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444 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July castle ; besides which, the latter was only beginning to rise when the lord of Cardiff and Tewkesbury was buried. Possessing the aforesaid grant, including the right to hold houses and lands at a money rent in lieu of customary service, with right to dispose of property by will without obligation to the lord, and the right to hold market and take toll, it is obvious that Burford became possessed of the usual machinery (though without asking for it), not only of a manorial borough, but of the means for attaining still greater and wider franchises, and perhaps a step towards future independence of manorial lords ; such as became enjoyed by Gloucester and Oxford, responsible, that is to say, to the Crown in chief, and paying a fee-farm rent thereto. Doubtless, had their grant resulted from serious aspirations and successful negotia- tions with their lord, things might have gone very much further with the good men of Burford. But, strange to say, in the history of this early, but limited, borough, at no period was there any conspiracy sworn together by the burgesses for the attainment of municipal independence. They probably very slowly realized the full value of what was given them, and they desired no more than the local defensive and administrative advantages which the several confirmations of the original grant of gild-merchant gave them. Burford experienced no friction with her overlords, such as did Cirencester ; withal she knew no sense of wrong done to her. Her citizens went quietly along their ways, exercising control of their markets and all other features of the given franchise, even developing in time a full corpora- tion, with alderman, steward, and fourteen burgesses, acting as town authority, holding borough courts, and awarding punishments. They used a beautiful mid-thirteenth-century common seal, and acquired more and more with prosperous years (especially through the wool-trade) both wealth and the true sense of corporate authority. Yet, imperceptibly, all this* time their sense of allegiance due to absentee manorial lords had been evaporating, and they were led into regarding themselves as a full- fledged corporate borough governing a completely enfranchised town. They even extended the privileges granted them by their Norman over- lord. Yet some successor of his might (but they did not realize it) wake up at any moment, and give a cruel jerk at the manorial string, and might further address them, not as they liked other people to do, as ' Men of Burford Town ', but as * Men, on my manor of Burford '. The author has well shown also how this their state of unapprehensiveness became further emphasized owing to the manor, in the days of Henry VII, passing into the hands of the Crown. For, thereafter, finding their local officials actually being appointed or confirmed by the Crown, they easily regarded Burford's relationship to it as similar to that of the neighbouring ancient boroughs of Oxford and Gloucester. Into this, however, they made no inquiry ; and meanwhile they took upon themselves to administer fresh and grave responsibilities, such as trusts of land and of tenements, with all their pertaining conveyances, not only those belonging to their gild, but those given to the church. Hence, when with the dissolution of the chantries and hospitals under Edward VI the usual confiscations took place here as elsewhere, it was with sweeping and dismaying effect, and it left the worthy burgesses comparatively little to administer. For most