Iron, tin,
lead, salt, and even coal were providing increasing numbers of
people with a livelihood.
Many new boroughs were founded as grants of market rights by the
king grew in number. These grants implied the advantage of the
King's protection. In fact, one flooded town was replaced with a
new town planned with square blocks. It was the charter which
distinguished the borough community from the other communities
existing in the country. It invested each borough with a distinct
character. The privileges which the charter conferred were
different in different places. It might give trading privileges:
freedom from toll, a guild merchant, a right to hold a fair. It
might give jurisdictional privileges: a right to hold court with
greater or less franchises. It might give governmental privileges:
freedom from the burden of attending the hundred and county
courts, the return of writs, which meant the right to exclude the
royal officials, the right to take the profits of the borough,
paying for them a fixed sum to the Crown or other lord of the
borough, the right to elect their own officials rather than them
being appointed by the king or a lord, and the right to provide
for the government of the borough. It might give tenurial
privileges: the power to make a will of lands, or freedom from the
right of a lord to control his tenants' marriages. It might give
procedural privileges: trial by combat is excluded, and trial by
compurgation is secured and regulated.
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