Burgh

A burgh /ˈbʌrə/ was an autonomous municipal corporation in Scotland and Northern England, 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 reorganization in 1975 the title of 'royal burgh' remains in use in many towns, but now has little more than ceremonial value. A burgh /ˈbʌrə/ was an autonomous municipal corporation in Scotland and Northern England, 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 reorganization in 1975 the title of 'royal burgh' remains in use in many towns, but now has little more than ceremonial value. The first burgh was Berwick. By 1130, David I (r. 1124–53) had established other burghs including Edinburgh, Stirling, Dunfermline, Haddington, Perth, Dumfries, Jedburgh, Montrose and Lanark. Most of the burghs granted charters in his reign probably already existed as settlements. Charters were copied almost verbatim from those used in England, and early burgesses usually invited English and Flemish settlers. They were able to impose tolls and fines on traders within a region outside their settlements. Most of the early burghs were on the east coast, and among them were the largest and wealthiest, including Aberdeen, Berwick, Perth and Edinburgh, whose growth was facilitated by trade with other North Sea ports on the continent, in particular in the Low Countries, as well as ports on the Baltic Sea. In the south-west, Glasgow, Ayr and Kirkcudbright were aided by the less profitable sea trade with Ireland and to a lesser extent France and Spain. Burghs were typically settlements under the protection of a castle and usually had a market place, with a widened high street or junction, marked by a mercat cross, beside houses for the burgesses and other inhabitants. The founding of 16 royal burghs can be traced to the reign of David I (1124–53) and there is evidence of 55 burghs by 1296. In addition to the major royal burghs, the late Middle Ages saw the proliferation of baronial and ecclesiastical burghs, with 51 created between 1450 and 1516. Most of these were much smaller than their royal counterparts. Excluded from foreign trade, they acted mainly as local markets and centres of craftsmanship. Burghs were centres of basic crafts, including the manufacture of shoes, clothes, dishes, pots, joinery, bread and ale, which would normally be sold to 'indwellers' and 'outdwellers' on market days. In general, burghs carried out far more local trading with their hinterlands, on which they relied for food and raw materials, than trading nationally or abroad. Burghs had rights to representation in the Parliament of Scotland. Under the Acts of Union of 1707 many became parliamentary burghs, represented in the Parliament of Great Britain. Under the Reform Acts of 1832, 32 years after the merger of the Parliament of Great Britain into the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the boundaries of burghs for parliamentary elections ceased to be necessarily their boundaries for other purposes.