[Sidenote:  Township, manor, and parish.] [Sidenote:  The vestry-meeting.] As we find it in later times, both before and since the founding of English colonies in North America, the township in England is likely to be both a manor and a parish.  For some purposes it is the one, for some purposes it is the other.  The townsfolk may be regarded as a group of tenants of the lord’s manor, or as a group of parishioners of the local church.  In the latter aspect the parish retained much of the self-government of the ancient town.  The business with which the lord was entitled to meddle was strictly limited, and all other business was transacted in the “vestry-meeting,” which was practically the old town-meeting under a new name.  In the course of the thirteenth century we find that the parish had acquired the right of taxing itself for church purposes.  Money needed for the church was supplied in the form of “church-rates” voted by the ratepayers themselves in the vestry-meeting, so called because it was originally held in a room of the church in which vestments were kept.

[Sidenote:  Parish officers.] The officers of the parish were the constable, the parish and vestry clerks,[6] the beadle,[7] the “waywardens” or surveyors of highways, the “haywards” or fence-viewers, the “common drivers,” the collectors of taxes, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century overseers of the poor were added.  There were also churchwardens, usually two for each, parish.  Their duties were primarily to take care of the church property, assess the rates, and call the vestry-meetings.  They also acted as overseers of the poor, and thus in several ways remind one of the selectmen of New England.  The parish officers were all elected by the ratepayers assembled in vestry-meeting, except the common driver and hayward, who were elected by the same ratepayers assembled in court leet.  Besides electing parish officers and granting the rates, the vestry-meeting could enact by-laws; and all ratepayers had an equal voice in its deliberations.

[Footnote 6:  Of these two officers the vestry clerk is the counterpart of the New England town-clerk.]

[Footnote 7:  Originally a messenger or crier, the beadle came to assume some of the functions of the tithing-man or petty constable, such as keeping order in church, punishing petty offenders, waiting on the clergyman, etc.  In New England towns there were formerly officers called tithing-men, who kept order in church, arrested tipplers, loafers, and Sabbath-breakers, etc.]

[Sidenote:  The transition from England to New England.] During the last two centuries the constitution of the English parish has undergone some modifications which need not here concern us.  The Puritans who settled in New England had grown up under such parish government as is here described, and they were used to hearing the parish called, on some occasions and for some purposes, a township.  If we remember