Burgage Tenure is the name of two different tenures of land, one in England, the other in Scotland. In England, it is a species of free Socage (q.v.) holding, and it prevails where the king or other person is lord of an ancient borough in which the tenements are held by a certain and determinate rent, and subject to a variety of customs, the principal and most remarkable of which is that called Borough English (q.v.). Among the other customs was one that the wife shall be endowed with all her husband's tenements, and not with the third part only, as at common law.
In Scotland, by this tenure is meant a peculiar sort of military holding affecting property in royal burghs, the sovereign being superior or overlord, and each individual proprietor or burgess holding direct of the crown, for the reddendo or service of Watching and Warding. This service is otherwise termed 'service of burgh used and wont,' and is now merely nominal. The proper vassal of the crown is the whole community; hence the tenure was not subject to the incidents of non-entry and relief, and the burgesses enjoyed peculiar facilities in the completion of titles by heirs and purchasers through the intervention of the magistrates. Since the conveyancing legislation of 1868 and 1874, however, there is not for practical purposes much difference between burghage and the ordinary feudal holdings in Scotland. At one time no widow's terce was due from burghage lands, but this was altered by the Conjugal Rights Act, 1861.