The ancient boroughs were an historic unit of lower-tier local government in England and Wales

England and Wales

England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...

. The ancient borough

Borough

A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely....

s covered only important towns and were established by charters granted at different times by the monarchy

Monarchy of the United Kingdom

The monarchy of the United Kingdom is the constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The present monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, has reigned since 6 February 1952. She and her immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial and representational duties...

. Their history is largely concerned with the origin of such towns and how they gained the right of self-government

Self-governance

Self-governance is an abstract concept that refers to several scales of organization.It may refer to personal conduct or family units but more commonly refers to larger scale activities, i.e., professions, industry bodies, religions and political units , up to and including autonomous regions and...

. Ancient boroughs were reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835

Municipal Corporations Act 1835

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835  – sometimes known as the Municipal Reform Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in the incorporated boroughs of England and Wales...

, which introduced directly elected corporations and allowed the incorporation of new industrial towns. Municipal boroughs ceased to be used for the purposes of local government in 1974, with borough status

Borough status in the United Kingdom

Borough status in the United Kingdom is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district...

 retained as an honorific title granted by the Crown

The Crown

The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...

.

Anglo-Saxon burhs

Throughout western Europe, the effect of the Germanic invasions

Migration Period

The Migration Period, also called the Barbarian Invasions , was a period of intensified human migration in Europe that occurred from c. 400 to 800 CE. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages...

 which completed the decline of the Roman Empire

Decline of the Roman Empire

The decline of the Roman Empire refers to the gradual societal collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many theories of causality prevail, but most concern the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, in tandem with foreign invasions and usurpers from within the...

 was to destroy the Roman

Western Roman Empire

The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....

 municipal organization

Local government

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...

. After the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, the ruins of Roman colonies and camps were used by the early English to form tribal strongholds. Despite their location, burh

Burh

A Burh is an Old English name for a fortified town or other defended site, sometimes centred upon a hill fort though always intended as a place of permanent settlement, its origin was in military defence; "it represented only a stage, though a vitally important one, in the evolution of the...

s on the sites of Roman colonies

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

 show no continuity with Roman municipal organization, and instead resemble the parallel revival of urban centres in continental Europe. The resettlement of the Roman Durovernum under the name "burh of the men of Kent," Cant-wara-byrig or Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, illustrates this point. The burh of the men of West Kent was Hrofesceaster (Durobrivae), Rochester, and many other ceasters mark the existence of a Roman camp occupied by an early English burh. The tribal burh was protected by an earthen wall, and a general obligation to build and maintain burhs at the royal command was enforced by Anglo-Saxon law

Anglo-Saxon law

Anglo-Saxon law is a body of written rules and customs that were in place during the Anglo-Saxon period in England, before the Norman conquest. This body of law, along with early Scandinavian law and continental Germanic law, descended from a family of ancient Germanic custom and legal thought...

.

Offences in disturbance of the peace of the burh were punished by higher fines than breaches of the peace of the hām or ordinary dwelling. However, neither in the early English language nor in the contemporary Latin was there any fixed usage differentiating the various words descriptive of the several forms of human settlement, and the fortified communal refuges cannot accordingly be clearly distinguished from villages or the strongholds of individuals by any purely nomenclative test.

Danish invasions

At the end of the 9th century and beginning of the 10th century there is evidence of a systematic "timbering

Fortification

Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...

" of new burhs, with the object of providing strongholds for the defence of Wessex

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

 against the Danes, and it appears that the surrounding districts were charged with their maintenance. It is not until after the Danish invasions that it becomes easier to draw a distinction between the burhs that served as military strongholds for national defence and the royal vills which served no such purpose. Some of the royal vill

Vill

Vill is a term used in English history to describe a land unit which might otherwise be described as a parish, manor or tithing.The term is used in the period immediately after the Norman conquest and into the late medieval. Land units in Domesday are frequently referred to as vills, although the...

s eventually entered the class of boroughs, but by another route, and for the present the private stronghold and the royal dwelling may be neglected. It was the public stronghold and the administrative centre of a dependent district which was the source of the main features peculiar to the borough. Many causes tended to create peculiar conditions in the boroughs built for national defence. They were placed where artificial defence was most needed, at the junction of roads, in the plains, on the rivers, at the centres naturally marked out for trade, seldom where hills or marshes formed a sufficient natural defence. Typically, the fortification of a burh consisted of earth ramparts

Defensive wall

A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...

 faced with timber. Palisades

Palisades

A palisade is a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.Palisade or Palisades also may refer to:-Geology:United States...

 were sometimes used.

The concept of a network of burhs as a defence in depth is usually attributed to Alfred

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...

.

The solution that Alfred devised for this apparently intractable predicament was nothing short of a revolution and that revolution began now in the 880s. If the Vikings could attack anywhere at any time, then the West Saxons had to be able to defend everywhere all the time. To make this possible Alfred ordered the construction of a network of defended centres across his kingdom, some built on refortified Roman and Iron Age sites, some built completely from scratch. These burhs were to be distributed so that no West Saxon was more than twenty or so miles -- a day's march -- from one of them.

Commercial significance

The burhs drew commerce by every channel; the camp and the palace, the administrative centre, the ecclesiastical centre (for the mother-church of the state was placed in its chief burh), all looked to the market for their maintenance . The burh was provided by law with a mint and royal moneyers and exchangers, with an authorized scale for weights and measures . Mercantile transactions in the burhs or ports, as they were called when their commercial rather than their military importance was accentuated, were placed by law under special legal privileges in order no doubt to secure the king's hold upon his toll. Over the burh or port was set a reeve, a royal officer answerable to the king for his dues from the burh, his rents for lands and houses, his customs on commerce, his share of the profits from judicial fines .

Legal and administrative roles

At least from the 10th century the burh had a moot

Moot hall

A moot hall is meeting or assembly building, traditionally to decide local issues.In Anglo-Saxon England, a low ring-shaped earthwork served as a moot hill or moot mound, where the elders of the hundred would meet to take decisions. Some of these acquired permanent buildings, known as moot halls...

 or court, the relation of which to the other courts is matter of speculation. A law of Edgar

Edgar of England

Edgar the Peaceful, or Edgar I , also called the Peaceable, was a king of England . Edgar was the younger son of Edmund I of England.-Accession:...

, about 960, required that it should meet three times a year, these being in all likelihood assemblies at which attendance was compulsory on all tenants of the burghal district, when pleas concerning life and liberty and land were held, and men were compelled to find pledges answerable for their good conduct. At these great meetings the borough reeve

Reeve (England)

Originally in Anglo-Saxon England the reeve was a senior official with local responsibilities under the Crown e.g. as the chief magistrate of a town or district...

 (gerefa) presided, declaring the law and guiding the judgments given by the suitors of the court. The reeve was supported by a group of assistants, called in Devon the witan

Witenagemot

The Witenagemot , also known as the Witan was a political institution in Anglo-Saxon England which operated from before the 7th century until the 11th century.The Witenagemot was an assembly of the ruling class whose primary function was to advise the king and whose membership was...

, in the boroughs of the Danelaw

Danelaw

The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the "Danes" held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. It is contrasted with "West Saxon law" and "Mercian law". The term has been extended by modern historians to...

 by a group of (generally twelve) " lawmen," in other towns probably by a group of aldermen, senior burgesses, with military and police authority, whose office was in some cases hereditary. These persons assisted the reeve at the great meetings of the full court, and sat with him as judges at the subordinate meetings which were held to settle the unfinished cases and minor causes. There was no compulsion on those not specially summoned to attend these extra meetings. At these subordinate jurisdictional assemblies, held in public, and acting by the same authority as the annual gathering of all the burh-wara, other business concerning borough administration was decided, at least in later days, and it is to these assemblies that the origin of the town council

Town council

A town council is a democratically elected form of government for small municipalities or civil parishes. A council may serve as both the representative and executive branch....

 may in many cases be ascribed.

In the larger towns the division into wards

Wards of the United Kingdom

A ward in the United Kingdom is an electoral district at sub-national level represented by one or more councillors. It is the primary unit of British administrative and electoral geography .-England:...

, with a separate police system, can be traced at an early time, appearing as a unit of military organization, answerable for the defence of a gate of the town. The police system of London is described in detail in a record of 930-940. Here the free people were grouped in associations of ten, each under the superintendence of a headman. The bishops and reeves who belonged to the "court of London" appear as the directors of the system, and in them we may see the aldermen of the wards of a later time. The use of the word bertha for ward at Canterbury, and the fact that the London wardmoot at a later time was used for the frankpledge

Frankpledge

Frankpledge, earlier known as frith-borh , was a system of joint suretyship common in England throughout the Early Middle Ages. The essential characteristic was the compulsory sharing of responsibility among persons connected through kinship, or some other kind of tie such as an oath of fealty to a...

 system as well as for the organization of the muster, point to a connexion between the military and the police systems in the towns.

In charters of the Anglo-Saxon period a haw, or enclosed area within a burh, was often conveyed by charter as if it were an apanage of the lands in the neighbourhood with which it was conveyed; the Norman settlers who succeeded to lands in the county succeeded therewith to houses in the burhs, for a close association existed between the thegns of the shire and the shirestow, an association partly perhaps of duty and also of privilege . The king granted borough haws as places of refuge in Kent, and in London he gave them with commercial privileges to his bishops. What has been called the heterogeneous tenure of the shirestow, one of the most conspicuous characteristics of that particular type of borough, was further increased by the liberty which some burgesses enjoyed to "commend" themselves to a lord of their own choosing, promising to that lord suit and service and perhaps rent in return for protection. Over these burgesses the lords could claim jurisdictional rights, and these were in some cases increased by royal grants of special rights within certain sokes

Soke (legal)

The term soke ), at the time of the Norman Conquest of England generally denoted "jurisdiction", but due to vague usage probably lacks a single precise definition....

. The great boroughs were honeycombed with sokes, or areas of seignorial jurisdiction, within which the royal reeve's authority was greatly restricted while that of the lord's reeve took precedence. Even the haws, being "burhs" or strongholds within a stronghold, enjoyed a local "peace" which protected from official intrusion .

Besides heterogeneity of tenure and jurisdiction in the borough, there was also heterogeneity of status; there were burh-thegns and cnihts

Knight

A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

, mercatores, burgesses of various kinds, the three groups representing perhaps military, commercial and agricultural elements . The burh generally shows signs of having been originally a village settlement, surrounded by open fields, of which the borough boundary before 1835 will suggest the outline. This area was as a rule eventually the area of borough jurisdiction. There is some evidence pointing to the fact that the restriction of the borough authority to this area is not ancient, but due to the Norman settlement.

Boroughs in Norman England

The wide districts over which the boroughs had had authority were placed under the control of the Norman

Anglo-Norman

The Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the Norman conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. A small number of Normans were already settled in England prior to the conquest...

 castle which was itself built by means of the old English levy of burhwork. The borough court was allowed to continue its work only within its own immediate territory, and, to prevent conflict, the castle was placed outside the borough. Losing their place in the national scheme of defence, the burgess cnihts made commerce their principal object under the encouragement of the old privileges of the walled place. Besides the great co-operative strongholds in which many lords had burgesses, there were small boroughs held by a single lord. In many cases boroughs of this "seignorial" type were created upon the royal estates. Out of the king's vill, as a rule the jurisdictional centre of a hundred, there was sometimes created a borough. The lines of division before Domesday Book are obscure, but it is probable that in some cases, by a royal grant of jurisdiction, the inhabitants of a populous royal vill, where a hundred court for the district was already held, were authorized to establish a permanent court, for the settlement of their disputes, distinct from the hundred court of the district. Boroughs of this type with a uniform tenure were created not only on the king's estates but also on those of his tenants-in-chief, and in 1086 they were probably already numerous.

Town and Manor

As noted by Stenton, the practice evident in the Norman period whereby lords

Lord of the Manor

The Lordship of a Manor is recognised today in England and Wales as a form of property and one of three elements of a manor that may exist separately or be combined and may be held in moieties...

 living in country manors

Manor house

A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...

 owned houses in the nearest borough was a continuation of a custom developed earlier by the Anglo-Saxons:

It is clear from the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 that in 1086 a piece of borough property -- a messuage

Messuage

In law, the term messuage equates to a dwelling-house and includes outbuildings, orchard, curtilage or court-yard and garden. At one time messuage supposedly had a more extensive meaning than that conveyed by the words house or site, but such distinction no longer survives.A capital messuage is the...

, a house, or a group of houses -- was often annexed to a manor in the open country. At Leicester

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

, for example, 134 houses were thus attached, singly or in groups, to 27 different manors. So far as can be seen the borough property was treated as a profit-yielding appendage of the manor. It provided the lord with a lodging when he came to the borough on business and with a place of refuge in time of trouble.... Most of the evidence which illustrates this practice relates to the time after the conquest, but it can be traced far back into the Anglo-Saxon period, and the Anglo-Saxon kings had encouraged it.

Privileges granted to boroughs to encourage settlement near castles

A borough was usually, though perhaps not invariably, the companion of a Norman castle. In some cases a French bourg was created by the side of an English borough, and the two remained for many generations distinct in their laws and customs: in other cases a French bourg was settled by the side of an English village. A large number of the followers of the Norman lords had been almost certainly town-dwellers in their own country, and lost none of their burghal privileges by the migration. Every castle needed for its maintenance a group of skilled artisans, and the lords wished to draw to the castle gates all kinds of commodities for the castle's provision. The strength of the garrison made the neighbourhood of the castle a place of danger to men unprotected by legal privilege; and in order to invite to its neighbourhood desirable settlers, legal privileges similar to those enjoyed in Norman or English boroughs were guaranteed to those who would build on the plots which were offered to colonists. A low fixed rental, release from the renders required of villeins, release from the jurisdiction of the castle, and the creation of a separate borough jurisdiction, with or without the right to choose their own officers, rules fixing the maximum of fees and fines, or promising assessment of the fines by the burgesses themselves, the cancelling of all the castellan's rights, especially the right to take a forced levy of food for the castle from all within the area of his jurisdiction, freedom from arbitrary tallage, freedom of movement, the right to alienate property and devise land, these and many other privileges named in the early seignorial charters were what constituted the Norman liber burgus of the seignorial type.

Not all these privileges were enjoyed by all boroughs; some very meagre releases of seignorial rights accompanied the lord's charter which created a borough and made burgesses out of villeins. However liberal the grant, the lord or his reeve still remained in close personal relation with the burgesses of such places, and this character, together with the uniformity of their tenure, continued to hold them apart from the boroughs of the old English type, where all varieties of personal relationship between the lords and their groups of tenants might subsist. The royal charters granting the right to retain old customs prevented the systematic introduction into the old boroughs of some of the incidents of feudalism. Rights of the king took precedence of those of the lord, and devise with the king's consent was legal. By these means the lords' position was weakened, and other seignorial claims were later evaded or contested. The rights which the lords failed to keep were divided between the king and the municipality; in London, for instance, the king obtained all escheats, while the borough court secured the right of wardship of burgess orphans. From Norman times the yearly profit of the royal boroughs was as a rule included in the general "farm" rendered for the county by the sheriff; sometimes it was rendered by a royal farmer apart from the county-farm. The king generally accepted a composition for all the various items due from the borough. The burgesses were united in their efforts to keep that composition unchanged in amount, and to secure the provision of the right amount at the right time for fear that it should be increased by way of punishment.

Charters

The levy of fines on rent arrear, and the distraints for debt due, which were obtained through the borough court, were a matter of interest to the burgesses of the court, and first taught the burgesses co-operative action. Money was raised, possibly by order of the borough court, to buy a charter from the king giving the right to choose officers who should answer directly to the exchequer and not through the sheriff of the county. The sheriff was in many cases also the constable of the castle, set by the Normans to overawe the English boroughs; his powers were great and dangerous enough to make him an officer specially obnoxious to the boroughs. Henry I

Henry I of England

Henry I was the fourth son of William I of England. He succeeded his elder brother William II as King of England in 1100 and defeated his eldest brother, Robert Curthose, to become Duke of Normandy in 1106...

 about 1131 gave the London citizens the right to choose their own sheriffs and a justiciar answerable for keeping the pleas of the crown. In 1130 the Lincoln citizens paid to hold their city in chief of the king. By the end of the 12th century many towns paid by the hand of their own reeves, and John's charters began to make rules as to the freedom of choice to be allowed in the nomination of borough officers and as to the royal power of dismissal.

In Richard I

Richard I of England

Richard I was King of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period...

's reign London imitated the French communes in styling the chief officer a mayor; in 1208 Winchester also had a mayor, and the title soon became no rarity. The chartered right to choose two of more citizens to keep the pleas of the crown gave to many boroughs the control of their coroners, who occupied the position of the London justiciar of earlier days, subject to those considerable modifications which Henry II

Henry II of England

Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...

's systematisation of the criminal law had introduced. Burgesses who had gone for criminal and civil justice to their own court in disputes between themselves, or between themselves and strangers who were in their town, secured confirmation of this right by charter, not to exclude the justices in eyre, but to exempt themselves from the necessity of pleading in a distant court. The burgess, whether plaintiff or defendant, was a privileged person, and could claim in this respect a "benefit" somewhat similar to the benefit of clergy. In permitting the boroughs to answer through their own officers for his dues, the king handed over to the boroughs the farming of his rents and a large number of rights which would eventually prove to be sources of great profit. No records exist showing the nature of municipal proceedings at the time of the first purchase of charters. Certain it is that the communities in the 12th century became alive to the possibilities of their new position, that trade received a new impulse, and the vague constitutional powers of the borough court acquired a new need for definition. At first the selection of officers who were to treat with the exchequer and to keep the royal pleas was almost certainly restricted to a few rich persons who could find the necessary securities. Nominated probably in one of the smaller judicial assemblies, the choice was announced at the great Michaelmas

Michaelmas

Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel is a day in the Western Christian calendar which occurs on 29 September...

 assembly of the whole community, and it is not till the next century that we hear of any attempt of the vulgus to make a different selection from that of the magnates. The vulgus were able to take effective action by means of the several craft organizations, and first found the necessity to do so when taxation was heavy or when questions of trade legislation were mooted.

Taxation leads to political reformation

The taxation of the boroughs in the reign of Henry II was assessed by the king's justices, who fixed the sums due per capita; but if the borough made an offer of a gift, the assessment was made by the burgesses. In the first case the taxation fell on the magnates. In the levy per communam the assessment was made through the wardmoots (in London) and the burden fell on the poorer class. In Henry II's reign London was taxed by both methods, the barones majores by head, the barones minores through the wardmoot. The pressure of taxation led in the 13th century to a closer definition of the burghal constitutions; the Commons

House of Commons of England

The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain...

 sought to get an audit of accounts, and (in London) not only to hear but to treat of municipal affairs. By the end of the century London had definitely established two councils, that of the mayor and aldermen, representing the old borough court, and a common council, representing the voice of the commonalty, as expressed through the city wards. The choice of councillors in the wards rested probably with the aldermen and the ward jury summoned by them to make the presentments. In some cases juries were summoned not to represent different areas but different classes; thus at Lincoln there were in 1272 juries of the rich, the middling and the poor, chosen presumably by authority from groups divided by means of the tax roll. Elsewhere the several groups of traders and artisans made of their gilds all-powerful agencies for organizing joint action among classes of commons united by a trade interest, and the history of the towns becomes the history of the struggle between the gilds which captured control of the council and the gilds which were excluded therefrom.

Many municipal revolutions took place, and a large number of constitutional experiments were tried all over the country from the 13th century onward. Schemes which directed a gradual co-optation, two to choose four, these six to choose more, and so in widening circles from a centre of officialdom, found much favour throughout the Middle Ages. A plan, like the London plan, of two companies, alderman and council, was widely favoured in the 14th century, perhaps in imitation of the Houses of Lords

House of Lords

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

 and Commons

House of Commons of England

The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain...

. The mayor was sometimes styled the "sovereign" and was given many prerogatives. Great respect was paid to the "ancients," those, namely, who had already held municipal office. Not till the 15th century were orderly arrangements for counting "voices" arrived at in a few of the most highly developed towns, and these were used only in the small assemblies of the governingbody, not in the large electoral assemblies of the people. In London in the 13th century there was aregular system for the admission of new members to the borough "franchise," which was at first regarded not as conferring any form of suffrage but as a means to secure a privileged position in the borough court and in the trade of the borough. Admission could be obtained by inheritance, by purchase or gift, in some places by marriage, and in London, at least from 1275, by a municipal register of apprenticeship. The new freeman in return for his privileges was bound to share with the other burgesses all the burdens of taxation, control, &c., which fell upon burgesses. Personal service was not always necessary, and in some towns there were many non- resident burgesses. When in later times admission to this freedom came to be used as means to secure the parliamentary franchise, the freedom of the borough was freely sold and given.

The elections in which the commons of the boroughs first took interest were those of the borough magistrates. Where the commons succeeded for a time in asserting their right to take part in borough elections they were rarely able to keep it, not in all cases perhaps because their power was feared, but sometimes because of the riotous proceedings which ensued. These led to government interference, which no party in the borough desired. The possibility of a forfeiture of their enfranchised position made the burgesses on the whole fairly submissive. In the 13th century London repeatedly was "taken into the king's hand," subjected to heavy fines and put under the constable of the Tower.

Charters of incorporation

In the 15th century disturbances in the boroughs led to the issue of new constitutions, some of which were the outcome of royal charters, others the result of parliamentary legislation. The development of the law of corporations also at this time compelled the boroughs to seek new charters which should satisfy the now exacting demands of the law. The charters of incorporation were issued at a time when the state was looking more and more to the borough authorities as part of its executive and judicial staff, and thus the government was closely interested in the manner of their selection. The new charters were drafted in such a way as to narrow the popular control. The corporations were placed under a council and in a number of cases popular control was excluded altogether, the whole system being made one of co-optation. The absence of popular protest may be ascribed in part to the fact that the old popular control had been more nominal than real, and the new charter gave as a rule two councils of considerable size. These councils bore a heavy burden of taxation in meeting royal loans and benevolences, paying per capita like the magnates of the 12th century, and for a time there is on the whole little evidence of friction between the governors and the governed. Throughout, popular opinion in the closest of corporations had a means of expression, though none of execution, in the presentments of the leet juries and sessions juries. By means of their "verdicts" they could use threats against the governing body, express their resentment against acts of the council which benefited the governing body rather than the town, and call in the aid of the justices of assize where the members of the governing body were suspected of fraud.

Elizabeth repeatedly declared her dislike of incorporations "because of the abuses committed by their head rulers," but in her reign they were fairly easily controlled by the privy council, which directed their choice of members of parliament and secured supporters of the government policy to fill vacancies on the borough bench. The practice in Tudor

Tudor dynasty

The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...

 and Stuart

House of Stuart

The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...

 charters of specifying by name the members of the governing body and holders of special offices opened the way to a "purging" of the hostile spirits when new charters were required. There were also rather vaguely worded clauses authorizing the dismissal of officers for misconduct, though as a rule the appointments were for life. When under the Stuarts and under the Commonwealth political and religious feeling ran high in the boroughs, use was made of these clauses both by the majority on the council and by the central government to mould the character of the council by a drastic "purging." Another means of control first used under the Commonwealth was afforded by the various acts of parliament, which subjected all holders of municipal office to the test of an oath. Under the Commonwealth there was no improvement in the methods used by the central government to control the boroughs.

All opponents of the ruling policy were disfranchised and disqualified for office by
act of parliament in 1652. Cases arising out of the act were to be tried by commissioners, and the commissions of the major-generals gave them opportunity to control the borough policy. Few Commonwealth charters have been preserved, though several were issued in response to the requests of the corporations. In some cases the charters used words which appeared to point to an opportunity for popular elections in boroughs where a usage of election by the town council had been established. In 1598 the judges gave an opinion that the town councils could by-law determine laws for the government of the town regardless of the terms of the charter. In the 18th century the judges decided to the contrary. But even where a usage of popular election was established, there were means of controlling the result of a parliamentary election. The close corporations, though their right to choose a member of parliament might be doubtful, had the sole right to admit new burgesses, and in order to determine parliamentary elections they enfranchised non-residents. Where conflicts arose over the choice of a member, and two selections were made, the matter came before the House of Commons

House of Commons of England

The House of Commons of England was the lower house of the Parliament of England from its development in the 14th century to the union of England and Scotland in 1707, when it was replaced by the House of Commons of Great Britain...

. On various occasions the House decided in favour of the popularly elected candidate against the nominee of the town council, on the general principle that neither the royal charter nor a by-law could curtail this particular franchise. But as each case was separately determined by a body swayed by the dominant political party, no one principle was steadily adhered to in the trial of election petitions. The royal right to create boroughs was freely used by Elizabeth and James I. as a means of securing a submissive parliament.

Crown control of boroughs in the restoration

The later Stuarts abandoned this method, and the few new boroughs made by the Georges

Georgian era

The Georgian era is a period of British history which takes its name from, and is normally defined as spanning the reigns of, the first four Hanoverian kings of Great Britain : George I, George II, George III and George IV...

 were not made for political reasons. The object of the later Stuarts was to control the corporations already in existence, not to make new ones. Charles II, from the time of his restoration decided to exercise a strict control of the close corporations in order to secure not only submissive parliaments, but also a pliant executive among the borough justices, and pliant juries, which were impanelled at the selection of the borough officers. In 1660 it was made a rule that all future charters should reserve expressly to the crown the first nomination of the aldermen, recorder and town-clerk, and a proviso should be entered placing with the common council the return of the member of parliament. The Corporation Act of 1661

Corporation Act 1661

The Corporation Act of 1661 is an Act of the Parliament of England . It belongs to the general category of test acts, designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to members of the Church of England....

 gave power to royal commissioners to settle the composition of the town councils, and to remove all who refused the sacraments of the Church of England or were suspected of disaffection, even though they offered to take the necessary oaths. Even so the difficulty of securing sub-missive juries was again so great in 1682 that a general attack on the borough franchises was begun by the crown. A London jury having returned a verdict hostile to the crown, after various attempts to bend the city to his will, Charles II issued a quo warranto

Quo warranto

Quo warranto is a prerogative writ requiring the person to whom it is directed to show what authority they have for exercising some right or power they claim to hold.-History:...

against the mayor and commonalty in order to charge the citizens with illegal encroachments upon their chartered rights. The want of a sound philosophical principle in the laws which were intended to regulate the actions of organized groups of men made it easy for the crown judges to find flaws in the legality of the actions of the boroughs, and also made it possible for the Londoners to argue that no execution could be taken against the mayor, commonalty and citizens, a "body politic invisible"; that the indictment lay only against every particular member of the governing body; and that the corporation as a corporation was incapable of suffering a forfeiture or of making a surrender. The judges gave a judgment for the king, the charters were forfeited and the government placed with a court of aldermen of the king's own choosing. Until James II yielded, there was no common council in London. The novelty of the proceedings of Charles II and James II lay in using the weapon of the quo warranto systematically to ensure a general revocation of charters. The new charters which were then granted required the king's consent for the more important appointments, and gave him power to remove officers without reason given.

Under James II in 1687 six commissioners were appointed to "regulate" the corporations and remove from them all persons who were opposed to the abolition of the penal laws against Catholics. The new appointments were made under a writ which ran, "We will and require you to elect" (a named person). When James II sought to withdraw from his disastrous policy, he issued a proclamation restoring to the boroughs their ancient charters. The governing charter thenceforth in many boroughs, though not in all, was the charter which had established a close corporation, and from this time on to 1835 the boroughs made no progress in constitutional growth.

England

• Abingdon, Agardsley, Aldborough, Andover, Appleby, Arundel, Axbridge, Aylesbury
• Bamborough, Banbury, Barnard Castle, Barnstaple, Baschurch, Basingstoke, Bath, Bedford, Berkhampstead, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Beverley, Bewdley, Bideford, Bishop's Castle, Blandford Forum, Bodmin, Boston, Brading, Bradninch, Bightnorth, Bridgewater, Bridport, Bristol, Buckingham, Burford, Bury St Edmonds
• Calne, Cambridge, Camelford, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chard, Chester, Chesterfield, Chichester, Chippenham, Chipping Campden, Chipping Norton, Chipping Sodbury, Christchurch, Cinque Ports, Cirencester, Cliteroe, Clun, Colchester, Colnbrook, Congleton, Coventry, Cricklade, Dartmouth, Daventry, Derby, Devizes, Doncaster, Dorchester, Dover, Droitwich, Dunheven, Great Dunmow, Dunster, Dunwich, Durham
• Evesham, Exeter, Eye
• Farnham, Faversham, Flint, Folkstone, Fordwich, Frodsham
• Gainsborough, Gloucester, Godalming, Godmanchester, Grampound, Grantham, Gravesend, Grimsby, Guildford
• Hadleigh, Hartlepool, Harwich, Hastings, Hedon, Helston, Hemel Hempstead, Henley-on-Thames, Hereford, Hertford, Higham Ferrers, Kingston-on-Hull, Huntingdon, Hythe
• Ilchester, Ipswich
• Kendal, Kidderminster, Kingston-on-Thames, Knutsford
• Lancaster, Langport Eastover, Leeds, Leicester, Leominster, Lichfield, Lincoln, Liskeard, Liverpool, London, Looe East, Looe West (also known as Porthbychan), Lostwithniel, Louth, Lundlow, Lydd, Lyme Regis, Lynn (also known as King's Lynn)
• Macclesfield, Maidenhead, Maidstone, Maldon, Malmesbury, Marazion, Marlborough, Melcome Regis, Milborne Port
• Nantwich, Newark-upon-Trent, Newbury, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newport (Isle of Wight), Newport (Salop), Newtown (Isle of Wight), Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham
• Okehampton, Ortford, Ormskirk, Oswestry
• Penryn, Penzance, Pevensey, Plymouth, Plympton, Pontefract, Poole, Portsmouth, Preston
• Queensborough
• Ravenserod, Reading, Retford East, Richmond (Yorks), Ripon, Roby, Rochester, Romsey, Ruyton, Rye
• Saffron Walden, St Albans, St Briavels, St Ives (Cornwall), Salisbury, Saltash, Sandwich, Scarborough, Seaford, Shaftesbury, Sheffield, Sherbourne, Shrewsbury, Southampton, South Molton, Southwell, Southwold, Stafford, Stamford, Stockton-on-Tees, Stratford-upon-Avon, Sudbury, Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield
• Tamworth, Taunton, Tenterden, Tewkesbury, Thaxted, Thetford, Tintagel, Tiverton, Torksey, Torrington, Totnes, Tregony, Truro
• Ulverston
• Wainfleet, Wallingford, Walsall, Warwick, Wells, Wenlock, Weymouth, Whitchurch, Wigan, Wilton, Winchester, Windsor, Wisbech, Wokingham, Woodstock, Wooten-Bassett, Worcester, Wycombe
• Great Yarmouth, Yarmouth (Isle of Wight), York

Reform and replacement

The tendency for the close corporation to treat the members of the governing body as the only corporators, and to repudiate the idea that the corporation was answerable to the inhabitants of the borough if the corporate property was squandered, became more and more manifest as the history of the past slipped into oblivion. The corporators came to regard themselves as members of a club, legally warranted in dividing the lands and goods of the same among themselves whensoever such a division should seem profitable. Even where the constitution of the corporation was not close by charter, the franchise tended to become restricted to an ever-dwindling electorate, as the old methods for the extension of the municipal franchise by other means than inheritance died out of use. At Ipswich in 1833 the " freemen " numbered only one fifty-fifth of the population. If the electorate was increased, it was increased by the wholesale admission to the freedom of voters willing to vote as directed by the corporation at parliamentary elections. The growth of corruption in the boroughs continued unchecked until the era of the Reform Bill. Several boroughs had by that time become insolvent, and some had recourse to their member of parliament to eke out their revenues. In Buckingham the mayor received the whole town revenue without rendering account; sometimes, however, heavy charges fell upon the officers.

Before the Reform era dissatisfaction with the corporations was mainly shown by the number of local acts of parliament which placed under the authority of special commissioners a variety of administrative details, which if the corporation had not been suspected would certainly have been assigned to its care. The trust offered another convenient means of
escape from difficulty, and in some towns out of the trust was developed a system of municipal administration where there was no recognized corporation. Thus at Peterborough the feoffees who had succeeded to the control of certain ancient charities constituted a form of town council with very restricted powers. In the 17th century Sheffield was brought under the act " to redress the misemployment of lands given to charitable uses," and the municipal administration of what had been a borough passed into the hands of the trustees of the Burgery or Town Trust

Sheffield Town Trust

The Sheffield Town Trust, formerly officially known as the Burgery of Sheffield, is a charitable trust operating in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.-Mediaeval period:...

. The many special authorities created under act of parliament led to much confusion, conflict and overlapping, and increased the need for a general reform. The reform of the boroughs was treated as part of the question of parliamentary reform. In 1832

Reform Act 1832

The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...

 the exclusive privileges of the corporations in parliamentary elections having been abolished and male occupiers enfranchised, the question of the municipal franchise was next dealt with. In 1833 a commission inquired into the administration of the municipal corporations. The result of the inquiry was the Municipal Corporations Act 1835

Municipal Corporations Act 1835

The Municipal Corporations Act 1835  – sometimes known as the Municipal Reform Act, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in the incorporated boroughs of England and Wales...

, which gave the municipal franchise to the ratepayers. In all the municipal corporations dealt with by the act, the town council was to consist of a mayor, aldermen and councillors, and the councils were given like powers, being divided into those with and those without a commission of the peace. The minutes were to be open to the inspection of any burgess, and an audit of accounts was required. The exclusive rights of retail trading, which in some towns were restricted to freemen of the borough, were abolished. The system of police, which in some places was still medieval in character, was placed under the control of the council. The various privileged areas within the bounds of a borough were with few exceptions made part of the borough. The powers of the council to alienate corporate property were closely restricted. The operations of the act were extended by later legislation, and the divers amendments and enactments which followed were consolidated in the Municipal Corporations Act 1882

Municipal Corporations Act 1882

The Municipal Corporations Act 1882 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaced existing legislation governing municipal boroughs in England and Wales, and gave the corporations powers to make byelaws and to acquire land and buildings. Municipal boroughs continued to be...

.

See also

• County corporate
  County corporate
  A county corporate or corporate county was a type of subnational division used for local government in England, Ireland and Wales.Counties corporate were created during the Middle Ages, and were effectively small self-governing counties...
  
  
• Liberty (division)
  Liberty (division)
  Originating in the Middle Ages, a liberty was traditionally defined as an area in which regalian rights were revoked and where land was held by a mesne lord...
  
  
• Burh
  Burh
  A Burh is an Old English name for a fortified town or other defended site, sometimes centred upon a hill fort though always intended as a place of permanent settlement, its origin was in military defence; "it represented only a stage, though a vitally important one, in the evolution of the...
  
  
• Rotten and pocket boroughs

External links

• Burhgal Hidage