Burgage: Difference between revisions

Burgage was the basis of the right to vote in many boroughs sending [[Member of Parliament|members]] to the [[unreformed House of Commons|House of Commons]] before 1832. In these boroughs the right to vote was attached to the occupation of particular burgage tenements. These burgages could be freely bought and sold, and the owner of the tenement was entitled to [[conveyancing|convey]] the right to vote for the duration of the election to another person, their ‘nominee’'nominee', who could then vote. The vote of each person entitled to the franchise was a matter of public record. Therefore the owner could monitor their nominees' votes. By purchasing the majority of the burgages one rich person could acquire the right to elect a Member of Parliament. Such burgage boroughs were called [[pocket borough]]s. Most of the burgage boroughs had become pocket boroughs in this way by the time of the [[Reform Act 1832|Great Reform Act 1832]]. The practice was abolished by the 1832 Act, which applied a uniform voting right to all boroughs.

In medieval England and Scotland and some parts of the [[Welsh Marches]] '''burgage plots''' or '''burgage tenements''' were [[inclosure|inclosed fields]] extending the confines of a town, established by the lord of the manor, as divisions of the 'open' manorial fields. The [[Burgess (word)|burgesses]] (equivalents of "burghers") to whom these tracts were allotted, as tenants of the enclosed lands, paid a cash rent instead of, as previously, feudal service. In 1207, for instance, Maurice Paynell, the Lord of the Manor of Leeds, granted a charter to '"his burgesses of Leeds'" to build a 'new town', and so created the first borough of Leeds, Briggate, a street running north from the River Aire.<ref>[http://www.leodis.org/discovery/default.asp Discovering Leeds]</ref>

The basic unit of measurement was the [[Pole (length)|perch]] which was {{convert|5.5 yards (5.03 |yd|m)}} and the plots can be identified today because they are in multiples of perches: at Cricklade most were 2 by 12 perches (10.1 by 60.4 m), while at Charmouth in Dorset, a charter of the year 1320 provided plots 4 perches wide and 20 perches long (about 20 by 100 m), giving a typical plot size of half an acre (0.2 hectare), held at an annual rent of 6[[penny|d]].<ref>[http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getfaq.php?id=216 Wiltshire County Council]</ref>