PRIVILEGES OF TOWNS 303
Here we may conveniently pause to examine the results of these
changes we have been discussing. When Higham Ferrers was
made a borough, the 92 burgesses of the new borough became
free men and a self-governing commonalty. They retained all
their lands and had in them the possibilities of a livelihood, but
in addition their charter gave them their own tithings, their own
three-weekly court for small pleas and transfer of burgage tene-
ments and a half-yearly view of frankpledge for their own men.
In short, they were completely their own masters, while around
them on all sides they saw others still subject to the manorial
lord's courts and services. So too in the New Boroughs esta-
blished by the King's command: the new citizens had the full
enjoyment of all the privileges given to them by their new
charter. At Kingston-on-Hull, for example, the inhabitants of
the newly created borough were to have all the liberties per-
taining to a free borough, with two markets a week and a yearly
fair. The burgesses had the right to make wills, to have their own
coroner, to plead in their own borough court only, to have the
return of royal writs, etc.1 Again when the burghers of New-
castle enlarged their borough boundaries so as to include the
former manor of Pandon, their charter explicitly stated that
"they should have in Pandon all the liberties and customs as in
Newcastle; and Newcastle and Pandon should be one borough".
Thus far, then, it is clear that any serfs fortunate enough to be
on the spot at the birth of boroughs such as these were in an
enviable condition as compared with that of their fathers. They
were free in the eyes of the law, masters of their own property
and holdings, and able to participate in all the communal
activities of their new town. In short, their opportunities were
what they made of them, and many might have cried " Bliss was
it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven".
When we turn to the serf who came into an already existing
town, we see that his condition was by no means so blissful; and,
unfortunately for him, it was to the existing towns that he and his
fellows fled for the most part. True by such flight and residence
within the town they acquired a seisin of liberty, and in due
time became free men—at least in the eyes of the law. But what
freedom had they in actual fact? Had they done much more than
1 Col. Pat. Rolls (1299), 475; and compare pp. 216, 296, 366.