THE BURGESSES 177 



of the house-owners, most of whom were owners of estates in 

 the county ; and there is evidence to show that they owned 

 their town houses as appurtenances of their rural estates. 



The explanation of this fact, first given by Professor 

 Maitland, 1 is that the lords of these villages were bound under 

 the trinoda necessitous (the universal obligation to repair the 

 boroughs and the bridges, and to serve in the fyrd) to repair 

 the walls of their county town, and that in order to do so 

 they kept a house in that town and a man in that house, to 

 be on the spot to do what repairs were necessary. Domesday 

 Book states that there were in the city of Oxford certain 

 houses known as " mural mansions," whose duty it was to repair 

 the walls when necessary. All these mural mansions belonged 

 to landowners in the neighbourhood, and appear to be appur- 

 tenant to villages in Oxfordshire and Berkshire ; and so it is 

 argued that these mural mansions were houses kept by the 

 lords of these rural manors in Oxford, so that there should 

 always be residents to relieve them of their obligation to 

 repair the city walls. 



All boroughs, however, were not thus constituted. There 

 are some thirty boroughs situate on rural estates and assessed 

 with those estates. They did not generally contain houses 

 belonging to other manors : and at Steyning, one of such 

 " simple " boroughs, "the burgesses worked at the court as 

 the other villans, T. R. E." 2 



This explanation has been severely criticized by Miss 

 Bateson, who contends that the burgesses who are mentioned 

 in connection with the villages are "upland" burgesses, 

 persons living in villages, who, to obtain trading privileges, 

 enrolled themselves as members of borough communities, in 

 the same way as the Abbot of Buckfastleigh was enrolled as 

 a member of the Guild of Totnes in the year 1236? But in 

 spite of these criticisms, I must still maintain that the 



1 D. B. and B., 189. 2 D. B., I. 17 a 2. 



3 Gild Merchant, ii. 235. 



