The inhabitants of a mark or town were a stationary clan.  It was customary to call them by the clan name, as for example “the Beorings” or “the Crossings;” then the town would be called Barrington, “town of the Beorings,” or Cressingham, “home of the Cressings.”  Town names of this sort, with which the map of England is thickly studded, point us back to a time when the town was supposed to be the stationary home of a clan.

[Footnote 1:  Pronounced “toon.”]

[Sidenote:  The Old English township.] [Sidenote:  The manor.] The Old English town had its tungemot, or town-meeting, in which “by-laws” were made and other important business transacted.  The principal officers were the “reeve” or head-man, the “beadle” or messenger, and the “tithing-man” or petty constable.  These officers seem at first to have been elected by the people, but after a while, as great lordships grew up, usurping jurisdiction over the land, the lord’s steward and bailiff came to supersede the reeve and beadle.  After the Norman Conquest the townships, thus brought under the sway of great lords, came to be generally known by the French name of manors or “dwelling places.”  Much might be said about this change, but here it is enough for us to bear in mind that a manor was essentially a township in which the chief executive officers were directly responsible to the lord rather than to the people.  It would be wrong, however, to suppose that the manors entirely lost their self-government.  Even the ancient town-meeting survived in them, in a fragmentary way, in several interesting assemblies, of which the most interesting were the court leet, for the election of certain officers and the trial of petty offences, and the court baron, which was much like a town-meeting.

[Sidenote:  The parish.] Still more of the old self-government would doubtless have survived in the institutions of the manor if it had not been provided for in another way.  The parish was older than the manor.  After the English had been converted to Christianity local churches were gradually set up all over the country, and districts called parishes were assigned for the ministrations of the priests.  Now a parish generally coincided in area with a township, or sometimes with a group of two or three townships.  In the old heathen times each town seems to have had its sacred place or shrine consecrated to some local deity, and it was a favourite policy with the Roman missionary priests to purify the old shrine and turn it into a church.  In this way the township at the same time naturally became the parish.