128
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
to render to him “ tributum ex Consuetudine pristina. ”1
At the same time, we may accept the Exeter privilege as evi-
dence that the city ranked among the greatest of the realm.
The smaller boroughs of Devon had shared to a lesser extent
in her good fortune. Totnes and perhaps Barnstaple and
Lydford, though Domesday is silent as to them, gelded when
Exeter did, at half her rate,2 and all three rendered jointly the
same amount of military and naval service as the county town.2
Royal concession to a burgess community might in other
cases take the form not of a low assessment for taxation but
of liberty to commute a personal obligation for a money
payment. Thus Oxford was free to pay £20 instead of sending
twenty burgesses to the king’s wars.4 This in itself required
communal action.
Lastly, it seems possible that a release of revenue to
burgesses, similar to that at Dover, but of gable not of sake
and soke, is the true explanation of a difficult passage in the
Domesday description of Canterbury : “ Burgenses habuerunt
xlv mansuras extra civitatem de quibus ipsi habebant gablum
et Consuetudinem ; rex autem habebat sacam et sacam.” 5
These messuages, it was complained, had been seized by
one Ranulf de Columbels. Owing to the absence of the article
in Latin, this entry has been claimed by some as evidence
of communal property and by others as merely referring to the
private property of a few wealthy burgesses. The ownership
of a number of tenements by the borough community as such
at this early date is certainly very unlikely,6 and it is, more-
over, impossible not to connect these with the 212 burgesses
over whom, we have been previously told, the king had sake
and soke, but by implication not gable. Now, they are par-
ticularly described in the Inquest of St. Augustine’s as Iiberi
homines,'1 and that generally means owners of their own land.
But the fuller transcript of the Domesday returns in the In-
quest strongly suggests that it is not ownership but revenue
which is in question here : “ Item [after recording the king’s
loss of gable from two burgess houses] demonstrant burgenses
civitatis xlv mansiones terre unde habebant Iiii solidos de
gablo T.R.E. et ipse rex habebat inde sacam et socam.” 8
1 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 146 fi ; cf. Round, Feudal England,
pp. 431 fi. 2 D.B. ɪ. 108b, ɪ.
’ Ibid. f. ɪooa, ι. lIbid. f. 154a, ι. 6 Ibid. f. 2a, ι.
• Ownership by a gild of burgesses is, of course, a different matter.
See above, p. 120.
7 Inq. St. August., ed. Ballard, p. 9, of. p. 7. β Ibid. p. 10.
REVENUE-RENDERING AND ADMINISTRATIVE 129
It is clear from this and from the “ Item dicunt burgenses ”
of the next paragraph that it is the burgess jurors who are
speaking and that they are complaining of a double loss,
of an income of £2 135. to their community and of sake and
soke to the king. There is nothing to show in what circum-
stances the gable, and, according to Domesday Book, other
custom, of these tenements and presumably of the rest held
by the 212 burgesses came to be rendered to the community,
but that such a diversion of revenue was possible is proved
not only by Domesday’s very clear account of what happened
at Dover, but also by its record of the payment of the custom
from the fields of Exeter to the city.1
An instance of communal property has been claimed for
Colchester which at first sight appears more plausible than
that at Canterbury. Besides the shares of the individual
burgesses in the fields of the borough, there were common
to the burgesses (in commune burgensium) 80 acres of land
and about the wall 8 perches, from all of which the burgesses
had yearly 605., for the king’s service if need were and if
not they divided it among themselves (in commune).2 This
seems a case, however, not of true communal ownership,
but of communal use of crown land with occasional enjoyment
of the profits. The inclusion of the eight perches around
the wall is significant for they would certainly come under the
royal claim, of which there is so much evidence later, that
vacant places in boroughs belonged to the crown. It may not
be accidental, indeed, that the entry immediately follows the
description of the agricultural demesne which the king had
in CoIchester and which, it is added, was included in his farm.
The 6os. evidently was not included, being treated as a reserve
against extraordinary expenditure.
The division of this revenue among the Colchester bur-
gesses, when it was not required for the king’s service, does
not suggest that as yet they had a permanent borough chest
such as must have been called into existence by the concession
of part of the royal revenue to the burgesses of the Cinque
Ports and perhaps of Canterbury and Exeter.
1 Above, p. 115.
2D.B. ii. 107a. Round took the first "in commune” as referring to
common of pasture (V.C.H., Essex, i. 577), but the description of the 80
acres is that of arable not pasture, and he himself admitted that the 60s.
"'as a surprisingly high return from pasture.