144 Wisconsin Acadeiny of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



ordinate town organization for purposes of local self-government.' It 

 would seem that in the seventeenth century, when this country was settled, 

 this process had not been comiDleted. The colonists brought with them both 

 institutions, and — as all New Englanders know — the parish and the 

 town were, as a rule, identical in New England as in Old England. 

 But whUe in New England the ecclesiastical organization became quite sec- 

 ondary, and has now practically disappeared, in Old England the reverse 

 was the case. The parish organization has crowded out that of the 

 town. As an English correspondent writes me: " With us town = market 

 town " — a specially privileged, and I suppose specially organized, class of 

 towns. The towns of the open country are known as parishes, and the 

 functions of local self-government, so far as they continue to be kept up, 

 are administered by the vestry, or parish assembly. Still even now we find 

 a survival of the old usage. The same correspondent writes: "I am 

 talking with the squire; the church bell sounds, and I ask him if he knows 

 why: he replies ' for a parish meeting, I suppose.' Again, in a conversation 

 with a laborer, to the same question he will reply: ' for a town meeting, I 

 suppose, sir.' " Here the primitive term has lingered among the peasantry, 

 while it has been dropped by the aristocracy. 



The transition from town to parish, and the equivalency of the terms, as 

 well as the fact of local self-government, to be considered further on, are 

 illustrated by local documents. For example : in the reign of Edward VI. , un- 

 der the influence, I suppose, of the radical reformation of the church favored 

 by that monarch, we have a record of a large amount of church plate and 

 other property sold in the eastern counties, by the authority, as it is stated, 

 sometimes of the town, and sometimes of the parish, showing that the two 

 terms are employed as identical. For example: " Barkinge. Certifficat of 

 Church wardens there. We present that we have solde by the consente of 

 tholeparysheacrosseparcellgylte, etc. . . . to Robert Knapi^e and Roger 

 Hylle of the same towne." " Beccles . . . solde anno primo Edwardi 

 sexti Regis etc, by the Townshype and Churchewardens so moch plate as 

 amounteth to the some of xl 1." Uast Ayigli an, May, 1885. "Church- 

 wardens of Martillesham. . . . goods sold by the said churche Re vies 

 and other the hoole Inhitants of the said towne." id., March, 1887. This 

 last instance appears to show an identity of the church-wardens with the 

 mediseval reeve. At a later date we find the village of Exning (Suffolk), 

 •which at the close of the sixteenth century " appears" says the correspon- 

 dent who mentions it, ' ' to have been dignified with the title of ' Town ', viz. , 



1590. 

 "Item, pd the xx daye of Aprill for a quarter of wyne for the town 

 xij. d. etc." id., March, 1888. 



1 See Gneist's History of the English Constitution, Vol. ii, p. 196. As this great writer is 

 "wont to depreciate tlie popular elements in the English constitution, it is not surprising 

 that he does not recognize the town, villata, as a regular part of the machinery of govern- 

 ment in the middle ages. 



