IIO THE BURGESSES AND THEIR TENURE
upon the burgess by the mere fact of his holding of the lord’s
soil, are all placed in the same category in the Anglo-Norman
documents. It is possible that the original Consiietudines of
Caen may not have been so exclusively customs on trade and
industry as they seem to have been later. Were the burgesses
not liable to such state requisitions as had to be formally
renounced in some Flemish cities ? Count William of Flanders
in his charter of 1127 to St. Omer applies the term Consuetudines
to these alone : “ ab omni Consuetudine liberos dcinceps esse
volo : nullum scoth, nullam taliam, nullam pecunie sue peti-
tionem eis requiro.” 1
In any case, the difference between the Anglo-Saxon
borough and the North French bourg in regard to tenure was
a difference in detail, not in kind. The Normans found it
sometimes difficult, but never impossible to apply the terms
with which they were familiar to the description of English
towns. It is particularly noteworthy that at Caen one of
the terms in use for the house rent in which Professor
Stephenson finds so strong a contrast to the borough rents
of Anglo-Saxon England was that very “ gable ” (gabulum,
gablum) by which these were usually designated, and if a
technical meaning is to be denied to the English (land) gable
because it was also applied to country rents, it must be equally
refused to the French gabelle, for that, too, had its more general
application. So, too, had census2 which is used as equivalent
to gable in the Caen documents, as it is in the Domesday
descriptions of Derby and Nottingham.3 What was normally
distinctive of these burghal rents was their lowness and their
equality for all tenements of equal size in the same town as
compared with the more economic and varied rents of agri-
cultural land, where they are found. These features were
naturally more pronounced in French bourgs of recent founda-
tion, to which traders were attracted by comparatively light
recognition of the lordship of the soil, than in the older English
boroughs, but they can, as we have seen, be discerned in
Domesday. The original gable at Caen seems to have been
2d. or l⅛d. according to the size of the tenement.4 The larger
figure may be compared with the ʒzf. of Winchcombe s and the
1 Giry, Hist, de Saint-Omer, p. 373. 2 Legras, op. cit. p. 52.
3 DB. i. 280. 1 Legras, op. ctt. p. 56.
s Madox, Firma Burgi, p. 22. The local tradition in the fifteenth
century that the 3d. was “ pro Walgauell ” is interesting, but too late and
too isolated to throw serious light on the origin of borough gable.
BURGAGE TENURE IN NORMANDY
III
3 jrf. of Bristol.1 At Hereford, where there were also two rates,
but decided by situation not by size, the figures were rather
more than double those of Caen. On the other hand the id.
of Lincoln and (probably) Norwich was lower than the smaller
rent in the Norman bourg. In twelfth-century foundations in
both countries higher rents were demanded, the shilling rent
being very common, but this was doubtless partly a set-off
to quittance of custom.
If the fundamental features of the Anglo-Saxon borough
did not differ essentially from those of the French bourg of
the eleventh century, the rights of the burgess over his tene-
ment were often greater in the former. The burgess of
Norwich or Torksey, for instance, could sell his tenement and
leave the borough without licence, but at the end of the
eleventh century leave to .^ell was indispensable at Caen and
the buyer was usually the lord.2 Not until a century or so
later was full freedom of alienation attained. Again, the right
to devise the burgess tenement by will enjoyed in English
boroughs, originally by the common law and from the latter
part of the twelfth century as a distinctive burghal privilege,
never existed in Caen or in any other Norman borough.
Burgage tenure of land in England was in fact a development
rooted in old English law and on the legal side owed little to
Norman precedents. Where French burgesses established
themselves at the Conquest alongside English borough com-
munities, as at. Shrewsbury and Nottingham, it was in the
main the English customs which ultimately prevailed.3
In view of these facts, we cannot see our way to agree
with Dr. Stephenson that the history of burgage tenure in
England begins practically at the Norman Conquest. The
formative influence of the French bourgage on the English
borough was neither so great or so immediate as he suggests.
Its greater simplicity as developed in Normandy and in
Norman foundations on this side of the Channel doubtless
had reactions upon the older boroughs which were not confined
to the name, but it is easy to exaggerate the influence of these
small Seignorial creations upon the ancient and far greater
1E. W. W. Veale, Great Red Book of Bristol, Introd., Part I, pp. 137 ff.,
296 ff. (Bristol Record Soc., vol. II). Was this curious sum originally a
Iourth of the 15d. we find as average rate at Bath and nearly so at Gloucester
(above, p. 91, и. 3) ? 2 Legras, op. cit. p. 58.
Primogeniture is no exception. " It is by no means certain,” says
Maitland, " thatin 1066 primogeniture had gone much further in Normandy
han in England ” (Hist, of Eng. Law, ii. 264).