TOWN AND VILLAGE 295
the seigneurial boroughs) have a similar history behind them, and
are therefore of great importance to our study of the methods by
which the villein won his freedom. When we read, for example,
that the Knutsford burgages were measured in selions and ridges,
do we not at once see the little borough arising from the midst
of an agricultural community?1 and when we read that the
burgesses of Leicester were freed from their reaping services, or
their fellows of Lancaster from their ploughing and other servile
customs, it is clear enough that the village community has but
recently become the town community.2
The serf, then, always had the chance that his lord, for one
reason or another, might enfranchise the village, and make it a
borough. But, in the nature of things, this chance was slight, and
even slighter than may appear at first sight, since a large number
of medieval boroughs only kept their municipal status for a time,
and then relapsed again into villages as conditions changed.3 But
it is not only the actual borough itself we have to consider, for its
influence was not confined within its walls. First, as we have
seen, the presence of this highly privileged locality was both an
attraction to fugitive and restless serfs, and also an exemplar to
them of privileges to be won. And even more important was its
effect on the immediately surrounding countryside. The common
fields of the town marched side by side with those of innumerable
surrounding manors. How could the manorial peasant be pre-
vented from grumbling when he found himself with innu-
merable burdens, while his neighbour of the next field went free?
How often must he have yielded to the temptation to pass across
the narrow strip which would give him the safe shelter, and oft-
times the welcome, of the town? The records of our towns show
clearly enough how they were constantly receiving an influx of
"foreigners". At Norwich, for example, from an examination
of the list of citizens at the end of the thirteenth century,
1 Ballard, op. cit. n, 52.
2 Ibid, i, 94,95. We might also note the importance attached in the charters
to the abolition of merchet and suit of mill or oven.
8 For instance Prof. Tait tells us that " of the 23 boroughs created in the
poor and backward county of Lancaster between 1066 and 1372, with
burgesses ranging in number from six up to one hundred and fifty or so, only
four retained an established borough status at the end of the Middle Ages ".
Proc. Brit. Acad. vol. x. So also at Halesowen, where the borough never
appears to have enjoyed any vitality. V.C.H. Wore, m,