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Free borough?

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What is or was a "free borough"? From a google search, Salford, Stafford, Higham, Godmanchester and Liverpool were made "free boroughs" during the Middle Ages. There is likely to be many many more such free boroughs and that is not an extensive list.

Question(s): what is a free borough? Was it a burgage? Did they have (historical) borough status? Was their any difference with a modern borough? If so, what? --Jza84 |  Talk  01:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the impression that it meant freedom from some specific kinds of taxes or other forms of payment due. These websites may shed some light on the matter: here, here, and this one in particular which states:

borough Derives from the Old English term burh, which was originally applied to any fortified place, such as a thegn's house or a hilltop – not necessarily a populated place. During the wars between Anglo-Saxons and Danes it was particularly applied to centres of population which were protected with defensive earthworks; such of those centres which continued to flourish in later times came to be boroughs. The term burgus often appears to be used in a technical sense, as distinct from "town" (villata), such as in the 1200 proceedings at Ipswich, usually relating to the town as a legal/administrative entity. Another term sometimes used in a general sense, but sometimes with a more technical meaning, was liber burgus, "free borough", (or the slightly older liber burgagium, referring to burgage tenure); this came into vogue at the close of the twelfth century and was popular throughout the thirteenth, when many communities sought this status through charters from their lords. It involved the grant of special privileges reducing the degree of servitude of burgesses to their lord and/or increasing the degree of corporate autonomy from external authorities; the precise set of privileges varied from town to town. This status was most commonly given to new town foundations, and implied their acquisition of privileges already in possession of many of the older, established towns (a specific town might be used as a model for a new foundation).

I hope that helps.  DDStretch  (talk) 01:27, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting and complicated subject. I seem to heve been confusing "seignorial boroughs" and "free boroughs": ,I didn't realise that free boroughs were created by royal charters as well as manorial ones. I'd assumed that as lords had somewhat less powers than the crown then the (free) boroughs they created weren't as privileged as royal ones, but this doesn't seem to have been the case...
According to this website [1], based on a 1907 source, Liverpool's charter or leters patent from King John of 1207 constituted it one of only 12 free boroughs in the country (along with Bristol and Southampton). "Burgesses gained exemption from the tolls not only in the Borough, but also throughout the kingdom" and secured "all the liberties and free customs which any free borough on the sea or has in our land". Which supports the quote above.

There are quite a few articles on medieval boroughs in JSTOR, but I would have to take a month off work to read them! This indicates the complexity of the situation and state of research in the 1960s:

In the first place, the borough cannot be defined; there is no formula which defines all the kinds of community to which the terms burh and burgus, and between them, port, were applied from the time when the early English became articulate until the Tudor Poor Law hardened the pattern of local government. One can write a book upon such a subject, but the edges of its argument will be uncertain, and uncertainty may have unjustly a taint of misapprehension about it. In the second place, no matter how its limits are sketched, the history of the English borough demands a very large investigation. Any community that does not live solely by producing its own food - and that at least is a category into which every burh, port and burgus must fall - is a complex and troublesome thing to apprehend, and the historian of the English borough in the Middle Ages can number his cares by scores, and if he will, by hundreds, before he begins to divide and analyse the material to which they lead him. And in the third place, that material, even for a history of the larger English boroughs that excludes London, is still imperfectly explored.

(The English Borough in the Thirteenth Century, Author(s): G. H. Martin, Source: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, Vol. 13 (1963), pp. 123-144)
Lozleader (talk) 12:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
From British Borough Charters 1042 - 1216 by Adolphus Ballard (Cambridge University Press, 1913):

The meaning of the "liber burgus " is much disputed : Professor Tait says " that the institution of a free borough meant no more than the substitution of free burgage tenure for the villein services and merchet of the rural manor," a definition which finds support by the Burton charter in which the Abbot, after reciting the King's license to found a borough, proceeds to order that all who held houses within a certain area, should hold by burgage tenure: but at the same time the Abbot conferred on them other privileges. On the other hand, Dr Gross thinks that the grant of the "liber burgus" is the grant of a mass of undefined franchises, and quotes the answer of the Mayor and Burgesses of Macclesfield in a quo warranto proceeding of 1350 "That by the words 'that the town of Macclesfield be a free borough they claim that the said town is a free borough and has all the liberties and customs which a free borough rightfully ought to have'," and, it will be remembered, that the burgesses of Ipswich proceeded to elect twelve capital portmen, as there were in the other free boroughs of England, immediately on the receipt of their charter, although there was no direct permission in their charter for their so doing. Among this mass of privileges burgage tenure would be one; and the Norham charter states that the custom of settling disputes out of court was another of these privileges.

Borough charters in the book declaring towns to be free boroughs were
  • Wells (1201) Wherefore we will... that they and their heirs have all the liberties and free customs of a free borough and of free burgesses,
  • Dunwich (1200),
  • Bridgwater (1200),
  • Helston (1201),
  • Chesterfield (1204),
  • Stafford (1206) all the other liberties and free customs which any free borough in England has, saving in all things, as aforesaid, the liberty of the city of London.,
  • Yarmouth (1208) (Isle of Wight or Great???)
  • Okehampton (1194),
  • Ipswich (1200) :Wherefore we will and firmly order that the aforesaid burgesses shall have and hold all the aforesaid liberties and free customs well and peaceably as other burgesses of our free boroughs in England best or most freely had or have them, saving in all things to our citizens of London, their liberties and free customs,
  • Huntingdon (1205) That the aforesaid borough of Huntingdon and the burgesses remaining in it, shall have and hold the same liberties and free customs which our other free boroughs and free burgesses of England have,
  • (King's) Lynn, (1204) Wherefore we will and firmly order that the aforesaid town of Lynn be a free borough for ever, and have all the liberties and free customs which our free boroughs have in all things, well and peaceably freely quietly and completely fully and honourably as is aforesaid...all and the same liberties which the burgesses of Oxford have, because our Lord the King granted to us by his charter that we should choose a borough in England, whichever we willed, and that the same liberties which that borough has, our town of Lynn should also have, and we have chosen Oxford. And therefore we will that the same town be a free borough, and have the same liberties which the borough of Oxford has in all things,
  • Liverpool (1207) Know ye that we have granted to all our lieges who have taken burgages at Liverpool, that they shall have all the liberties and free customs in the town of Liverpool which any free borough on the sea has in our land. And so we order you that securely and in our peace you come thither to receive and inhabit your burgages.
So it would seem that a free borough / liber burgus was usually defined in terms of the freedom enjoyed by an existing community, but without defining what these freedoms were! Hence the "mass of undefined franchises".
Lozleader (talk) 17:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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Holderness

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Two dates for when Holderness was granted borough status, from the same site: 21 June 1977, from the 77-78 page currently cited, and 5 September 1977 from "Alteration of Status of Local Authorities 1975–1978" cited for other dates here. Peter James (talk) 00:17, 30 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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