BURGESS, a term, in its earliest sense, meaning an inhabit ant of -a borough, one who occupied a tenement therein, such tenement, unlike the county freeholds, being devisable by will and constituting "burgage-tenure," but now applied solely to a registered parliamentary, or more strictly, municipal voter. In some of the American colonies (e.g., Virginia), a "burgess" was a member of the legislative body, which was termed the "House of Burgesses." The Burgess-roll is the register or official list of burgesses in a borough. In English local government law, all the burgesses, and not merely the mayor and town council, are members of the municipal corporation.