature
except in the new boroughs under single lords. It was only,
it would seem, by assuming that the original meaning of
bourgage was “ tenement ” not “ borough status ” that she
reached this conclusion. As a matter of fact, there is a long
chain of evidence to show that tenure of land from the crown
in the ancient boroughs was for three centuries after the Con-
quest known by a term of old English origin, socage.2 Nor
was the absence of a single lord in the old borough so fatal
to uniformity as she supposed. There were indeed usually
other lords than the king, but this did not necessarily exempt
the tenants of these lords from rendering the royal customs or
exclude them from the burgess community. It was the
Conquest itself which for a time drew a much sharper line
between terra régis and terra baronum. Yet Domesday makes
it clear that the burgesses rendering custom to the king were
still the normal element in the borough, the others the ex-
ception. The effacement of this line of division was, as we
have seen, a very slow process. The survey of Winchester
under Henry I shows it still as sharp as, or sharper than, in
1086. Nevertheless, this did not prevent contemporaries from
ɪ B.B.C. i. 39.
2 In the list of St. Paul’s rents, c. n30, the royal quit-rent is described
as de socagio (Essays presented to T. F. Tout, p. 56). The same term is
applied to the landgable in an early thirteenth century London list of
city rents (E.H.R. xvii. (1902), 484, 495). As late as 1306 the mayor and
aidermen informed Edward I that all tenements in the city were held in
chief of the king in socagio (Rot. Part. i. 213 b.). It was only later that
ln libero burgagio was substituted in such returns. At Worcester a land-
lord acquits a tenant’s holding against the king’s reeves " de iiii denariis
et obolo qui sunt de socagio domini régis” (Worcester Cartulary, no. 395).
At Bristol in 1355 tenements are mentioned as held of the kingin chief
by socage after the custom of Bristol ” (E. W. Veale, Great Red Book of
Bristol, I. i. 167).