The New Lancashire Gazetteer, Or Topographical Dictionary: Containing an Accurate Description of the Several Hundreds, Boroughs, Market Towns, Parishes, Townships, and Hamlets, in the County Palatine of Lancaster (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The New Lancashire Gazetteer, or Topographical Dictionary: Containing an Accurate Description of the Several Hundreds, Boroughs, Market Towns, Parishes, Townships, and Hamlets, in the County Palatine of Lancaster

In the population census, published by order of government, a distinction is made between chapelr'ies and townships which at the present period does not strictly apply, those places only appearing as chapehies which are mentioned as such in the king's books, though several of the townships contain an episcopal chapel of more recent erection, and consequently are equally chapelries with the others. Townships seem to have been originally the same as tythings or villa; which, by the constitution of king Alfred, about the year 890, consisted of ten freeman, or frank pledges, and were subdivisions of the more ancient hundred. After the general institution of parishes, according to the best antiquaries, in the reign of king Edgar, about seventy years later, the tything, which was only a civil division, became merged or identified with the parish, which was an ecclesiastical division, and was considered as the more important. In the southern part of the kingdom a parish seldom contained more than one tything; but in the thinly peopled districts of the north this particular seems not to have been regarded, as there, indeed, the frank pledges, remote from each other, were scattered over such a wide waste of uncultivated country, that in many parts they could scarcely be said to form a vill or tything at all. At various periods many of these separate and distant dwellings of the freemen became subsequently the nucleus of a village, forming a modern township, several of which in Lancashire are commonly found in one parish.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.