Forms: 1 burhʓeréfa (also Hist. in 9), 2. burhreve, 9 boroughreeve. [f. BOROUGH + REEVE.]
† a. A governor of a town or city; esp. the official who before the Norman Conquest represented the king’s authority for fiscal and other purposes in boroughs, as the scír-ʓeréfa (SHERIFF) did in shires. The office seems to have been substantially identical with that of PORTREEVE.
c. 1000. Ælfric, Gloss., in Wr.-Wülcker, Voc., 110. Prætor uel præfectus, uel quæstor, burhʓerefa.
c. 1225. Leg. Kath., 1927. Com a burhreve [orig. urbis prefectus] as þe þat wes þes deoueles budel.
[1861. Pearson, Early & Mid. Ages Eng., I. 84. The præfectus, or burh-gerefa, was rather a royal than a civic officer.]
b. The chief municipal officer in certain unincorporated English towns, before the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835.
1808. Chron., in Ann. Reg., 325/1. The weavers assembled … near Manchester … Mr. Starkie, the Boroughreeve strove to persuade them to disperse, but in vain.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), II. 191. The officer of the king, called port-reeve or borough-reeve.
1881. Morley, Cobden, I. 121. He was intolerant of the small politics of the Borough-reeve and the Constables.
1885. Manch. Exam., 20 March, 8/4. He filled the office of boroughreeve, or chief magistrate, of Salford in 1839.
