A burgess was the holder of a certain status in an English or Scottish borough in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, designating someone of the burgher class. It originally meant a freeman of a borough or burgh, but later came to be used mostly for office-holders in a town or one of its representatives in the House of Commons.
In England, burgess meant an elected or unelected official of a borough, or the representative of one in the House of Commons of England. [1] This use of the word burgess has since disappeared. Burgesses as freemen had the sole right to vote in municipal or parliamentary elections. However, in Britain and Ireland these special privileges were removed by the Reform Act 1832. [2]
Burgesses were originally freeman inhabitants of a city in which they owned land and who contributed to the running of the town and its taxation. The title of burgess was later restricted to merchants and craftsmen, so that only burgesses could enjoy the privileges of trading or practising a craft in the city through belonging to a guild (by holding a guild ticket) or were able to own companies trading in their guild's craft. [3] One example are the Burgesses of Edinburgh.
The burgesses' ancient exclusive trading rights through their Guilds were abolished in 1846. Thereafter a burgess became a title that gave social standing to the office and usually carried with it a role which involved charitable activities of their guild or livery company, as it does today. [4]
The term was also used in some of the Thirteen Colonies. In the Colony of Virginia, a "burgess" was a member of the legislative body, which was termed the "House of Burgesses". In Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the Burgess, or Chief Burgess, was the executive of many colonial-era municipalities until the turn of the 20th century, and persists in some places as the highest ranking magistrate of a municipality. [1]
The word was derived in Middle English and Middle Scots from the Old French word burgeis, simply meaning "an inhabitant of a town" (cf. burgeis or burges respectively). The Old French word burgeis is derived from bourg, meaning a market town or medieval village, itself derived from Late Latin burgus, meaning "fortress" [5] or "wall". In effect, the reference was to the north-west European medieval and renaissance merchant class which tended to set up their storefronts along the outside of the city wall, where traffic through the gates was an advantage and safety in event of an attack was easily accessible. The right to seek shelter within a burg was known as the right of burgess. [6]
The term was close in meaning to the Germanic term burgher , a formally defined class in medieval German cities (Middle Dutch burgher, Dutch burger and German Bürger). It is also linguistically close to the French term bourgeois , which evolved from burgeis.
The original version of the well-known English folk song "Greensleeves" includes the following:
Thy purse and eke thy gay guilt knives,
thy pincase gallant to the eye:
No better wore the Burgesse wives,
and yet thou wouldst not love me.
This clearly implies that at the time when it was composed (late 16th to early 17th century) a burgess was proverbial as being able to provide his wife with beautiful and expensive clothes.
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
A guild is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular territory. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradespeople belonging to a professional association. They sometimes depended on grants of letters patent from a monarch or other ruler to enforce the flow of trade to their self-employed members, and to retain ownership of tools and the supply of materials, but most were regulated by the local government. Guild members found guilty of cheating the public would be fined or banned from the guild. A lasting legacy of traditional guilds are the guildhalls constructed and used as guild meeting-places.
The bourgeoisie are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, as well as their access to and control of cultural, social, and financial capital.
A burgh is an autonomous municipal corporation in Scotland, usually a city, town, or toun in Scots. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United Kingdom. Following local government reorganisation in 1975, the title of "royal burgh" remains in use in many towns, but now has little more than ceremonial value.
Burgher may refer to:
A huckster is anyone who sells something or serves biased interests, using pushy or showy tactics. Historically, it meant any type of peddler or vendor, but over time it has assumed pejorative connotations.
Town privileges or borough rights were important features of European towns during most of the second millennium. The city law customary in Central Europe probably dates back to Italian models, which in turn were oriented towards the traditions of the self-administration of Roman cities.
Patricianship, the quality of belonging to a patriciate, began in the ancient world, where cities such as Ancient Rome had a social class of patrician families, whose members were initially the only people allowed to exercise many political functions. In the rise of European towns in the 12th and 13th centuries, the patriciate, a limited group of families with a special constitutional position, in Henri Pirenne's view, was the motive force. In 19th century Central Europe, the term had become synonymous with the upper Bourgeoisie and cannot be interchanged with the medieval patriciate in Central Europe. In the maritime republics of the Italian Peninsula as well as in German-speaking parts of Europe, the patricians were as a matter of fact the ruling body of the medieval town. Particularly in Italy, they were part of the nobility.
A Meistersinger was a member of a German guild for lyric poetry, composition and unaccompanied art song of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. The Meistersingers were drawn from middle class males for the most part.
Burgher people, also known simply as Burghers, are a small Eurasian ethnic group in Sri Lanka descended from Portuguese, Dutch, British and other Europeans who settled in Ceylon. The Portuguese and Dutch had held some of the maritime provinces of the island for centuries before the advent of the British Empire. Burgher people are often referred to as belonging to one of two sub-groups, either Dutch Burghers or Portuguese Burghers, though both are of mixed descent.
The Peasant War in Germany by Friedrich Engels is a short account of the early-16th-century uprisings known as the German Peasants' War (1524–1525). It was written by Engels in London during the summer of 1850, following the revolutionary uprisings of 1848–1849, to which it frequently refers in a comparative fashion. "Three centuries have flown by since then," he writes, "and many a thing has changed; still the peasant war is not as far removed from our present-day struggles as it would seem, and the opponents we have to encounter remain essentially the same."
Uradel is a genealogical term introduced in late 18th-century Germany to distinguish those families whose noble rank can be traced to the 14th century or earlier. The word stands opposed to Briefadel, a term used for titles of nobility created in the early modern period or modern history by letters patent. Since the earliest known such letters were issued in the 14th century, those knightly families in northern European nobility whose noble rank predates these are designated Uradel.
Colchester is a historic former town [now city] located in Essex, England. It served as the first capital of the United Kingdom and is the oldest recorded town in Britain. It was raided by the Vikings during the 9th and 10th centuries. It also served as an essential location for the medieval cloth trade.
An ancient borough was a historic unit of lower-tier local government in England and Wales. The ancient boroughs covered only important towns and were established by charters granted at different times by the monarchy. Their history is largely concerned with the origin of such towns and how they gained the right of self-government. Ancient boroughs were reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which introduced directly elected corporations and allowed the incorporation of new industrial towns. Municipal boroughs ceased to be used for the purposes of local government in 1974, with borough status retained as an honorific title granted to some post-1974 local government districts by the Crown.
Burgher arms or bourgeois arms are coats of arms borne by persons of the burgher social class of Europe since the Middle Ages. By definition, however, the term is alien to British heraldry, which follows other rules.
"The Taill of the Uponlandis Mous and the Burges Mous", also known as "The Twa Mice," is a Middle Scots adaptation of Aesop's Fable The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse by the Scottish poet Robert Henryson. Written around the 1480s, it is the second poem in Henryson's collection called The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian.
Grand Burgher [male] or Grand Burgheress [female] is a specific conferred or inherited title of medieval German origin and legally defined preeminent status granting exclusive constitutional privileges and legal rights. Grand Burghers were magnates and subordinate only to the Emperor, independent of feudalism and territorial nobility or lords paramount.
The Incorporated Trades of Edinburgh are the trade and craft bodies of the City of Edinburgh, Scotland, in much the same way as the Livery companies are in The City of London, but on a much smaller scale. The Incorporations are not "guilds", that term being properly reserved in Scotland for the merchant bodies in the various burghs. The Incorporations have never referred to themselves as guilds; indeed they came into existence, mostly in the latter part of the fifteenth century, in order to counter the growing power of the merchant guild, known as the Royal Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh.
Burgher was a rank or title of a privileged citizen of a medieval to early modern European town. Burghers formed the pool from which city officials could be drawn, and their immediate families that formed the social class of the medieval bourgeoisie.
In Brussels, as in most European cities, one needed the capacity of bourgeois to exercise political rights but also to practice a trade, which in Brussels meant to be a member of the guilds or of the Seven Noble Houses.
burgess-rights.
The dictionary definition of burgess at Wiktionary