A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



unit which contained that church gave its name to the whole area ; and 

 that area found its unity in no other conceivable cause than in the rights 

 possessed over all of it by the single parish church. As the church on 

 a great scale is said to have given unity to the kingdom, so, on a small 

 one, it seems to me, the church gave to the parish its unity and its 

 form. To take three extreme cases, Hornchurch, Berechurch and St. 

 Lawrence are parishes to-day, but they were at first but the names of 

 buildings. The name of West Donyland has given way to Berechurch, 

 even as, a few miles across the Hertfordshire border, the name of 

 Lefstaneschurch, now Layston, has taken the place of those names found 

 in Domesday Book. 1 And ' St. Lawrence ' has supplanted the Domesday 

 names of (East and West) Newland. In Essex Wimbish and Thunderley 

 were once distinct parishes, and they are the subjects in Domesday of 

 distinct entries. But in 1425 the vicarage of Thunderley was united to 

 that of Wimbish, and ' as to the church of Thunderley,' Morant wrote, 

 ' the place where it stood is now part of a field ' (ii. 561). Thunderley 

 accordingly has vanished from the map. Wimbish, which has the 

 church, now gives name to the whole. In the same way, ' Beauchamp 

 St. Ethelbert' was once a distinct parish, but since 1473 ' Ovington and 

 Beauchamp St. Ethelbert have been united together and presented to by 

 the name of Ovington with the chapel of Albright . . . after which 

 the chapel, growing out of use, was suffered entirely to decay ; but there 

 are two distinct parsonage-houses and glebes.' 2 Ovington, because it has 

 the parish church, has long given name to the whole, and indeed I have 

 not even been able to locate Beauchamp St. Ethelbert for the purpose of 

 the Domesday map. 



Enough has now been said, I hope, to make it clear that the church 

 is the decisive factor in the local divisions of the county. If Springfield 

 or Boreham, Arkesden or Finchingfield, are each of them but one ' civil 

 parish,' it is because there was in each but one parish church. If Laver 

 or Tolleshunt, on the contrary, is divided into three parishes, it is simply 

 because there were three churches. It was not a matter of area at all. 

 We have in Essex no example in which the ecclesiastical origin of such 

 divisions is as obvious as in the cases cited from Norfolk by Professor 

 Maitland himself. 3 Nor have we, as in Suffolk, a Domesday instance of 

 the practice.* But Chignal St. James is still distinguished, as Beauchamp 

 St. Ethelbert once was, by the invocation of its church, while in 

 Margaret Roding and Margaretting we have two parishes distinguished 

 by their patron saint, St. Margaret, from other Rodings and Ings, as 

 ' Genevieve's Fornham ' was distinguished from the other Fornhams in 

 Domesday. 



It is only when we look at the Domesday map and compare it with 



1 See the Victoria History of Hertfordshire, i. 310. 2 Morant, ii. 338. 



3 < Wiggenhall St. Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St. German, Wiggenhall St. Peter, Wiggenhall St. 

 Mary Magdalen, Tilney cum Islington, Tilney All Saints, Tilney St. Lawrence, Terrington St. Clement, 

 Terrington St. John, Walpole St. Peter, Walpole St. Andrew' (Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 367). 



4 The present Fornham St. Genevieve is Genovevae [printed ' Genonevas '] Forham ' in Domesday 

 (362/7), a distinction unnoticed by Prof. Maitland, and perhaps unique. 



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