296 THE ROAD TO FREEDOM
Mr W. Hudson was able to tell us that they are drawn from
more than 450 localities in Norfolk and Suffolk.1 The other side
of the picture is made clear enough by looking over the Court
Rolls of any manor situated near to a town: again and again men
are reported as being fugitives, and dwelling in the neighbouring
town; and, although order is given that they be brought back, the
town continued to shelter them, and generally their names drop
out of the Rolls after these ineffective commands have been
made for several years.2
From their side the burgesses frequently helped the unfree,
for once they were secure themselves, it was not long before
prosperity caused them to find their borough too small, and they
cast envious eyes on some manor whose fields were contiguous
to their own. A few examples will make this clear. In the year
1256 the men of Scarborough found themselves cramped, and
got a charter from the King allowing them "for the increase of
their borough", to absorb the King's own manor of Walles-
grave [Palsgrave] with all its appurtenances and 60 acres in the
fields of ScarboroughJ' .3 Now, although the men of Scarborough
absorbed this manor for their own ends, so far as the dwellers on
that manor were concerned they became, ipso facto, men of
Scarborough, and entitled to its privileges and rights. We find
similar things happening all over the country. The Abbot of
Burton-on-Trent founded the borough there before 1213,
granting burgess tenure to all who took burgages in the street
extending from the great bridge of Burton to the new street of
Horningclawe. By 1273 he was obliged to enfranchise another
part of the little town, and yet again, in 1286, he enlarged the
confines of the borough.4 In similar fashion the new lands and
burgages at Berry Pomeroy were added to the town of Bridge-
town Pomeroy by a confirmation and extension of the original
charter of I268.5 Lastly, let us examine the very instructive
proceedings at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Here the foundation charter
dates from the time of Henry I; but, by 1298, the town was ready
for expansion, and so it got a grant from the King of
all the lands in Pampadene [Pandon] in Byker, adjoining the said town
1 Norf. Arch, xn, 46. * Hales Rolls, passim and below, 308, 3°9-
Cal. Charter Rolls, in, 190. * Hist. MSS. Com. xv, part vii, i34-5«
5 Arch.Journ. vn, 432 ff.