Each borough had a district delineated on the map by the king around it in which it was illegal to buy or sell. Smithers, so you didn't have to do that in your own little village. You could take that up to the borough and leave your tire time to do more with your land and so on. Sometimes i tell my students that burgesses are time share slaves. They do the kind of specialist work that a slave might do on a farm, but they're now co owned by everybody, potentially.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of David I of Scotland (c1084-1153) on his kingdom and on neighbouring lands. The youngest son of Malcolm III, he was raised in exile in the Anglo-Norman court and became Earl of Huntingdon and Prince of Cumbria before claiming the throne in 1124. He introduced elements of what he had learned in England and, in the next decades, his kingdom saw new burghs, new monasteries, new ways of governing and the arrival of some very influential families, earning him the reputation of The Perfect King.
With
Richard Oram
Professor of Medieval and Environmental History at the University of Stirling
Alice Taylor
Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London
And
Alex Woolf
Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews
Producer: Simon Tillotson