"A YEAR AND A DAY" 299
who dwells in [the borough] for a year and a day, at all events if
he has become a burgess or a member of the merchant guild,
becomes free, or at least cannot be claimed by his Lord so long
as he remains within the borough."1
This guarded statement is necessary, for the actual position is
uncertain, and it may well be that for a considerable time it was
constantly changing. Not every city or borough was a chartered
town or royal demesne, and without such a status the town could
afford the serf but little protection. The widest claim is to be
found in the laws called Willelmi Articuli Retractati, where it is
stated, " If slaves (servi) have remained a year and a day without
being claimed, in our cities or in our walled boroughs or in our
castles, from that day they shall become free men and shall
remain for ever free from the yoke of slavery".2 These laws,
however, do not date in their present form from the time of the
Conqueror, although no doubt they are expanded from some
earlier enactments. As we now have them they appear to be
written after izoo,3 but before that date we have much evidence
which modifies their force. Glanvill, in a well-known passage,
says that the serf who dwells in a privileged town without
challenge for a year and a day, "so that he shall have been re-
ceived like a citizen into their common gild, he will be liberated
from serfdom by that very fact".4 It will be noted that it is not
mere residence, but reception in the gild that is the essence of this
case. And this insistence on something more than residence is
to be noticed in the charters which the towns were acquiring
from the twelfth century onward. Thus at Newcastle, the town
charter, which dates before 1135, insists that the serf (rtisticus)
must stay his year and a day, as a burgess (sicut burgen$is)\ or, as
another charter at Lincoln (1157) has it, "he is free if he dwells a
year and a day and pays the customs of the city". At Northamp-
ton, in 1190, the custom was shown to require the would-be
citizen to be resident and at hearth and home and lot and scot
with the citizens for a year and a day, and similar laws obtained
at Dunwich and Hereford in 1215. Furthermore, a careful ex-
1 Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. I, 648.
2 A. J. Robertson, Laws of Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I,
cap. 16.
8 Liebermann, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, in, 278,
4 Glanvill, op. cit. Bk. v, cap. 5.