32 Jtwigiisft and Continental Backgrounds
centres., especially where trading was carried on, it seems
iicely that special courts might grow and the institutional
distinction from the ordinary townships be established.
Populations which gathered about the residences of lay
or ecclesiastical lords were drawn by the industrial needs
of such establishments. Such needs were varied. The
labourers and craftsmen who met them came often from
the servile or semi-servile classes, and the rude towns
which they made were regarded as belonging to the lords.
Such industrial groups might also form upon the king's
extensive lands, and, if they developed or acquired the
borough qualities, add to the number of boroughs that
he already had. At any point in the later Anglo-Saxon
period, there can be found a group of boroughs clearly
recognised as such, the old boroughs. These may have
originated in any of the ways mentioned. There can also
be found communities in all stages of progress towards
boroughs, and, in the case of some of them, it is impossible
to conclude whether or not they may be properly con-
sidered boroughs. This was still the case at the Norman
Conquest. And by that time, forces which had been in-
creasing the powers of the great landholders and depressing
the status of the middle-class freemen were more and more
bringing all boroughs under lords, who enjoyed financial
and judicial privileges in them.
The tenure by which real estate was held in the bor-
oughs was known as burgage and was based upon a money
rent. It was a heritable tenure and much like free
socage, which latter was the most important of a group of
Anglo-Saxon free, non-noble tenures.1 Burgage has been
described as a sort of town socage. How a tenure purely
at a money rent arose at such an early time is an interest-
ing but obscure matter. Probably it was originally a
commutation of some earlier and more uncertain service,2
1 The idea at the "root of the term socage Is that of seeking or follow-
ing; the socagers, sokemanni, are bound to seek, follow, attend the court
of the lord." Maitland, C. H. £., p. 48. See below, p. 44 and note I,
and also on land tenure after the Conquest, pp. 94-96, 101.
2 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 198-200,