It is not easy to define the exact status of the tensers. They were certainly considered as an inferior body of burgesses, and might comprise three classes. Firstly, those not willing or not able to enter one of the gilds; secondly, traders waiting to be admitted burgesses; thirdly ex-burgesses fallen from the higher state through misfortune.
1. As an inferior class of tradesmen they could only purchase their stock from townsmen (Gross, II. 177); they were incapable of bearing municipal office (_Ibid._ II. 190) and they were liable to be called upon "to be contributorie to alle the comone charges of the Citie, whan it falleth" (_Ibid._ II. 190). In the general course of trade but little difference might be perceptible between the tensers and the Gildsmen, but attempts to fuse or to confuse the two classes were jealously resented whenever they were discovered. Naturally these attempts to minimise the distinctions between Gildsmen and non-gildsmen were generally prompted, in later times, by political reasons. Only freemen of the town and members of the companies had the privilege of voting in Parliamentary elections, and great was the desire to obtain a position on the list of voters. In "An Account of the Poll for Members of Parliament for the Borough of Shrewsbury taken June 29 and 30, 1747" etc., information is supplied concerning certain townsmen who had claimed to be freemen but were rejected on account of having proved themselves to be otherwise by payment, in times past, of the tensers' fines. Of John Bromhall, baker, we read "It was objected to his vote that he was no Burgess, in support of which it was proved that he had paid Tensership several years, and that his ffather had paid toll. This Tensership is a ffine or acknowledgement commonly paid by persons following trade in the town that are no Burgesses, but it being insisted that it was paid through ignorance or mistake, his ffather was called and admitted to prove that he had voted at a former election for this Borough, whereupon the Mayor admitted his vote, but upon examining a copy of the Poll for the year 1676 it appears that all the ffamily of this Bromhall were upon a scrutiny rejected as not Burgesses."