royal revenue, and, although frequently leased or feued out for a fixed duty, were on the accession of James I. annexed to the crown as an alimentary fund. Burgh customs still stand in the peculiar position of being neither adjudgeable nor arrestable; they are therefore bad security. The early charters contain the usual privileges of holding a market, of exemption from toll or tribute, and that distraint will be allowed only for the burgess’s own debts. There was also the usual strife between the gildry and the craftsmen, who were generally prohibited from trading, and of whom dyers, fleshers and shoemakers were forbidden to enter the gildry. Deacons, wardens and visitors were appointed by the crafts, and the rate of wages was fixed by the magistrates. The crafts in Scotland were frequently incorporated, not by royal charter, but, as in the case of the cordiners of Edinburgh, by seals of cause from the corporation. The trade history of the free burghs is very important. Thus in 1466 the privilege of importing and exporting merchandise was confined to freemen, burgesses and their factors. Ships were directed to trade to the king’s free burghs, there to pay the customs, and to receive their cocquets or custom-house seals; and in 1503 persons dwelling outside burghs were forbidden to “use any merchandise,” or to sell wine or staple goods. An act of 1633, erroneously called a Ratification of the privileges of burghs, extended these privileges of buying and selling to retail as well as wholesale trade, but restricted their enjoyment to royal burghs. Accordingly, in 1672, a general declaratory act was passed confirming to the freemen in royal burghs the wholesale trade in wine, wax, silk, dyeing materials, &c., permitting generally to all persons the export of native raw material, specially permitting the burgesses of barony and regality to export their own manufactures, and such goods as they may buy in “markets,” and to import against these consignments certain materials for tillage, building, or for use in their own manufactures, with a general permission to retail all commodities. This extraordinary system was again changed in 1690 by an act which declared that freemen of royal burghs should have the sole right of importing everything by sea or land except bestial, and also of exporting by sea everything which was not native raw material, which might be freely exported by land. The gentry were always allowed to import for their personal consumption and to export an equal quantity of commodities. The act mentions that the royal burghs as an estate of the kingdom contributed one-sixth part of all public impositions, and were obliged to build and maintain prison-houses. Some of these trade privileges were not abolished till 1846.
In the north of Scotland there was an association of free burghs called the Hanse or Ansus; and the lord chamberlain, by his Iter, or circuit of visitation, maintained a common standard of right and duties in all burghs, and examined the state of the “common good,” the accounts of which in 1535 were appointed to be laid before the auditors in exchequer. The chamberlain latterly presided in the Curia Quatuor Burgorum (Edinburgh, Berwick, Stirling, Roxburgh), which not only made regulations in trade, but decided questions of private right (e.g. succession), according to the varying customs of burghs. This court frequently met at Haddington; in 1454 it was fixed at Edinburgh. The more modern convention of royal burghs (which appeared as a judicial persona in the Court of Session so late as 1839) probably dates from the act of James III. (1487, c. 111), which appointed the commissioners of burghs, both north and south, to meet yearly at Inverkeithing “to treat of the welfare of merchandise, the good rule and statutes for the common profit of burghs, and to provide for remeid upon the skaith and injuries sustained within the burghs.” Among the more important functions of this body (on whose decrees at one time summary diligence proceeded) were the prohibition of undue exactions within burghs, the revisal of the “set” or mode of municipal election, and the pro rata division among the burghs of the parliamentary subsidy required from the third estate. The reform of the municipalities, and the complete representation of the mercantile interests in the united parliament, deprived this body of any importance.
Burghs of regality and of barony held in vassalage of some great lordship, lay or ecclesiastical, but were always in theory or in practice created by crown grant. They received jurisdiction in civil and criminal matters, generally cumulative with that of the baron or the lord of regality, who in some cases obtained the right of nominating magistrates. Powers to hold markets and to levy customs were likewise given to these burghs.
The Scottish burghs emerged slowly into political importance. In 1295 the procurators of six burghs ratified the agreement for the marriage of Edward Baliol; and in 1326 they were recognized as a third estate, granting a tenth penny on all rents for the king’s life, if he should apply it for the public good. The commissioners of burghs received from the exchequer their costages or expenses of attending parliament. The burghs were represented in the judicial committee, and in the committee on articles appointed during the reign of James V. After the Reformation, in spite of the annexation of kirk lands to the crown, and the increased burdens laid on temporal lands, the proportion of general taxation borne by the burghs (viz. 1s. 6d.) was expressly preserved by act 1587, c. 112. The number of commissioners, of course, fluctuated from time to time. Cromwell assigned ten members to the Scottish burghs in the second parliament of Three Nations (1654). The general practice until 1619 had been, apparently, that each burgh should send two members. In that year (by an arrangement with the convention of burghs) certain groups of burghs returned one member, Edinburgh returning two. Under art. 22 of the treaty of Union the number of members for royal burghs was fixed at fifteen, who were elected in Edinburgh by the magistrates and town council, and in the groups of burghs by delegates chosen ad hoc. (W. C. S.)
See C. Gross, Bibliography of British Municipal History (1897), which contains all needful references up to that date; F. W. Maitland, Township and Borough (1898); A. Ballard, Domesday Boroughs (1904); M. Bateson, Borough Customs (1904–1906); S. and B. Webb, English Local Government (3 vols., 1906–1908). For the character of the modern Scottish burgh see Mabel Atkinson, Local Government in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1904), where other works are mentioned.
BOROUGHBRIDGE, a market town in the Ripon parliamentary
division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England; 22 m. N.W.
of York on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. (1901)
830. It lies in the central plain of Yorkshire, on the river Ure
near its confluence with the Swale. It is in the parish of
Aldborough, the village of that name (q.v.), celebrated for
its Roman remains, lying a mile south-east.
About half a mile to the west of Boroughbridge there are three upright stones called the Devil’s Arrows, which are of uncertain origin but probably of the Celtic period. The manor of Boroughbridge, then called Burc, was held by Edward the Confessor and passed to William the Conqueror, but suffered so much from the ravages of his soldiers that by 1086 it had decreased in value from £10 to 55 s. When the site of the Great North Road was altered, towards the end of the 11th century, a bridge was built across the Ure, about half a mile above the Roman bridge at Aldborough, and called Burgh bridge or Ponteburgem. This caused a village to spring up, and it afterwards increased so much as to become a market town. In 1229 Boroughbridge, as part of the manor of Aldborough, was granted to Hubert de Burgh, but was forfeited a few years later by his son who fought against the king at Evesham. It then remained a royal manor until Charles I. granted it to several citizens of London, from whom it passed through numerous hands to the present owner. The history of Boroughbridge during the early 14th century centres round the war with Scotland, and culminates with the battle fought there in 1321. When in 1317 the Scots invaded England, they penetrated as far south as Boroughbridge and burnt the town. Boroughbridge was evidently a borough by prescription, and as such was called upon to return two members to parliament in 1299. It was not represented again until 1553, when the privilege was revived. The town was finally disfranchised in 1832. In 1504 the bailiff and inhabitants of Boroughbridge received a grant of two fairs, and Charles II. in 1670 created three new fairs in the borough, on the 12th of June, the 5th of August and the 12th of October, and leased them to Francis Calvert and Thomas Wilkinson for ninety-nine years.
BOROUGH ENGLISH, a custom prevailing in certain ancient English boroughs, and in districts attached to them (where the lands are held in socage), and also in certain copyhold manors (chiefly in Surrey, Middlesex, Suffolk and Sussex), by which in general lands descend to the youngest son, to the exclusion of all
