We have it in our modern heads that the medieval borough is a sanctuary of peace, an oasis of ‘industrialism’ in the wilderness of ‘militancy.’ Now a sanctuary of peace the borough is from the very first. An exceptional and exalted peace reigns over it. If you break that peace you incur the king’s burh-bryce. But we may strongly suspect that the first burg-men, the first burgenses, were not an exceptionally peaceful folk. Those burhwaras of London who thrashed Swegen[754] and chose kings were no sleek traders; nor must we speak contemptuously of ‘trained bands of apprentices’ or of ‘the civic militia.’ In all probability these burg-men were of all men in the realm the most professionally warlike. Were we to say that in the boroughs the knightly element was strong we might mislead, for the word knight has had chivalrous adventures. However, we may believe that the burgensis of the tenth century very often was a cniht, a great man’s cniht, and that if not exactly a professional soldier (professional militancy was but beginning) he was kept in the borough for a military purpose and was perhaps being fed by the manor to which he belonged. These knights formed gilds for religious and convivial purposes. At Cambridge there was a gild of thegns, who were united in blood-brotherhood. We can not be certain that all these thegns habitually lived in Cambridge. Perhaps we should rather say that already a Cambridgeshire club had its head-quarters in Cambridge and there held its ‘morning-speeches’ and its drinking bouts. These thegns had ‘knights’ who seem to have been in some sort inferior members of the gild and to have been bound by its rules[755]. Then we hear of ‘knight-gilds’ at London and Canterbury and Winchester[756]. Such gilds would be models for the merchant-gilds of after-days, and indeed when not long after the Conquest we catch at Canterbury our first glimpse of a merchant-gild, its members are calling themselves knights: knights of the chapman-gild[757]. Among the knights who dwelt in the burg such voluntary societies were the more needful, because these men had not grown up together as members of a community. They came from different districts and had different lords. In this heterogeneity we may also see one reason why a very stringent peace, the king’s own house-peace, should be maintained, and why the borough should have a moot of its own. When compared with a village there is something artificial about the borough.
Buhr-bót and castle-guard.
This artificiality exercised an influence over the later fate of the boroughs. The ground had been cleared for the growth of a new kind of community, one whose members were not bound together by feudal, proprietary, agricultural ties. But the strand that we have been endeavouring to trace is broken at the Conquest. The castle arises. It is garrisoned by knights who are more heavily armed and more professionally militant than were their predecessors. The castle is now what wants defending; the knights who defend it form no part of the burghal community, and perhaps ‘the castle fee’ is in law no part of the borough. And yet let us see how in the twelfth century the king’s castle at Norwich was manned. It was manned by the knights of the Abbot of St Edmund’s. One troop served there for three months and then was relieved by another, and those who were thus set free went home to the manors with which the abbot had enfeoffed them and which they held by the service of castle-guard[758]. Much in this arrangement is new; the castle itself is new; but it is no new thing, we take it, that the burh should be garrisoned by the knights of abbots or earls. And who built the castles, who built the Tower of London? Let us read what the chronicler says of the year 1097:—Also many shires which belonged to London for work[759] were sorely harassed by the wall that they wrought around the tower, and by the bridge, which had been nearly washed away, and by the work of the king’s hall that was wrought at Westminster. There were shires or districts which from of old owed this work or work of this kind to London-bury[760]
Borough and market.
Long before the Conquest, however, a force had begun to play which was to give to the boroughs their most permanent characteristic. They were to be centres of trade. We must not exclude the hypothesis that some places were fortified and converted into burgs because they were already the focuses of such commerce as there was. But the general logic of the process we take to have been this:—The king’s burh enjoys a special peace: Even the men who are going to or coming from it are under royal protection: Therefore within its walls men can meet together to buy and sell in safety: Also laws which are directed against theft command that men shall not buy and sell elsewhere: Thus a market is established: Traders begin to build booths round the market-place and to live in the borough. A theory has indeed been brilliantly urged which would find the legal germ of the borough rather in a market-peace than in the peace of a burg[761]. But this doctrine has difficulties to meet. A market-peace is essentially temporary, while the borough’s peace is eternal. A market court, if it arises, will have a jurisdiction only over bargains made and offences committed on market-days, whereas the borough court has a general competence and hears pleas relating to the property in houses and lands. Here in England during the Angevin time the ‘franchise,’ or royally granted right, of holding a market is quite distinct from the legal essence of the borough. Lawful markets are held in many places that are not boroughs; indeed in the end by calling a place ‘a mere market-town’ we should imply that it was no borough. Already in Domesday Book this seems to be the case. Markets are being held and market-tolls are being taken in many vills which are not of burghal rank[762]. Perhaps also we may see the borough-peace and the market-peace lying side by side. In the Wallingford of the Confessor’s day there were many persons who had sake and soke within their houses. If any one spilt blood and escaped into one of those houses before he was attached, the owner received the blood-wite. But it was not so on Saturdays, for then the money went to the king ‘because of the market[763].’ Thus the king’s borough-peace seems to be intensified on market-days; on those days it will even penetrate the houses of the immunists. So at Dover some unwonted peace or ‘truce’ prevailed in the town from St. Michael’s Day to St. Andrew’s: that is to say, during the herring season[764].
Establishment of markets.
The establishment of a market is not one of those indefinite phenomena which the historian of law must make over to the historian of economic processes. It is a definite and a legal act. The market is established by law. It is established by law which prohibits men from buying and selling elsewhere than in a duly constituted market. To prevent an easy disposal of stolen goods is the aim of this prohibition. Our legislators are always thinking of the cattle-lifter. At times they seem to go the full length of decreeing that only in a ‘port’ may anything be bought or sold, unless it be of trifling value; but other dooms would also sanction a purchase concluded before the hundred court. He who buys elsewhere runs a risk of being treated as a thief if he happens to buy stolen goods[765]. Official witnesses are to be appointed for this purpose in every hundred and in every burh: twelve in every hundred and small burh, thirty-three in a large burh[766]. Here once more we see the burh co-ordinated with the hundred. A by-motive favours this establishment of markets. Those who traffic in the safety of the king’s burh may fairly be asked to pay some toll to the king. They enjoy his peace; perhaps also the use of royal weights and measures, known and trustworthy, is another part of the valuable consideration that they receive. First and last throughout the history of the boroughs toll is a matter of importance[767]. It gives the king a revenue from the borough, a revenue that he can let to farm. Also, though we do not think that the borough court was in its origin a mere market court, the disputes of the market-place will provide the borough court with plentiful litigation, and in this quarter also the king will find a new source of income. Among the old land-books that which speaks most expressly of the profits of jurisdiction as the subject-matter of a gift is a charter which concerns the town of Worcester. Æthelred and Æthelflæd, the ealdorman and lady of the Mercians, have, at the request of the bishop, built a burh at Worcester, and they declare that of all the rights that appertain to their lordship both in market (on ceapstowe) and in street, within the burh and without, they have given half to God and St. Peter, with the witness of King Alfred and all the wise of Mercia. The lord of the church is to have half of all, be it land-fee, or fiht-wite, stealing, wohceapung (fines for buying or selling contrary to the rules of the market) or borough-wall-scotting[768]. Quite apart from the rent of houses, there is a revenue to be gained from the borough.
Moneyers in the burh.
Another rule has helped to define the borough, and this rule also has its root among the regalia. No one, says King Æthelstan, is to coin money except in a port; in Canterbury there may be seven moneyers, four of the king, two of the bishop, one of the abbot; in Rochester three, two of the king, one of the bishop; in London-borough eight; in Winchester six; in Lewes two; in Hastings one; in Chichester one; in Hampton two; in Wareham two; in Exeter two; in Shaftesbury two, and in each of the other boroughs one[769]. Already, then, a burh is an entity known to the law: every burh is to have its moneyer.
Burh and port.