Crossword clues for burgher
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Burgher \Burgh"er\, n. [From burgh; akin to D. burger, G. b["u]rger, Dan. borger, Sw. borgare. See Burgh.]
A freeman of a burgh or borough, entitled to enjoy the privileges of the place; any inhabitant of a borough.
-
(Eccl. Hist.) A member of that party, among the Scotch seceders, which asserted the lawfulness of the burgess oath (in which burgesses profess ``the true religion professed within the realm''), the opposite party being called antiburghers.
Note: These parties arose among the Presbyterians of Scotland, in 1747, and in 1820 reunited under the name of the ``United Associate Synod of the Secession Church.''
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1560s, "freeman of a burgh," from Middle Dutch burgher or German Bürger, from Middle High German burger, from Old High German burgari "inhabitant of a fortress," from burg "fortress, citadel" (see borough). Burgh, as a native variant of borough, persists in Scottish English (as in Edinburgh).
Wiktionary
n. A citizen of a borough or town, especially one belonging to the middle class.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Burgher may refer to:
- Burgher, a citizen of a borough or town, especially one belonging to the middle class
- Burgher, a resident of a burgh in northern Britain
- Burgher, a social class in medieval European cities from which city officials could be drawn; see Medieval bourgeoisie
- Burgher (Boer republics), an enfranchised citizen of the South African Republic or the Orange Free State
- Burgher (Church history), a member of the United Secession Church who subscribed to the Burgher Oath
- Burgher people, an ethnic group that formed during the colonization of Sri Lanka
- Grand Burgher, a historical German title
In the Scottish church of the 18th and 19th centuries, a burgher was a member of that party amongst the seceders which asserted the lawfulness of the burgess oath.
The burgess oath was that oath a town burgess was required to swear on taking office. The secession church in Scotland split in 1747 into the Burghers and the Anti-Burghers over the lawfulness of the forms of the oath then current in Scotland, the contentious clause being that in which the burgess professed the true religion professed within the realm. According to Dale Jorgenson, "...The Patronage Act, enacted under the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14), gave lay patrons the right to present ministers to parishes. This act of patronage was an affront to classic Presbyterianism, and resulted in a division between Burghers who accepted the Burghers' Oath and its consequent patronage, and the Anti-Burghers who would not accept the oath."
Burghers were "citizen-soldiers" who, between the ages of 16 and 60, were obliged to serve without pay in the republic's commandos, providing their own horse and rifle, 30 rounds of ammunition and their own rations for the first ten days. Most of them were Boers. Following the discovery of diamonds and gold in the Boer Republics and their environs in the 1870s and 1880s, white immigrants of mostly British stock began moving to the region in large numbers. The Boers referred to these people as uitlanders (out-landers). The uitlanders demanded full burgher rights in the Transvaal, but the local government under President Paul Kruger was unwilling to grant these, surmising that the sheer number of uitlanders might imperil the republic's independence. The uitlander problem and the associated tensions between the South African Republic and Britain led to the Jameson Raid of 1895–96 and ultimately the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. Following the British victory in the latter and the Treaty of Vereeniging, the Free State and the Transvaal were annexed by Britain as the Orange River Colony and Transvaal Colony.
Usage examples of "burgher".
Here, too, were the fierce men from the Mendips, the wild hunters from Porlock Quay and Minehead, the poachers of Exmoor, the shaggy marshmen of Axbridge, the mountain men from the Quantocks, the serge and wool-workers of Devonshire, the graziers of Bampton, the red-coats from the Militia, the stout burghers of Taunton, and then, as the very bone and sinew of all, the brave smockfrocked peasants of the plains, who had turned up their jackets to the elbow, and exposed their brown and corded arms, as was their wont when good work had to be done.
As only one regiment of Prussians could be spared to remain there in garrison, the burghers were disarmed, their arms deposited in the arsenal, and a detachment was posted at Konigstein, to oblige that fortress to observe a strict neutrality.
The number of desperate and long-drawn actions which have ended, according to the official Pretorian account, in a loss of one wounded burgher may in some way be better policy, but does not imply a higher standard of public virtue, than those long lists which have saddened our hearts in the halls of the War Office.
Rural serfage was maintained, which proves that the revolution had been directed by the burghers, and for their own profit.
But the main interest of the little town centred in its shrine and in the houses of the burghers, with their evidences of a wonderfully even standard of comfortable and peaceful life, by no means untinged with artistic elegance.
An increasing number of the burghers were volunteering for service against their own people, and it was found that all fears as to this delicate experiment were misplaced, and that in the whole army there were no keener and more loyal soldiers.
Heinrich Abt, Franz Endermann, and Ernst Geller, sons of chief burghers, each of whom carried a yard-long scroll in his cap, and was too disfigured in person for men to require an inspection of the document.
The burghers of the Transvaal and of the late Orange Free State were legitimate belligerents, and to be treated as such--a statement which does not, of course, extend to the Afrikander rebels who were their allies.
There he was greeted by the parliamentary member, the representatives of the local council, various trembling beadles and burghers, and a squad of shrunken, bemedalled regimental pensioners in their frayed crimson tunics, ready for one final war.
I sent men out to visit the farms of those burghers who had gone home after the fall of Bloemfontein, with orders to bring them back to the front.
In the neighbourhood of Bloemfontein, Reddersburg, and Dewetsdorp, and at every other place where it was possible, his troops had made prisoners of burghers who had remained quietly on their farms.
Vice-Commander-in-Chief Piet Fourie to take under his charge the districts of Bloemfontein, Bethulie, Smithfield, Rouxville, and Wepener, and to permit the burghers there, who had remained behind, to join us again.
The latter was the man who, when the burghers from Fauresmith, even before the taking of Bloemfontein, had remained behind, broke through with seventy or eighty troops.
Amid rain and mist the British columns were pushing rapidly forwards, but still the burghers held together, and still their artillery was uncaptured.
Viljoen, with a number of followers, slipped through between the columns, but the greater part of the burghers, dashing furiously about like a shoal of fish when they become conscious of the net, were taken by one or other of the columns.