burgess

plural burgesses

1. An inhabitant of a borough with full rights; a citizen.

   In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass. In this way all respectable burgesses, down to fifty years ago, spent their evenings.

   1892, Walter Besant, chapter III, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC

   1 more example

   If any burgess be appealed of a plea whereon wager of battle may issue by a villein or outdweller , let him defend himself by oath, that is to say by the 36 men, unless he is challenged in respect of a crime that the law requires him to defend by battle, in no case ought a burgess to fight against a villein if he have challenged him unless before the dispute he shall have quitted the burgage.

   1907, Antiquities of Sunderland and Its Vicinity - Volumes 5-7, page 73

2. historicalA town magistrate.
3. UKhistoricalA representative of a borough in the Parliament.
4. UShistoricalA member of the House of Burgesses, a legislative body in colonial America, established by the Virginia Company to provide civil rule in the colonies.
5. SaskatchewanA person who pays municipal taxes, a ratepayer.

1. A surname transferred from the common noun.
2. A number of places in the United States:
   1. A township in Bond County, Illinois.
   2. An unincorporated community in Hayes Township, Charlevoix County, Michigan.
   3. A village in Barton County, Missouri.
   4. An unincorporated community in Horry County, South Carolina.
   5. An unincorporated community in Northumberland County, Virginia.