Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/474

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A HISTORY OF ESSEX leading us possibly to identify with the latter, in its original form, ' the agricultural community, the community which had common fields.' The whole argument rests, it will be seen, on the assumption, how- ever unconscious, that all parishes are of the same size. As they are very far from being so, the entire area of a group need not be very large. To take those selected by the writer, the three Lavers only contain 4,082 acres ; the three Layers, 5,551 ; the three Theydons, 6,920 ; the three Tolleshunts, 7,483 ; and even all the Rodings together no more than 11,839. These, no doubt, are large areas, but so are those of the 'civil parishes 'of Thaxted (6,251), Great Waltham (7,457), Hatfield Broadoak (8,809), St. Osyth (8,877), an( ^ Barking (12,307). What- ever size therefore we assign to the ancient Hundred, it cannot be said that the groups selected approach it more nearly than sundry ' civil parishes.' So much for the ' evidence which seems to show that the vill of ancient times was often a much larger tract of land than the vill of modern times ; that the area belonging to an agricultural community was not unfrequently as large as the area of some of our Hundreds.' I venture therefore to hold that it does not lead us to a ' time when township and Hundred were identical, or rather for this would be the better way of putting it when the Hundred, besides being the juridical community, was also an agricultural community.' 1 Professor Maitland, in his later work, refers us to this argument, but puts the matter rather differently. He writes of the groups in question : Doubtless they point to a time when a single village by some process of colonization or subdivision became (sic) two villages ... so when we see two different villages called Hamton and Other Hamton, lying next each other, we may be fairly certain that they are not of equal antiquity, and it is not unlikely that the one is the offshoot and daughter of the other.*

  • Fission of vills ' and ' Village colonies ' are phrases which seem to me

to suggest two opposite theories. The former implies the breaking-up of an originally large area ; the latter suggests an area originally small, from which colonists have gone forth to found fresh settlements in the forest belt around. Domesday, as the writer observes, is vague in its terminology ; * in a few instances it marks off the little village from the great village of the same name ; s in some other instances it will speak, for example, of Mordune and Mordune a/ia, of Emingeforde and Emingeforde a/ia, or the like, thus showing both that the change has taken place and also that it is so recent that it is recognized only by very clumsy terms.' * Let us glance at the Essex instances. ' Great ' and ' Little ' Birch, as they are styled in Domesday, preserved those names as distinct parishes down to 1 Arctttohgical Review, iv. 235.

  • Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 14, 365. But on p. 367 we return to the 'many cases which

seem to tell us that in the oldest days the smallest district that bore a name was often large, and there- fore that the territory which subserved a single group of homesteads was often spacious.' 3 ' A good many instances,' he observes in a note, ' will be found in Essex and Suffolk."

  • Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 14.

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