THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



than that in which a single name is borne by a whole group of parishes. 

 ' The science of village morphology,' Professor Maitland has observed, 

 'is still very young'; but its fascination and its importance for the early 

 history of our race have led him to devote special attention to this 

 second and more familiar type, of which he found remarkable examples 

 in the eastern counties and especially in Essex. 1 



It will be best to give in his own words the Professor's observations 

 on the subject : 



Very often we find two or more contiguous townships bearing the same names 

 and distinguished only from each other by what we call their surnames. Cases in 

 which there are two such townships are in some parts of England so extremely 

 common as to be the rule rather than the exception. If, for example, we look at the 

 map of Essex, we everywhere see the words Great and Little serving to distinguish 

 two neighbouring villages. Cases in which the same name is borne by three or 

 more adjacent townships are rarer. . . . Essex is particularly rich in such groups ; 

 close to Layer Marney, Layer de la Hay and Layer Breton are Tolleshunt Knights, 

 Tolleshunt Major and Tolleshunt Darcy. In the same county are High Laver, 

 Little Laver and Magdalen Laver ; Theydon Gernon, Theydon Mount, Theydon 

 Bois ; also (and this is perhaps the finest example) High Roding, Roding Aythorpe, 

 Leaden Roding, White Roding, Margaret Roding, Abbots (sic) Roding, Roding 

 Beauchamp and Berners Roding. . . . 



In general, where two neighbouring modern villages have the same name, 

 Domesday does not treat them as two. Let us look at the very striking case of the 

 various Rodings and Roothings, which lie in the Dunmow hundred of Essex.* 

 Already six lords have a manor apiece ' in Rodinges ' ; but Domeiday has no sur- 

 names for these manors ; they all lie ' in Rodinges.' It is so with the various 

 Tolleshunts in the Thurstable Hundred : there are many manors ' in Tolleshunta ' 

 (Archieological Review, iv. 2368). 



It is a matter of detail and of no great consequence that Domesday 

 does not, as here alleged, uniformly employ the phrases * in Rodinges ' 

 or ' in Tolleshunta.' Out of sixteen entries relating to ' Rodinges ' (or 

 ' Roinges,') only one has the prefix c in ' ; and out of twelve relating to 

 * Toleshunta,' only one has that prefix. But this has at least some 

 bearing on the argument. The important thing, however, is the Pro- 

 fessor's conclusion. He thinks that these examples ' suggest that in a very 

 large number of cases the territory which was once the territory of a 

 single township or cultivating community has, in course of time, perhaps 

 before, perhaps after the Norman Conquest, become the territory of 

 several different townships.' This would made us ' think of the township 

 . . . of very ancient times as being in many cases much larger than the 

 vill or township of the later middle ages, or our own " civil " parish,' 

 and would even ' make the vill approach the size of a Hundred.' 

 Therefore, he suggests, ' as we look backwards, we seem to see a con- 

 vergence between the size of the township and the size of the Hundred,' 



century,' that ' in general the vill of Domesday Book is still a vill in after days,' and that ' the villa of 

 Domesday Book is in general the vill of the thirteenth century and the civil parish of the nineteenth ' 

 (Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 9-17). 



1 See the paragraphs on ' Fission of vills,' ' Village colonies ' and ' New and old villages ' in his 

 Domeiday Book and Beyond, pp. 14, 365, 367 ; and his paper on 'The Surnames of English Villages' in 

 Archeeohgual Review, iv. 233-40. 



1 This is an error. It is important to observe that the Rodings are divided between the Hundreds 

 of Dunmow and of Ongar. 



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