THE NEW BOROUGHS 297
of Newcastle, with all the rents and services of all the tenants there,
.. .to be held by the said burgesses and good men of Newcastle and
their heirs from the King for the same sums, which they render to the
King from the town of Newcastle, with all the appurtenances, to be
united with and included in the said town for the bettering and se-
curing thereof. And the said burgesses shall have in Pampadene a free
borough as in Newcastle; and the said lands and tenements shall be
free burgages and held in free burgage; and they shall have in Pampa-
dene all the liberties and customs as in Newcastle, and Newcastle and
Pampadene shall be one borough.1
As an outward and visible sign of this unity, when the citizens
built their new wall a few years later, it made a considerable
detour in order to enclose the newly enfranchised portion.2
Henceforth the sometime rustics could sleep safely: all danger of
their reverting to their former servile status was past.
It was not only the enfranchisement of townships and the
absorption of the neighbouring manors that offered oppor-
tunities to the serf. For some time, especially during the reign
of Edward I, there was the constantly recurring opportunity
offered by the creation of entirely new towns. Hitherto we have
seen the serfs of a certain village transformed into burgesses by
the formation of a borough from the village; yet, important as
this was in many ways, its initial advantage was obviously
limited to those happy few who had the fortune to reside there
at that moment. With new boroughs it was different. Here a
town was deliberately created on a spot where, hitherto, nothing
but waste, or, at the most, a few wretched huts had stood. It was,
therefore, essential to bring settlers to such places, and so all
were welcomed. The King (for they are mainly royal creations)
offered land and burgage rights to every one who would come
and take up residence in the new borough. Thus, in 1286, the
King appointed two men
to lay out, with sufficient streets and lanes, and adequate sites for a
market and church, and plots for merchants and others, a new town
with a harbour in a place called Gotowre-super-mare [co. Dorset]...
which was formerly of R. de Muchgros, and contiguous to the said
place, the lands and tenements of the which said town'the King is
1 Col. Close Rolkt n, 474.
* R. Welford, History of Newcastle, I, x.