Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/387

 ii s. m. MAY -20, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

381

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY SO, 1011.

CONTENTS.-NO. 73.

NOTES : The Parish in England, 331 Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' 383 Roeites and Wroeites The Royal Exchange Farington of Worden, 385 Junius: New Edition Chotta Rousthwel Dutch Words in English " Capping" at Scottish Universities, 386.

-QUERIES :- William Penn's Works Christian Names used by Men and Women " Great George our King" Birthdays and the Change of Calendar Queen Victoria's "Great-Grandmother Pre-Reformation Urswick Vicars Sir William Ashton, 387 Authors Wanted -"Orgeat" Charles and Samuel Wesley Day, Halley, and Pyke Families, 388 Boys' Magazines in the Fifties Quebec Cathedral Bells -Essex Collins Da Costa D'Agar Col. Duroure Easter : Calculating its Date, 389 Goethe Quotation, 390.

REPLIES: "O.K.": New Explanation, .390 St. Helena Portraitist Terrace Shakespeare and the Prayer Book Clergyman and Crests, 391 Hannah More Portraits " Popylorum tibi " : Suppressions in ' Pickwick '' Pick- wick' Difficulties "Rhubarb," 392 Walter R. Benjamin Fishing in Classical Times Prince Charles of Bourbon- Capua, 393 The Authorized Version, 394 Medieval " Oberammergaus " Ananias as a Christian Name " Segundo," 395 The "Aleppo Merchant" Inn Litany : Spitting Marshal Tallard Ballantyne's Kelso Press, 396 May Day- R. R. Gillespie Church of England London Remains- Walton and Cotton Medal, 397 Corpse Bleed- ing Gratious Street' Hamlet ' in 1585 " C " and " T Lawrence Street -A Curious Box, 398

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'London Clubs ''Upper Norwood Athenaeum Record.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

OBITUARY : Mr. John Radcliffe.

Notices to Correspondents.

JElotes.

THE PARISH IN ENGLAND : ITS ORIGIN.

THE REV. O. J. REICHEL has published two short treatises ' The Rise of the Parochial System in England,' reprinted by W. Pollard of Exeter, from Trans. Exeter Dioc. Archi- tectural and Archaeological Society, Third Series, vol. ii. pt. iii, (1905), and ' Churches and Church Endowments in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,' reprinted from the Transactions of the Devon Association, vol. xxxix. pp. 360-93 (1907), which I re- commend to GREGORY GRUSELIER (ante, p. 88) ; and I venture to touch on a few points contained in, or raised by, their sub j ec t-matter.

Premising that the word " parish " in the ninth century designated not a geographical area, but " a cure of souls an administra- tio" Mr. Reichel maintains that " the parish as we understand it, is of post-Domesday creation," and points as evidence of this to

the fact " that a single Domesday estate appears in the thirteenth century as two or more parishes" ; whereas, to those who hold in Mr. Reichel' s words, that " the parish in pre-Domesday times was usually co-ter- minous with a manor," and, as another recent writer puts it, " was, in fact, the manor from the ecclesiastical point of view," it would seem consistent that the subdivision of manors, which went on after the Conquest until checked by the Act of Quia Emptores, should be attended by a multiplication of churches, and hence of parishes.

In the face of the declaration in Edgar's " Law 9 " that " there are now [1064 A.D.] three or four churches in many places where formerly there was but one," Mr. Reichel would limit the number of pre-Domesday churches in Devonshire, of the "mother" or independent rank as distingushed from private or manorial oratories, to the 23 which he has unearthed from Domesday Book.

So low an estimate is surprising ; but " had others existed," says Mr. Reichel, " Domesday Book would necessarily have recorded the value of their endowment." Yet, by his own showing, there were at least three churches extant before, and not men- tioned in D.B., namely, St. Mary Church, near Torquay ; St. James Church, near Exeter ; and Honeychurch ; and I should imagine that churches on ancient demesnes might be added to these. Moreover, seeing that D. B. is concerned only with taxable estates, and that, according to Mr. Reichel, " the grant of an estate or freehold manor to a mass-priest was a rare thing in Devon,' ' may we not suspect that there were churches whose incumbents enjoyed only a share in the common fields, and which thus escaped record ?

In his references to " such churches as in a later age were described as ' Elective,' ' Mr. Reichel uses the term " collegiate " in its general or etymological rather than in its commonly accepted and more restricted sense. But, to retain his own terminology, it may be said that he concerns himself with the constitution of two classes of churches the " Collegiate " and the " Donative," and as to the latter apparently assumes all " rural churches served by one quasi-independent priest " to have been " the creation of lords of manors," or, if I may coin an expression myself, to have been of Capellanal origin.

Of the interesting theory that the parish church in some cases originated in a com- munal foundation, we find no trace or hint