1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 445 of the alienated lands now passed into the hands of private purchasers having no ties with Burford. Though the administration of their courts did not become impaired by this event, that duty in their eyes seems to have been of no whit more importance than the policy to which they now applied every effort, namely, that of recovering the lost charity lands. They continued throughout the sixteenth century to obtain fresh letters patent confirming their franchises, yet did not attempt to expand the . rudimentary charters of Henry II, or in any way to give true validity to their corporate constitution. Not a suspicion crossed their minds, even in 1605, that in calling themselves ' the Prynce's chief e officers ' the burgesses (still misled by the Crown tenure of the manor) were supposing themselves to be ' as independent of any intermediate lordship as a fully- chartered borough held at fee-farm from the Crown '. For they had encroached more and more upon his manorial rights as they had identified themselves less and less with the invisible lord. In consequence, the profits and fines, the tolls, and other sources of burghal profit, had found their way freely into the ' common box They had completely forgotten their purely manorial status. In 1617 the executors of Sir John Fortescue, the last absentee lord of the manor, sold both town and manor to Sir Lawrence Tanfield, chief baron of the exchequer. He had already long resided on the spot, and now became the first owner, probably, who had so resided there since Alberic, earl of Northumberland. With which party lay the early outbreak of differences is not recorded, but within two years of his purchase of the lordship of both town and manor they were at loggerheads. The attorney-general, Sir Henry Yelverton, lodged an information resulting in a writ of Quo Warranto, calling upon six of the burgesses of Burford to show by what right they had usurped certain liberties and privileges to which they were not entitled. It contained thirteen counts which discover the cause of quarrel to have been quite unavoidable. Curiously enough, the author, after going through them, and viewing all the privileges alienated by the Crown to the new lord, openly admits that Tanfield could not be blamed for bringing to question the burgesses' appropriations. ' Some of the impeached privileges were not defended at all by them.' Even the right to imprison for breaches of the by-laws was abandoned. The burgesses, of course, claimed that they had exercised their variously assumed rights time out of mind, but it at once became clear that they had had no charter from the Crown granting them the fee-farm of the town ; and all that they could point to was merely what they had obtained as the men of the lord of the manor of Burford and not as his privileged substitutes paying for the same to the Crown. The borough had, in fact, never acquired independence of its owners. The court of chancery of King James abolished everything but the corporation and the titles of alderman and burgesses. The fact that in the troubles of the previous Tudor period they had taken under their trust and authority certain of the charity lands now kept the corporation together ; for they had likewise repurchased some of these lands from the former grantees of the Crown. The burgesses of Burford actually survived until 1861, when they were dissolved by act of parliament.
