132 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION TO 1066
400 houses into 28 acres north of the bridge. Not the least
of the objections is the apparent continuity of the royal tene-
ment rents from 1066 to 1483.1
To such foreign mercantile settlements, Scandinavian in
this case, Dr. Stephenson would ascribe even the limited
urban development which he now allows to the great Danelaw
boroughs at an earlier date. Little or no allowance is made for
a like native development in the English boroughs, because he
has convinced himself that they were predominantly agri-
cultural. This under-estimate of English trade and urban
growth results partly from failure to distinguish always
between what Domesday reports for 1066 and what for 1086,
and partly from a tendency to interpret ambiguous evidence
in the light of a theory. The villeins and bordars and minute
or poor burgesses mentioned in a few boroughs were either
on enclaves of royal or private arable or, in the great majority
of cases, obvious victims of Norman devastation, a depressed
class of former full burgesses. The 480 bordarii at Norwich
in 1086 were reduced to the status of “ cottagers ” because
they were unable to pay any customs, i.e., dues, with the
burgesses, but it is most unlikely that they had anything
but the name in common with the rural bordars. They
probably got a precarious living in minor urban occupations.
The misunderstanding is the more unfortunate because it is
used to support a theory that the mass of the Anglo-Saxon
burgenses—a term meaning, it is held, no more than “ borough
people ” and covering various classes—were mere cultivators
of borough arable which was in the hands of a few rich men.
This theory seems to have been suggested mainly by the
division of the arable land at Derby and Nottingham between
a small number of burgesses. But the arrangement may be
more probably explained by a system of leases, such as ob-
tained at Huntingdon, and not as a manorial relation. It
may even mean that the “ agricultural shell ” of the borough
was becoming unimportant for the mass of the burgesses.
In accordance with his view Dr. Stephenson sees only a small
number of individual landowners in the passage : “ Burgenses
Exonie urbis habent extra civitatem terram xii carucarum.”
This is grammatically possible, but it is equally possible and
1Above, p. 91, n. In Proc. Cambr. Anliq. Soc., vol. xxxv. (1935), pp.
33^53∙ Miss ɑam reviews the whole evidence, including arehæoɪogieal dis-
coveries not taken into account either by Maitland (Township and Borough,
p. 99) or by Dr. Stephenson (Borough and Town, pp. 200 £f.) and decides that
its weight is against the theory in question.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION TO 1066 133
more probable that the borough fields of Exeter were divided,
as they certainly were at Colchester, between, at any rate,
a considerable proportion of the burgess body.
The small borough, especially in the south-west, has a
deceptively agricultural look in Domesday. It was often
seated in the caput of a large royal manor and the revenue from
market and burgess rents was included with that of the
manor in a single farm. The compilers of the survey were,
therefore, not always careful to enumerate the burgesses
separately from the villeins and bordars, but the limitation of
the earl’s third to the borough revenue shows that borough
and manor were distinct entities. Where burgesses were few,
the borough might sooner or later disappear, as it did for
instance, at Bruton in Somerset. On the other hand, a more
favourable position for trade already marked out Ilchester,
with its 108 burgesses in 1086, for municipal growth. The
same variety of fortune befell the similar little groups of
burgesses round markets which Norman lords established at
their manorial centres after the Conquest. In Hertford-
shire, Ashwell and Stansted failed to maintain the urban
character which St. Albans retained and extended. Even the
smallest Anglo-Saxon boroughs were not essentially different
from “ mercantile settlements ” like these.
In the agricultural borough pictured by Dr. Stephenson,
the burgage tenure of the twelfth century could not exist.
It came, he holds, with mercantile settlement. Yet we find
the essential features of the tenure already present. The
tenement is hereditable at a money rent, the landgable or
“ custom of burgesses ” ; subject to some varying restrictions,
it may be sold or mortgaged. Inability to render any custom
or exemption from custom excludes from the class of burgesses.
Villeins and bordars are usually carefully distinguished from
them. Their rents formed a leading item in the fixed farm
of the borough, and in 1086 they were complaining that they
were held responsible for rents and taxes withheld by Normans
who had dispossessed burgesses. The burgage rents were
still called landgable. Identities of amount can be proved,
as at Cambridge. The rateable area at Oxford was known
both before and after the Conquest as the king’s “ Eight
Virgates."
Had the borough been primarily agricultural, the unit of
assessment would have been acres in the arable fields ; actu-
ally it was the house {domus) within the ramparts and many