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to guide us. We know that the boundaries of many of the Wealden parishes were not finally settled until the century after the Norman Conquest, when the see of Chichester was removed thence from Selsea.* We also know that the Weald proper could not have been much occupied at the time of the compilation of Domesday Book; for although many manors are described as partly within the Weald, not many places are mentioned which are now wholly within it. We seem to have a limit as to time in the other direction; for by far the greater number of names, even of the earliest settlements along the Chalk escarpment, are eminently English.

In speaking as I have done of the probable relative date of the various settlements and their parishes, I of course do not mean that our parishes date so far back. The date at which most of these were formed, and even whether they were originally civil or ecclesiastical divisions, are questions which are all involved in doubt, and I do not pretend that this investigation throws much light directly upon the subject. Still, I think it does give a little. If parishes or manors were ever formally planned out, it seems in the highest degree unlikely that such striking agreement with the physical features as we have seen to exist, should occur. Probably such features would be altogether ignored; or if taken into consideration would be seized upon as boundaries. One could scarcely desire a more striking physical feature for a boundary than the Chalk escarpment, but we have seen that it is only in rare cases that this forms the boundary of a parish; generally it is well within the parish, which stretches up to and often far beyond it. The boundaries cross the escarpment; in nine cases out of ten at right angles to it. So again with the Lower Greensand escarpment; although in its relation to the parishes it acts exactly the reverse of the

Dallaway's "History of Sussex," vol. i, p. 51. As good evidence of the comparatively recent date of places in the Weald, may mention that names ending in ford are almost unknown, whilst there are plenty of bridges.

It has been suggested, with great probability, that the Surveyors of Domesday did not pay much attention to the interior of the Weald, and therefore the fact that but few places are there mentioned is no evidence that many others did not exist. No mention is made of the Wealden Ironworks, although they existed long before and long after the Norman Conquest, and it is exceedingly unlikely that the trade would have been discontinued for a while.

It is probable that the Norman Conquest had but a small effect upon the interior of the Weald, although the great battle was fought within it. The dialects of Sussex are almost pure Saxon, and some of the small landowners claim to have had their land in possession of their own families from before the Conquest. Quite recently I had a Geological tour in the Weald with Mr. Bristow and Mr. Drew, and we were much struck at hearing a Sussex labourer speak of the Conqueror as Duke William;" and this within sight

of Senlac.

Chalk escarpment, yet they agree in rarely forming parish boundaries.*

It will be most important to ascertain what relation the manors and other recognised land-divisions (when they materially differ from parishes in area) have to the features here described. In the Weald, at least, I believe that the results will be the same as those at which we have arrived. Manors, farms, etc., so far as one can judge, act as regards the Chalk escarpment, in the same way that the parishes do. When situated at the foot of the escarpment, they extend up its slope, and also take in some of the arable and pasture land of the Upper Greensand and Gault.

It is, however, very difficult to obtain the data necessary for working out this question fully. It is useless to attempt to generalise in such matters from a limited area; and for this reason I have taken the parishes as the basis, the boundaries of these being readily obtainable.

In Sussex the simplest parishes, or those in which the manorial and parochial boundaries most nearly coincide-whether there be one or several manors-are in those districts where we may infer the land divisions to be the oldest; whilst the more complicated parishes are in the central parts, where we infer the land divisions to be the most recent, and where we know that the parochial divisions certainly are so.†

It was long ago pointed out by Blackstone, that "it very seldom happens that a manor extends itself over more parishes than one, though there are often many manors in one parish."‡ He infers that the manorial divisions are the oldest, and that

Watersheds are very often boundaries in the north of England, and any remarkable stone or other natural object is also taken as a boundary mark. The lines over the moorlands are still in many places undefined, excepting by these occasional objects; but boundary stones or stone walls are now very commonly placed along them. Many years ago there were but few of these, and the boundaries were handed down by tradition. It was then the custom for each person entrusted in the matter to be taken over the ground when young, and to him was pointed out by old shepherds and others the boundary lines which they had received by tradition from their fathers. It would be his duty in after years to hand on the same traditions to the next generation. The annual custom of "beating the bounds" of the parishes in the south of England is an useless perpetuation of the same proceeding.

The areas of the various properties in the north of England were often erroneously estimated. The accurate measurements of the Ordnance Survey have proved that the moorlands belonging to a large landowner near the borders, are less by some thousands of acres than has always been supposed. + It very often happens that parishes have detached portions lying at some distance from the main mass. The parishes along the Chalk border often have such outlying patches within the Weald, but it is remarkable that very few parishes within the Weald have outlying patches on the Chalk. Of the villages on Weald Clay or Hastings Beds, only two, Lynch and Chaily, have such detached portions.

"Commentaries," vol. i, p. 112, of Ed. 1809.

parishes were formed from them, either by taking one manor only, as is sometimes though rarely the case, or by grouping several.

The word manor was introduced by the Normans, but the divisions of land to which it was applied must have existed at a much earlier date; indeed it is probable that but few changes took place in the recognised divisions of the land at the Conquest.

For the original unit of the land divisions we must, then, go still further back. Is it not probable that in what we consider to be the earlier settlements at least-with their arable, down, pasture, and woodland-and preserving so often their antique names, we have the sites of the original Mark?

Mr. Freeman regards the modern parish or manor as the representative of the Mark; and he looks upon the parishioners assembled in vestry as equally representing the assembly of the Markmen.*

Tempting as this view of the subject is, this is not the place to pursue it further. I am content to have shown, as it appears to me beyond all dispute, that the land divisions of the southeast of England have a well-marked and constant relation to the great physical features; a relation which cannot possibly have been the result of accident. From this relation we may safely infer that whatever may have been the origin of manors or parishes, as such, they both depend upon older divisions of the land, which were not formed by the arbitrary act of Church or King, but resulted necessarily from the great physical features of the country.†

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History of the Norman Conquest," vol. i, p. 104; and "Growth of the English Constitution," 2nd ed. (1873), pp. 10 and 60. In the opening pages of the latter work, Mr. Freeman, in a passage which is remarkable even amongst his writings for its beauty and power, gives an account of the yearly meeting of the people of Uri and Appenzell to frame laws and to choose rulers. He sees in these gatherings the exact counterparts of the assemblies which, in early times, would have met for the same purpose in such districts as Holderness or Cleveland; districts in which several Marks would be included.

+ In addition to the authorities already referred to, I may here mention the following, in which the Mark and its modern representative are discussed:

E. Nasse, "On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, and Inclosures of the Sixteenth Century in England" (1869). Translated by Col. H.A. Ouvry, 2nd Edition, 1872. See p. 14 especially; but the whole of the work contains most important information bearing upon this subject. Frequent references are given to English authors.

R. B. D. Morier, "The Agrarian Legislation of Prussia during the Present Century." In the Essays published by the Cobden Club on the Sys. tems of Land Tenure in various Countries. 2nd Edition, 1870.

Sir H. S. Maine, "Village Communities in the East and West," 1871. Lectures iii-v.

The divisions of the country are described, and their history discussed, by Mr. J. Lewis in his "Digest of the English Census of 1871" (1873), pp. 14-22. Canon Greenwell, in the "Durham Chronicle," during Sept. 1869, printed

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DISCUSSION.

Dr. CLEMENT LE NEVE FOSTER, referring to some previous remarks by Mr. Charlesworth, said :-As Mr. Charlesworth does not seem to have fully understood the point of Mr. Topley's paper, I rise to say that I think the author made everything very clear, to some of his audience at least. The idea that I gathered from the paper just read is, that the first inhabitants of the Weald, on choosing land for their settlements, took strips of various formations to suit their various wants. They wanted a position where water could be easily obtained, so they placed their villages at the foot of the Chalk escarpment, where springs are met with. They required bread and meat for food, and fire to cook it, so each village took its slice of Chalk for pasture land, some of the Upper Greensand for arable land, and a strip of Gault for woodland. When these formations were all occupied, other settlers chose the best land they could find on the Lower Greensand, Weald Clay, and Hastings Beds.

Mr. HYDE CLARKE said that the parish divisions of themselves were relatively modern and casual, as they had been disturbed by the addition or abstraction of portions of the neighbouring lands. Nevertheless, the valuable facts laid before them by Mr. Topley could not be without reference to that important question of dispute, whether Britain was or was not bodily invaded, conquered, and occupied by the English, or whether the present state of affairs was a simple continuation of the Roman occupation. The pre-historic and the Celtic periods might be dismissed from the present consideration, as they had been disturbed by the Roman occupation. This occupation must at least have been as close as that of the early English. In the south of England the parish generally coincided with the township, and the township, from the extraordinary details recorded by Mr. Topley, probably coincided with the mark or gau of other Germanic countries, in conformity with the views of Mr. Kemble. These long narrow strips starting from the natural boundaries (without intentional compliance with geological features), or from the artificial boundaries of the Roman roads, would represent the allotments among the invading parties. The position of villages signified little, for there were many hamlets in a parish, and where the church was placed there would afterwards be the thickest population or village. Where there was a two deeds of the end of the 12th century: a Conveyance of Land and a Lease, relating to Durham. He has given an introduction and notes to each, which contain a great deal of information upon the condition of the country at that date.

The Municipal and Ecclesiastical Theories of Parishes are discussed by "An Hereditary High Churchman," in a pamphlet entitled "The Parish in History and in Church and State," reprinted from the "Church Review," 1871. This pamphlet was noticed in the "Saturday Review," and in the same periodical there was an earlier article on Local Government, both giving much information upon these subjects. Unfortunately I have mislaid these articles and cannot give the references.

On the Early Physical Condition of England, see Mr. C. H. Pearson's "History of England," vol. i, chap. i, 1867; and the same author's Historical Maps.

Roman well or settlement, that seemed to be a preferable situation for those entitled to selection. The old towns appeared to be awarded to chiefs. He thought, rather, that in most cases the churches had been placed at the ton, or stronghold, of the chief of the allotments. While the other homesteads were scattered, these strongholds side by side constituted lines of defence. The allotment could scarcely be, as assumed by Mr. Topley, to get a portion of each class of land for the village, because there was originally no village, and the other homesteads were scattered. It would be necessary to examine carefully the relative evidence of the Germanic allotments in the other conquered countries, and Flanders should not be omitted. Mr. Topley had referred to the opinion that the Boulonnais had been conquered from England, but he (Mr. Clarke) was inclined to suggest from the evidence of names, that while the main stream of the English and the Saxons poured from Jutland, across the North Sea, to Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Essex, the East Angles, Lindsey and Northumbria, another stream passed by North Dutchland and Flanders, and settled in Wessex and probably Sussex. He pointed out that in Flanders there were many peculiarities of name, distribution and language. An archæologist had mapped out the distribution of dialects, which had been better preserved there than here, and this coincided with the condition that there had been an occupation by men of various tribes, among whom the land was apportioned.

Mr. FRANKS remarked that a subject of somewhat analogous nature had lately occupied the attention of the Anthropological Society of Berlin, being a communication from Herr Meitzen, printed in the "Zeitschrift für Ethnologie," 1872, Verhandelung, p. 134, with plans of villages and peasants' lands, showing what important ethnological conclusions can be drawn from the various dispositions of boundaries.

Mr EDWARD CHARLESWORTH exhibited two tusks of an existing African elephant, identical in form with those of the extinct mammoth.

The PRESIDENT remarked that since the tusks were said to come from Africa, they could not in any way be connected with the Mammoth. Had they, however, been Asiatic, there would have been nothing very surprising that they should present the form, more or less nearly, of the tusks usually observed in Elephas primigenius, which is undoubtedly at the present day represented by El. Indicus, if there be really any true specific distinction between them. It was impossible, he thought, to entertain the idea that the true Mammoth or hairy elephant was living down to the present day, and most certainly it would not be found in Africa.

The meeting then separated.

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