124
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
that houses once inhabited by burgesses had been wrongfully
taken away from them (sibi injuste ablatas),1 and the Colchester
complaint that similar houses, which had rendered the
Consuetudo régis in King Edward’s time, had ceased to
contribute their share.2 Hence, too, the claim of the latter
borough that five hides at Lexden, within the burghal hundred,
were liable to custom and to account with the city (ad con-
Suetudinem et compotum civitatis),i or, as we should say, were
rateable with it. The result of their claim is not given, but
the men of Southwark put on record, apparently with some
self-satisfaction, that they had recovered from Count Eustace
of Boulogne a haw and its toll for the farm of Kingston (on
Thames) in which the revenue from the borough was included.4
This stimulus to common interest and common action was
doubtless much more seldom felt before the Conquest, but it
must have existed.
The burgesses were more directly and more constantly
trained as a community, however, by participation in the
government of the borough. The king’s reeve was indeed and
long remained an official over whom they had no direct control.
They did not appoint him, but he had to work with the burgess
community in its court and more particularly with their
“ eldest men ” (seniores, senator es) or “ witan ” (sapientes),
just as the king himself had to consult with his “ witan.”
For these nascent borough councils were not the mere personal
advisers of arbitrary reeves. They had a separate standing
of their own. It was they who drew up the list of London
usages embodied in the fourth law of Ethelred IL5 The
royal draughtsman has left the “ We ” of the original standing.
It was to the witan of the four Devon boroughs, without men-
tion of their reeves, that Bishop Eadnoth of Crediton, some
twenty years later, sent official notice of a mortgage of part
of his land.6 In the Danish boroughs the lawmen, though
primarily judges, may have occupied a similar position.7
1 Above, p. 92. 2 D.B. ii. ro6b.
’ D.B. ii. 104a. Compotum seems a certain emendation of the MS.
cootum. For the inclusion of Lexden and three other agricultural vills in
Colchester hundred, see above, p. 48, and for the admitted rateability of
Milend in the twelfth century, D. C. Douglas, Feudal Documents from the
Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds (r932), p. 144.
4 Ibid. i. 32a, ɪ. See above, p. 58.
s See above, p. n8. ∙ Above, p. 42.
’ Liebermann, Ges. ii. 565. In tιo6 a lawman of York was described
as Iiereditario iure Iagaman civitatis quod Latine potest dici legislator vel
iudex (ibid). Alex. Bugge somewhat exaggerated the self-government of
these boroughs (Vierteljahrschrift für Social, u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte, ɪv,
257) ■
REVENUE-RENDERING AND ADMINISTRATIVE 125
Already, too, there is a faint adumbration of the borough
treasury {camera) of the future, a repository of revenue avail-
able for local purposes, as distinguished from the reeve’s
treasury {prepositura) into which went the revenue due to
the king.1 The borough “ accounts ” {compotus) of Colchester
were confined to royal revenue, though, as we have seen, the
burgesses, for personal reasons, were keenly interested in
them. But when the Londoners asked King Ethelred to
allow them to inflict a special penalty for breach of the peace
of their “ port,” in addition to his own much heavier fine, they
must either have had a city chest2 or have been prepared to
start one. The provoking ambiguity of the Latin in the
statement of Domesday that the church of St. Mary at
Huntingdon had belonged to the church of Thorney until the
abbot “ inuadiauit earn burgensibus ” 3 leaves us in doubt
whether the community or a group of burgesses were the
mortgagees, but a borough camera is clearly implied in a well-
known series of entries under Kent. Edward the Confessor’s
release of sake and soke to the burgesses of Dover, recorded
on the first page of Domesday Book, was a grant of the profits
of justice in their court. This revenue was indeed only a
set-off against a new personal service required by the king,
but provision must have been made for the safe keeping of
the money until it was needed. Other entries show that
the same release was conceded to Sandwich, Romney, and
Fordwich.4 The arrangement of which it formed part was
in fact the origin of the liberty of the Cinque Ports, though
Hastings and Hythe are not credited with the release in
Domesday.5 The fullest account of it is in the case of Romney
where the burgesses of the archbishop and of Robert de
Romney {Romenel) had, it is stated, all the forfeitures except
the three highest, usually reserved to the crown, but here
belonging to the archbishop.
The record indeed goes further and says that the burgesses
had all customs as well as the lower forfeitures.6 This would
seem also to have been the case at Sandwich according to a
brief allusion to the grant which is found only in the Holy
1 See above, p. ιι6 n. and below, p. 225.
! Liebermann makes this inference (Ges. iii. 165, on IV Ethelred, 4, 2).
s D.B. i. 208a, i.
4 Ibid. i. 3a, i ; 4b, ɪ ; ɪob, 2 ; 12a, 2. For the evidence of the St.
Augustine's inquisition, see below, p. 126.
s Hythe is given only a few words (ibid. 4b, ι), and Hastings is not
described at all, ∙ D.B. i. 4b. ι.
K'