The borough community is seen acting jointly to pursue common interests or goals – i.e. in a corporate fashion – from at least the twelfth century on. However, the law made no formal recognition of this (even though the king effectively recognized the existence of communities in his dealings with towns), which was often inconvenient. One of the last major concessions, in terms of chartered liberties, that the king made to towns in the Middle Ages was their incorporation (i.e. making the town a fictitious personality in the eyes of the law). There were five characteristics associated with this: the right of perpetual succession; the right to use a "common seal" as the signature of the borough to official documents expressing community will; the right to sue, and be sued; the right to make by-laws; and the right to hold property communally. Since almost all of these features had been in use in boroughs prior to incorporation, the recognition of this by royal grant was probably not such a significant step forward for boroughs that it might appear to us; however this grant often went hand in hand with other powers, such as the right to have a mayor as the executive officer (once associated with the dreaded commune, whose spectre had greatly diminished by the time of incorporation), and the grant of local jurisdiction over Sessions of the Peace. Perhaps equally important to the borough government was that incorporation reduced the liability of individual officers to be sued for transgressions or defaults of the community, while it made it easier for the borough to acquire communal property which was an increasingly important source of revenue to support administrative costs. To the historian, incorporation is simply the logical culmination of the development of borough government throughout the Late Middle Ages, creating the form of the post-medieval borough.

This definition is in context to Medieval Town. See more contextual defintions for Incorporation.