Also 6–7 burger, -ar, -or. [In 16th c. burger, a. early mod.G. or Du. burger citizen of a burg or fortified town; afterwards assimilated to Eng. burgh, BOROUGH.]
1. An inhabitant of a burgh, borough, or corporate town; a citizen. Chiefly used of continental towns, but also of English boroughs, in a sense less technical than burgess. Now somewhat archaic.
1568. [see BURGHERSHIP].
1590. Marlowe, 2nd Pt. Tamburl., V. i. 160. Go now, and bind the burghers, hand and foot.
1600. Shaks., Merch. V., I. i. 10. Your Argosies … Like Signiors and rich Burgers on the flood.
1660. R. Coke, Power & Subj., 186. A Burger who hath … half a mark, let him pay a Peter-peny.
1698. in R. Holmes, Bk. of Entries of Pontefract Corp., 233. The most able and sufficient Burgesse or Burgor inhabiting and residing in the said town.
1727. De Foe, Eng. Tradesm., xxvi. (1841), I. 265. The burgher’s wives of Horsham, go as fine as they do in other places.
1824. W. Irving, T. Trav., I. 56. A rich burgher of Antwerp … in a broad Flemish hat.
a. 1842. Macaulay, Armada, 74. And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle.
1867. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), I. v. 288. The valiant burghers had already learned to grapple with the Dane.
fig. 1619. Drayton, Man in the Moone (R.). As those great burghers of the forest wild, The Hart, the Goat.
b. attrib. and comb.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xviii. ‘I do not understand,’ answered the burgher-magistrate, ‘that the young man Butler’s zeal is of so inflammable a character.’
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. I. viii. 56. Mark that queenlike burgher-woman.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 170. Contests, in which one club of burgher-oligarchs successively displaced another.
1855. Motley, Dutch Rep. (1861), I. 38. The burgher class controlled the government.
1873. Dixon, Two Queens, III. XIII. iv. 20. Springing from a burgher stock.
1878. Simpson, Sch. Shaks., I. 154. To show the inferiority of a burgher militia to professional soldiers in war.
2. A member of that section of the Scottish Secession Church, which upheld the lawfulness of the burgess oath: also attrib. See ANTIBURGHER.
1766. J. Brown, Hist. Seceders, 67. The Anti-burghers … persecuted their Burgher brethren with deposition and excommunication.
1773. J. Smith, Hist. Sk. Relief Ch., 39. The Burgher clergy maintained, that it [the Synod] remained in their society, while the Antiburghers endeavoured to prove that they carried it away with them to Mr. Gib’s manse.
1861. Ramsay, Remin. (ed. 18), 18. John Brown, Burgher minister at Whitburn.
1881. Masson, Carlyle, in Macm. Mag., XLV. 74. That Nonconforming communion, called the Burgher Seceders.
3. In Ceylon; see quot.
1807. Cordiner, Descr. Ceylon, 89 (Y.). Admitted, by the Dutch, to all the privileges of citizens, under the denomination of burghers.
1836. Penny Cycl., VI. 457/1. The descendants of Europeans of unmixed blood, and that race which has sprung from the intercourse of Europeans with the natives, are called Burghers.
Hence Burgherage, Burgherdom, Burgherhood, the body of burghers or citizens collectively.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., I. III. iii. 210. Baronage, Burgherage, they were German mostly by blood, and by culture were wholly German.
1884. W. S. Sichel, in 19th Cent., July, 121. Voss, the poet of burgherdom.
1885. J. Fiske, in Harper’s Mag., Feb., 413/2. As the burgherhood enlarged, the assembly became a huge mob.
