Only "burghers", i.e. gentry and free farmers, were real citizens with all rights of a free man.

This indignant burgher was a German, one of those that were useful to the doctor....

Indeed, a half-drunken burgher who spoke fair English, and who, because he had once lived in America, insisted on taking personal charge of our affairs, was constantly bustling in to say he had arranged for carriages and horses; but when the starting hour cameat five o'clock on Monday morningthere was no sign either of our fuddled guardian or of the rigs he had promised.