Gomme’s Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, contains an extensive bibliography of the subject, with valuable critical notes and comments.

CHAPTER III.

THE COUNTY.

Section 1. The County in its Beginnings.

It is now time for us to treat of the county, and we may as well begin by considering its origin.  In treating of the township we began by sketching it in its fullest development, as seen in New England.  With. the county we shall find it helpful to pursue a different method and start at the beginning.

If we look at the maps of the states which make up our Union, we see that they are all divided into counties (except that in Louisiana the corresponding divisions are named parishes).  The map of England shows that country as similarly divided into counties.

[Sidenote:  Why do we have counties?] If we ask why this is so, some people will tell us that it is convenient, for purposes of administration, to have a state, or a kingdom, divided into areas that are larger than single towns.  There is much truth in this.  It is convenient.  If it were not so, counties would not have survived, so as to make a part of our modern maps.  Nevertheless, this is not the historic reason why we have the particular kind of subdivisions known as counties.  We have them because our fathers and grandfathers had them; and thus, if we would find out the true reason, we may as well go back to the ancient times when our forefathers were establishing themselves in England.

[Sidenote:  Clans and tribes.] We have seen how the clan of our barbarous ancestors, when it became stationary, was established as the town or township.  But in those early times clans were generally united more or less closely into tribes.  Among all primitive or barbarous races of men, so far as we can make out, society is organized in tribes, and each tribe is made up of a number of clans or family groups.  Now when our English forefathers conquered Britain they settled there as clans and also as tribes.  The clans became townships, and the tribes became shires or counties; that is to say, the names were applied first to the people and afterwards to the land they occupied.  A few of the oldest county names in England still show this plainly. Essex, Middlesex, and Sussex were originally “East Saxons,” “Middle Saxons,” and “South Saxons;” and on the eastern coast two tribes of Angles were distinguished as “North folk” and “South folk,” or Norfolk and Suffolk.  When you look on the map and see the town of Icklinghiam in the county of Suffolk, it means that this place was once known as the “home” of the “Icklings” or “children of Ickel,” a clan which formed part of the tribe of “South folk.”