Burgess

From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

Mawmsey, a chief representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing respectable people whose names were on his books.

The hostlers fly back, drawing off the cloths from their glossy loins, and away we go through the market-place and down the High Street, looking in at the first- floor windows, and seeing several worthy burgesses shaving thereat; while all the shopboys who are cleaning the windows, and housemaids who are doing the steps, stop and look pleased as we rattle past, as if we were a part of their legitimate morning's amusement.

The burgesses of Aberdeen were the first civic body to administrate the royal burgh, founded by David I and confirmed by his grandson, William the Lion, in 1178.

In 1764, Edmund Randolph's Uncle Peyton, a member of the House of Burgesses, chaired the committee that drafted the original petition of protest to the proposed Stamp Act.