iι4 THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
more rapid in the regions which had long been in touch with
the opposite coasts of the mainland.
I. The Burgesses as Agricultural Community
In an earlier chapter it has been seen that the agricultural
economy of the vill (or vills) out of which the borough had
grown had been to a considerable extent transformed by its
urban growth. Increased trade and population made agri-
culture merely a subsidiary means of livelihood, often in-
sufficient to feed the people. Churches and magnates were
permitted by the king to encroach upon the fields and pastures.
In towns such as Canterbury, Ipswich, and Norwich the bur-
gesses retained a mere fragment of the original agricultural
appurtenances. Maldon was perhaps not alone in having
apparently been created with only enough land for a small
minority of its burgesses. Boroughs which still kept great
stretches of arable land were sometimes content to leave its
cultivation to a few of their number. This seems to have
been the case at Derby, Nottingham, and probably at
Huntingdon.
On the other hand, there were some large boroughs where,
so far as we can see, the burgesses still utilized the whole of
their ancient fields, without such delegation. Colchester was
one, Exeter perhaps another, though this has been disputed.
Its arable land is briefly described in the following lines of
Domesday : “ Burgenses Exonie urbis habent extra civitatem
terram xii carucarum quae nullam Consuctudinem reddunt
nisi ad ipsam civitatem.” 1 The Latin burgenses is, of course,
ambiguous, but its wider meaning here is established by the
entry later of the bishop’s 2⅜ acres “ which lie with the land
of the burgesses ” (jacenl cum terra burgensium).2 Had a few
burgesses only been in question, Domesday would, no doubt,
have given their number, as it does at Derby, Nottingham,
and Thetford.3
At Colchester and Exeter the whole management of the
common cultivation would be in the hands of the burgesses as
a body, though the details, fortunately preserved in the
former case, show that the individual’s interest must have
ɪ D.B. i. ɪooa, i. , Ibid. f. ɪoɪb, 2.
3 At Lydford in Devon Domesday makes it quite clear that the whole
burgess population shared in the arable (ibid. f. ɪooa, 2). But Lydford
was a small borough, with only two Carucates of land.
AGRICULTURAL
ιi5
been quite subordinate to other means of subsistence. And
even where the town fields were of small extent, the burgess
community would still be responsible for the observance of
its by-laws. Where the fields were leased, their control would
be less direct and at Huntingdon the leases were granted by
the officers of the king and earl.
Apart from any manorialization in the fields, the burgesses
had not always the sole enjoyment of them. The churches
of the borough had usually shares of varying area. At
Ipswich the many churches held among them double the num-
ber of acres that belonged to burgesses.1 At Stamford 2 and
Lincoln 3 the lawmen also had their portion, but at Lincoln
perhaps only took custom or rent from burgesses who actually
cultivated the land.
The description of the Lincoln fields is by far the fullest
in Domesday, but is not easy to interpret. Of the 12⅜ caru-
catcs the king and earl are said to have held 8 “ in demesne,”
the lawmen held three and two churches the rest. In what
sense did they hold them ? There is some evidence that
the fields of boroughs were normally subject to custom sepa-
rately from the tenements within the town.4 At Exeter this
custom was left, doubtless by some unrecorded grant, to the
burgess community lad civitalem), clearly to use for its own
purposes ; s at Stamford none was exacted.® The explana-
tion of the tenure of the Lincoln carucates that first suggests
itself is that the king and earl had released their custom over
some third of the arable to lawmen and churches, but retained
it over the other two-thirds, and this fits in with another state-
ment in Domesday which implies that besides thirty crofts
in the city, the churches and burgesses had the use of the twelve
and a half carucates. The chief difficulty in accepting this in-
terpretation is that the king and earl’s portion was so domin-
ical that King William had exchanged one carucate for a ship
and, the purchaser being dead, no one had this carucate, un-
less the king granted it. But the conveyance of land when
only profitable rights in it are transferred is a common enough
feature of Anglo-Saxon practice. Moreover, this land is
1 D.B. ii. 290a, b. 2 Ibid. i. 336b, 2. 3 Ibid. f. 336a, 2.
4 At Cambridge hawgable and landgable were still distinguished in the
thirteenth century, though they had both been comprised under landgable
ɪn Domesday (Maitland, Township and Borough, pp. 70, 180). At Bury
ɛt. Edmunds there was a separate Iandmol on the arable appurtenances
(M. D. Lobel, The. Borough of St. Edmunds (1935), p. 56).
5 Above, p. 114. , “ Sine omni Consuetudine."