This said, we will turn back our thoughts to the oldest days. The word that deserves our best attention is burh, the future borough, for little good would come of an attempt to found a theory upon the Latin words, such as civitas, oppidum and urbs which occur in some of those magniloquent land-books[727]. Now it seems fairly clear that for some long time after the Germanic invasions the word burh meant merely a fastness, a stronghold, and suggested no thick population nor any population at all. This we might learn from the map of England. The hill-top that has been fortified is a burh. Very often it has given its name to a neighbouring village[728]. But, to say nothing of hamlets, we have full two hundred and fifty parishes whose names end in burgh, borough or bury, and in many cases we see no sign in them of an ancient camp or of an exceptionally dense population. It seems a mere chance that they are not tons or hams, worths or thorpes. Then again, in Essex and neighbouring shires it is common to find that in the village called X there is a squire’s mansion or a cluster of houses called X-bury. Further, we can see plainly from our oldest laws that the palisade or entrenchment around a great man’s house is a burh. Thus Alfred: The king’s burh-bryce (the sum to be paid for breaking his burh) is 120 shillings, an archbishop’s 90 shillings, another bishop’s 60 shillings, a twelve-hundred man’s 30 shillings, a six-hundred-man’s 15 shillings, a ceorl’s edor-bryce (the sum to be paid for breaking his hedge) 5 shillings[729]. The ceorl, whose wer is 200 shillings, will not have a burh, he will only have a hedge round his house; but the man whose wer is 600 shillings will probably have some stockade, some rude rampart; he will have a burh
The king’s burh.
We observe the heavy bót of 120 shillings which protects the king’s burh. May we not see here the very first stage in the legal history of our boroughs? We pass over some centuries and we read in a statement of the Londoners’ customs that a man who is guilty of unlawful violence must pay the king’s burh-bryce of five pounds[730]. And then the Domesday surveyors tell us how at Canterbury every crime committed in those streets which run right through the city is a crime against the king, and so it is if committed upon the high-roads outside the city for the space of one league, three perches and three feet[731]. This curious accuracy over perches and feet sends us to another ancient document:—‘Thus far shall the king’s peace (grið) extend from his burhgeat where he is sitting towards all four quarters, namely, three miles, three furlongs, three acre-breadths, nine feet, nine hand-breadths, nine barley-corns[732].’ And then we remember how Fleta tells us that the verge of the king’s palace is twelve leagues in circumference, and how within that ambit the palace court, the king’s most private court, has jurisdiction[733]
The special peace of the burh.
Has not legal fiction been at work since an early time? Has not the sanctity of the king’s house extended itself over a group of houses? The term burh seems to spread outwards from the defensible house of the king and with it the sphere of his burh-bryce is amplified. Within the borough there reigns a special peace. This has a double meaning:—not only do acts which would be illegal anywhere become more illegal when they are done within the borough, but acts which would be legal elsewhere, are illegal there. King Edmund legislating against the blood-feud makes his burh as sacred as a church; it is a sanctuary where the feud may not be prosecuted[734]. If in construing such a passage we doubt how to translate burh, whether by house or by borough, we are admitting that the language of the law does not distinguish between the two. The Englishman’s house is his castle, or, to use an older term, his burh; the king’s borough is the king’s house, for his house-peace prevails in its streets[735]
The town and the burh.
Our oldest laws seem to know no burh other than the strong house of a great (but he need not be a very great) man. Early in the tenth century, however, the word had already acquired a new meaning. In Æthelstan’s day it seems to be supposed by the legislator that a moot will usually be held in a burh. If a man neglects three summonses to a moot, the oldest men of the burh are to ride to his place and seize his goods[736]. Already a burh will have many men in it. Some of them will be elder-men, aldermen. A moot will be held in it. Very possibly this will be the shire-moot, for, since there is riding to be done, we see that the person who ought to have come to the moot may live at a distance[737]. A little later the burh certainly has a moot of its own. Edgar bids his subjects seek the burh-gemót as well as the scyr-gemót and the hundred-gemót. The borough-moot is to be held thrice a year[738]. At least from this time forward, the borough has a court. An important line is thus drawn between the borough and the mere tún. The borough has a court; the village has none, or, if the villages are getting courts, this is due to the action of lords who have sake and soke and is not commanded by national law. National law commands that there shall be a moot thrice a year in every burh
The building of boroughs.
The extension of the term burh from a fortified house to a fortified group of houses must be explained by those who are skilled in the history of military affairs. It is for them to tell us, for example, how much use the Angles and Saxons in the oldest days made of the entrenched hill-tops, and whether the walls of the Roman towns were continuously repaired[739]. Howbeit, a time seems to have come, at latest in the struggle between the Danish invaders and the West-Saxon kings, when the establishment and maintenance of what we might call fortified towns was seen to be a matter of importance. There was to be a cluster of inhabited dwellings which as a whole was to be made defensible by ditch and mound, by palisade or wall. Edward the Elder and the Lady of the Mercians were active in this work. Within the course of a few years burgs were ‘wrought’ or ‘timbered’ at Worcester, Chester, Hertford, Witham in Essex, Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick, Eddisbury, Warbury, Runcorn, Buckingham, Towcester, Maldon, Huntingdon[740]. Whatever may be meant by the duty of repairing burgs when it is mentioned in charters coming from a somewhat earlier time, it must for the future be that of upholding those walls and mounds that the king and the lady are rearing. The land was to be burdened with the maintenance of strongholds. The land, we say. That is the style of the land-books. Land, even though given to a church, is not to be free (unless by exceptional favour) of army-service, bridge-work and borough-bettering or borough-fastening. Wall-work[741] is coupled with bridge-work; to the duty of maintaining the county bridges is joined the duty of constructing and repairing the boroughs. Shall we say the ‘county boroughs’
The shire and its borough.