Denizen

Unlike many of the other keywords in this volume, ‘denizen’ is not commonly used in modern-day vernacular. However, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, ‘denizen’ served as a specific and widely used legal term in English. ‘Denizen’ (‘born within’) originates from the Anglo-Norman for someone who dwells within a country as opposed to outside of it. ¹ Yet by the thirteenth century, it had come to identify figures who were distinctly external in their origins: migrants who had been granted certain rights to settle in the country. Unlike acts of naturalisation passed by Parliament, denization was granted by the Crown. Whereas naturalisation provided a migrant with a full set of rights as an English subject, denization offered a limited set of privileges to the recipient individual or group. In his Expositiones terminorum legume Angliea (1579), John Rastell defined how a migrant became a denizen, and the limitations of this status. ² According to Rastell, a ‘denizen’ was an alien who had ‘becommeth the Quéenes subject and obteyneth her letters patentes to enjoye al priviledges as an Englishman’, though ‘not with standinge, he shall paye customes and divers other things as aliens doe &c’. ³ Over half a century later, Francis Bacon similarly defined denizens as the third of four degrees of legal subjecthood. ⁴ Like Rastell, Bacon highlighted how denization ‘doth imparte, yet more ample benefit, for it gives him power to purchase freehold and inheritance to his owne use’ and allows his children to also do so, yet they could not ‘make title’ as the ‘[l]aw thinks not good to make him the same degree, with a subject born’. ⁵ The status of a denizen was inherently precarious, a ‘status somewhere between native and stranger’. ⁶ As Rastell and Bacon pointed out, although they paid homage and swore allegiance to the monarch, denizens remained aliens by birth. This led to the perception that some if not all denizens were untrustworthy, as they had rejected the allegiance and country of their birth and might do the same again. ⁷ Alan Stewart has highlighted this issue when discussing Portuguese denizens in London: although they received the status in some official documents, they were still always placed on the list of strangers. ⁸ As such, they were prohibited by law from inheriting land as well as from bequeathing land to any children born before they became denizens. ⁹ Furthermore, they were required to pay customs and taxes as aliens. At the same time, however, they were granted the right to bring lawsuits, children born post-denization could inherit property, and they could request exemption from the customs and tax rates of aliens. ¹⁰