An Investigation On The English Burgage Tenure In11-14th Centuries

Burgage Tenure is one special kind of land tenure from English medieval towns. As to be one of the most important and basic privileges, towns obtained it from their lords by granting charters or accepting towns’tradition and customs as a compromise to provide them economic profits in the wave of commercialisation for their abandon towns’ feudal incidents.Burgage Tenure was began from later Anglo-Saxon period, and impacted by the European feudalism and Norman element from the Norman Conquest in1066. After it, Burgage Tenure initiated a fusion between the Anglo-Saxon custom and Norman element, and eventually finished it at12th century, which made Burgage Tenure a considerable influential tenure in all the English society with its spread into almost all the urban world.Much more free than country land, urban land under Burgage Tenure was burdened with almost nothing but a sum of gable paid with currency. Feudal incidents could only be found in little towns, such as wardship, relief, heriot and marriage. Enjoyed the freedom in land trade, townspeople could buy and sale urban land without obstruction in many times, which could ignore the kin’s preemption for its unpopular in townspeople and the more and more commercial society. London was the peak of English medieval urbanization and the price of urban land, after which were several regional great cities, many county towns, and new created small towns.In fact, Burgage Tenure was a variation of feudal land tenure, came from the feudal lords’ unwilling concession to the development of the social production and commercialisation. It was belonged to the feudal medieval period, rather than beyond.