burgage

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Burgage.

Burgage is a medieval land term used in England and Scotland, well established by the 13th century. A burgage was a town ("borough") rental property (to use modern terms), owned by a king or lord. The property ("burgage tenement") usually, and distinctly, consisted of a house on a long and narrow plot of land, with the narrow end facing the street. Rental payment ("tenure") was usually in the form of money, but each "burgage tenure" arrangement was unique, and could include services. As populations grew, "burgage plots" could be split into smaller additional units. Burgage tenures were usually monetary based, in contrast to rural tenures which were usually services based. In Saxon times the rent was called a landgable or hawgable.

Burgage was used as the basis of the franchise in many boroughs sending members to the Unreformed House of Commons before 1832. In these boroughs the right to vote was attached to the occupation of particular burgage tenements. Since these could be freely bought and sold, and since the owner of the tenement was perfectly entitled to convey it for the election period to a reliable nominee, who could then vote, it was possible to purchase the majority of the burgages and thereby the absolute power to nominate the members of Parliament. Most of the burgage boroughs became pocket boroughs in this way. The practice was abolished by the Great Reform Act 1832 which applied a uniform franchise to all boroughs.

In medieval England and Scotland, and some parts of the Welsh Marches, burgage plots or burgage tenements were inclosed fields extending the confines of a medieval town, established by the lord of the manor, as divisions of the 'open' manorial fields. The burgesses (equivalents of "burghers") to whom these tracts were allotted, as tenants of the enclosed lands, paid a cash rent instead of, as previously, occupying land by virtue of having given feudal service. In 1207, for instance, Maurice Paynell, the Lord of the Manor of Leeds, granted a charter to 'his burgesses of Leeds' to build a 'new town', and so created the first borough of Leeds, Briggate, a street running north from the River Aire.^[1]

These burgesses had to be freemen: those who were entitled to practise a trade within the town and to participate in electing members of the town’s ruling council.

In the very earliest chartered foundations, predating the Norman Conquest, the burgage plots were simply the ploughland strips of pre-existing agrarian settlements: in towns like Burford and Chipping Campden in Oxford or Cricklade in Wiltshire, the property on the road frontage extends in a very long garden plot behind the dwelling even today, as English property lines have remained very stable.

The basic unit of measurement was the perch which was 5.5 yards (5 m) and the plots can be identified today because they are in multiples of perches: at Cricklade most were 2 by 12 perches (10 by 60 m), while at Charmouth in Dorset, a charter of 1320 provided plots 4 by 20 perches long (20 by 100 m), giving a typical plot size of half an acre (2,000 m²), held at an annual rent of 6d.^[2]

See also

• Burgess (word)
• History of English land law

References

• Medieval English Towns - Glossary
• The Local Historian's Encyclopedia by John Richardson - ISBN 0-9503656-7-X

Further reading

• Hemmeon, Morley de Wolf (2004-07-09). Burgage Tenure in Mediaeval England. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1402140525. 

External links

• Wiltshire County Council: Burgage plots
• Discovering Leeds: Briggate