As exemplified in the Manor of Castle Combe. 147 
places to which the circulars were addressed, was any thing clearly 
known by these officers, or any series of documents preserved 
relative to the history of their ancient liberties, the proceedings of 
their local courts or governing bodies, or the early usages and 
customs of the place. There are, as I have said, some few exceptions 
to this general neglect; and from the records preserved in these 
instances, and other sources, it would be possible to derive much 
valuable information on the general history of our municipal 
institutions. Whoever would undertake such a work would confer 
a great benefit on the literature of this country, and supply an 
important defect in the materials of its history. 
In the meantime I have thought it may not be uninteresting to 
those who look into the philosophy of history, and love to trace the 
remote sources from which our most valuable institutions of the 
present day are derived, if I produce an example of the extent of 
self-government practised from a very early time in one of these 
privileged communities, although unincorporated, and of an insig- 
nificant character in comparison with the great towns of the 
kingdom—being in fact at no time more than a rural or upland 
township, with a population consisting of but a few hundred 
persons—from the records that happen to be in my possession, and 
in a tolerably perfect state, relating to the manor of Castle Combe. 
The very insignificance of the place, indeed, may add to the value 
of its history in these respects, as being a specimen probably of 
many hundred other village communities, in which similar customs 
prevailed. 
The inhabitants of the Manor of Castle Combe, although not 
incorporated by Royal Charter, enjoyed, however, from an early 
period all the special rights and privileges which appertained by 
the Common Law to those Vills which belonged to the domain of 
the Crown in the Saxon era. These rights were conveyed under 
the terms, now scarcely intelligible, of Tol, Them, Sok, Sak, 
Infangthef, View of frank-pledge, Waif, Stray, &c., and were 
generally known as Jwra Regalia, including the power of punishment 
by Stocks and Pillory, Pit and Gallows, (Cippus, Pilarum, Fossa 
et urea). The particular meaning of all these obsolete terms is 
(uper?? 
_ 
