II. THE TRIBAL HOUSEHOLDS OF GERMAN SETTLERS.
Now, if we were to rely upon this evidence of Tacitus alone, the conclusion would be inevitable that the German and Roman land-systems were so nearly alike in their tendencies that they naturally and simply joined in producing the manorial system of later times. And there can be little doubt that, speaking broadly, this would be a substantially correct statement of the case.
Were there other kinds of settlements not so manorial?
But before we can fairly and finally accept it as such, it is necessary to consider another branch of evidence which has sometimes been understood to point to a kind of settlement not manorial. [p347]
The patronymic suffix ing or ingas to local names.
The evidence alluded to is that of local names ending in the remarkable suffix ing or ingas. It is needful to examine this evidence, notwithstanding its difficult and doubtful nature. It raises a question upon which the last word has by no means yet been spoken, and out of which interesting and important results may eventually spring. The impossibility of arriving, in the present state of the evidence, at a positive conclusion, is no reason why its apparent bearing should not be stated, provided that suggestion and hypothesis be not confounded with verified fact. At all events, the inquiry pursued in this essay would be open to the charge of being one-sided if it were not alluded to.
Do they represent clan settlements?
The reader of recent literature bearing upon the history of the English conquest of Britain will have been struck by the confidence and skill with which, in the absence of historical, or even, in some cases, traditional evidence, the story of the invasion and occupation of England has been sometimes created out of little more than the combination of physical geography with local names, on the hypothesis that local names ending in 'ing,' or its plural form 'ingas,' represent the original clan settlements of the German conquerors. Writers who rely upon G. L. Von Maurer's theory of the German mark-system have also naturally called attention to local names with this suffix as evidence of settlements on the basis of the free village community as opposed to those of a manorial type.
Local names with this suffix, it is hardly needful to say, are found on the Continent as well as in England. [p348]
How, it may well be asked, does the evidence they afford of clan settlements or free village communities comport with the thoroughly manorial character of the German settlements on the lines described by Tacitus?
What Germans did Tacitus describe?
Now, in order to answer this question, it must first be considered how far the description of Tacitus covers the whole field—whether it refers to the Germans as a whole, or whether only to those tribes who had come within Roman influences, and so had sooner, perhaps, than the rest, relinquished their earlier tribal habits to follow manorial lines.
So far as his description is geographical it is very methodical.
Those within the limes.
(1) There are the Germans within the Roman limes.[525] These included the tribes who, following up the conquests of Ariovistus, had settled on the left bank of the Rhine in what was then called the province of Upper Germany, including the present Elsass and the country round the confluence of the Rhine with the Maine and Moselle. These tribes were the Tribocci, Nemetes and Vangiones.[526] Further, there were the tribes or emigrants, many of them German, gradually settling within the limits of the 'Agri Decumates.' Lastly, there were the Batavi and other tribes settled in the province of Lower Germany at the mouths of the Rhine, shading off into Belgic Gaul.
Northern tribes outside it.
(2) There were the Northern tribes outside the Roman province,[527] some of them tributary to the [p349] Romans and some of them hostile, the Frisii, the Chatti (or Hessians), and other tribes, reaching from the German Ocean to the mountains, and occupying the country embracing the upper valleys of the Weser and the Elbe, some of which tribes afterwards joined the Franks and Saxons.
The Suevic tribes on the borders.
(3) There were the Suevic tribes[528] so familiar to Cæsar, and amongst whom were the Angli and Varini, the Marcomanni and Hermunduri, always hovering over the limes of the provinces from the Rhine and Maine to the Danube: some of them hostile and some of them friendly; some of whom afterwards mingled with the Franks and Saxons, but most of whom were absorbed in the Alamannic and the Bavarian tribes who finally, following the course of the previous emigration, passed over the limes and settled within the 'Agri Decumates' in Rhætia, and in the Roman province of Upper Germany.
Distant tribes.
(4) Behind all these tribes with whom the Romans came in contact were others vaguely described as lying far away to the north and east.
The habits of which of these widely different classes of German tribes did Tacitus describe?
The Suevic tribes most in his mind probably.
Probably it would not be safe to go further than to say that the Germans whose manners he was most likely to describe were those chiefly Suevic tribes hovering round the limes of the provinces, especially of the 'Agri Decumates,' with whom the Romans had most to do. It is at least possible that he left out of his picture, on the one hand, those distant northern or eastern tribes who may still have retained their early nomadic habits, and on the other hand those [p350] Germans who had silently and peaceably settled within the limes of the Roman provinces, and so had become half Roman.[529]
But to what class are we to refer the settlements represented by the local names with the supposed patronymic suffix?
The patronymic local names imply fixed settlement.
The previous study of the Welsh and Irish tribal system ought to help us to judge what they were.
In the first place we have clearly learned that in tracing the connexion of the tribal system with local names, the fixing of a particular personal name to a locality implies settlement. It implies not only a departure from the old nomadic habits on the part of the whole tribe, but also the absence within the territory of the tribe of those redistributions of the tribesmen among the homesteads—the shifting of families from one homestead to another—which prevailed apparently in Wales and certainly in Ireland to so late a date.
Following the parallel experience of the Irish and Welsh tribal system we may certainly conclude that in the early semi-nomadic and shifting tribal stage described by Cæsar the names of places, like those of the Irish townlands, would follow local peculiarities of wood or stream or plain, and that not until there was a permanent settlement of particular families in fixed abodes could personal names attach themselves to places, or suffixes be used which in themselves involve the idea of a fixed abode.
They are suggestive of the tribal household.
Then with regard to the nature of the tribal settlements which these local names with a patronymic [p351] suffix may represent, surely the actual evidence of the Welsh laws and the 'Record of Carnarvon,' as to what a tribal household was, must be far more likely to guide us to the truth than any theoretical view of the 'village community' under the German mark-system, or even actual examples of village communities existing under complex and totally different circumstances at the present time, valuable as such examples may be as evidence of how the descendants of tribesmen comport themselves after perhaps centuries of settlement on the same ground.
The joint holding of a family down to second cousins.
Now we have seen that the tribal household in Wales was the joint holding of the heirs of a common ancestor from the great-grandfather downwards, with redistributions within it to make equality, first between brothers, then between cousins, and finally between second cousins; the youngest son always retaining the original homestead in these divisions. The Weles, Gwelys, and Gavells of the 'Record of Carnarvon' were late examples of such holdings. They were named after the common ancestor and occupied by his heirs. Such holdings, so soon as there was fixed settlement in the homesteads, were obviously in the economic stage in which, according to German usage, the name of the original holders with the patronymic suffix might well become permanently attached to them.[530]
The division, the youngest retaining the family homestead.
We may then, following the Welsh example, fairly expect the distinctive marks of the tribal household to be joint holding for two or three generations, and then the ultimate division of the holding among male heirs, the youngest retaining the original ancestral homestead. [p352]
We know how persistently the division among male heirs was adhered to in Wales and in Ireland under the custom of Gavelkind,[531] though of the peculiar right of the youngest son to the original homestead we have no clear trace in Ireland. Possibly St. Patrick was strong enough to reverse in this instance a strong tribal custom. But in Wales the succession of the youngest was, as we have seen, so deeply ingrained in the habits of the people that it was observed even among the taeogs. The elder sons received tyddyns of their own in the taeog trev in their father's lifetime, whilst the youngest son remained in his father's tyddyn, and on his death succeeded to it.
The persistence in division among heirs and the right of the youngest were very likely therefore to linger as survivals of the tribal household.
Survival of this equal division and the right of the youngest.
Now it is well known that in the south-east of England, and especially in Kent, the custom of Gavelkind has continued to the present day, retaining the division among male heirs and historical traces of the right of the youngest son to the original homestead. In other districts of England and in many parts of Europe and Asia the division among heirs has passed away, but the right of the youngest—Jüngsten-Recht—has survived.
Mr. Elton, in his 'Origins of English History,' has carefully described the geographical distribution in Western Europe of the practice, not so much of division among heirs, as of the right of the youngest to [p353] inherit the original homestead, the latter having survived in many districts where the other has not.
In Wales and S.E. England—the old 'Saxon shore.'
In England he finds the right of the youngest most prevalent in the south-east counties—in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, in a ring of manors round London, and to a less extent in Essex and the East Anglian kingdom,—i.e. as Mr. Elton describes it, in a district about co-extensive with what in Roman times was known as the Saxon shore. A few examples occur in Hampshire, and there is a wide district where the right of the youngest survives in Somersetshire, which formed for so long a part of what the Saxons called 'Wealcyn.' [532]
Further, as the custom is found to apply to copyhold or semi-servile holdings, it would not be an impossible conjecture that previously existing original tribal households were, at some period, upon conquest, reduced into serfs, the division of the holdings among heirs being at the same time stopped, so as to keep the holdings in equal 'yokes,' or 'yard-lands,' thus leaving the right of the youngest as the only point of the pre-existing tribal custom permitted to survive.
Survival of the 'right of the youngest' on the Continent.
A similar process, perhaps in connexion with the Frankish conquest of parts of Germany, possibly had been gone through in many continental districts. Mr. Elton traces the right of the youngest in the north-east corner of France and in Brabant, in Friesland, in Westphalia, in Silesia, in Wirtemberg, in the Odenwald and district north of Lake Constance, in Suabia, in Elsass, in the Grisons. It is found also in [p354] the island of Borneholm, though it seems to be absent in Denmark and on the Scandinavian mainland.[533]
Attention has been called to this curious survival of the right of the youngest because it forms a possible link between the Welsh, English, and continental systems of settlements in tribal households.
We now pass to the more direct consideration of the local names with the supposed patronymic suffix.
Wide extension and meaning of the patronymic suffix 'ing,' &c.
These peculiar local names are scattered over a wide area; the suffix varying from the English ing with its plural 'ingas,' the German ing or ung with its plural ingas, ingen, ungen, ungun, and the French 'ign' or igny, to the Swiss[534] equivalent ikon, the Bohemian ici,[535] and the wider Slavonic itz or witz.
It seems to be clear that the termination ing, in its older plural form ingas, in Anglo-Saxon, not by any means always,[536] but still in a large number of cases, had a patronymic significance.
We have the evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle itself that if Baldo were the name of the parent, his children or heirs would in Anglo-Saxon be called Baldings[537] (Baldingas).
There is also evidence that the oldest historical form of settlement in Bohemian and Slavic districts [p355] was in the tribal or joint household—the undivided family sometimes for many generations herding together in the same homestead (dĕdiny).[538]
And the number of local names ending in ici, or owici, changing in later times into itz and witz, taken together with the late prevalence of the undivided household in these semi-Slavonic regions, so far as it goes, confirms the connexion of the patronymic termination with the holding of the co-heirs of an original holder.[539]
The geographical distribution of local names with the patronymic termination is shown on the same map as that on which were marked the position of the 'hams' and 'heims.'
In England.
First, as regards England, the map will show that in the distribution of places mentioned in the Domesday survey ending in ing, the largest proportion occurs east of a line drawn from the Wash to the Isle of Wight: just as in the case of the 'hams,' only that in Sussex the greatest number of 'ings' occurs instead of in Essex.
It is worthy of notice that names ending in ingham or ington are not confined so closely to this district, but are spread much more evenly all over England.[540] Further, it will be observed that the counties where the names ending in ing occur without a suffix are remarkably coincident with those where Mr. Elton has found survivals of the right of the youngest, i.e. the old 'Saxon shore.' [p356]
In Picardy.
Next, as to the opposite coast of Picardy, the ings and hems are alike, for very nearly all the hems in the Survey of the Abbey of St. Bertin of A.D. 850 are preceded by ing, i.e. they are inghems. The proportion was found to be sixty per cent.[541] In this north-east corner of France the right of the youngest, as we have seen, also survives.
In the Moselle valley and round Troyes and Langres.
There are also many patronymic names of places in the Moselle valley and in Champagne around Troyes and Langres.[542]
In Frisia.
Next, as to Frisia, eight per cent. of the names mentioned in the Fulda records end in 'inga,' two and a half per cent. in ingaheim, and three per cent. in ing with some other suffix, making thirteen and a half per cent. in all. In Friesland also there are survivals of the right of the youngest.
In Germany most densely in the old Roman provinces of the 'Agri Decumates.'
Over North Germany, outside the Roman limes, the proportion is much less, shading off in the Fulda records from six to three, two, and one per cent.
But the greatest proportion occurs within the Roman limes in the valleys of the Neckar and the Upper Danube, where (according to the Fulda records) it rises to from twenty to twenty-four per cent.,[543] shading off to ten per cent. towards the Maine, and in the present Elsass, and to nine per cent. southwards in the neighbourhood of St. Gall.[544] [p357]
This chief home of the 'ings' was the western part of the district of the 'Agri Decumates' of Tacitus and the northern province of Rhætia, gradually occupied by the Alamannic and Bavarian tribes in the later centuries of Roman rule.
Whether they entered these districts under cover of the Roman peace, or as conquerors to disturb it, the founders of the 'ings' evidently came from German mountains and forests beyond the limes.
North of the limes chiefly in Grapfeld and Thuringia.
North of the Danube names with this suffix extend chiefly through the region of the old Hermunduri into the district of Grapfeld and Thuringia, where they were in the Fulda records six per cent.
This remarkable geographical distribution in Germany suggests important inferences.
They suggest settlements
(1) The attachment of the personal patronymic to the name of a particular locality implies in Germany no less than in Ireland and Wales a permanent settlement in that locality, and so far an abandonment of nomadic habits and even of the frequent redistributions and shifting of residences within the tribal territory.
within Roman provinces,
(2) The occurrence of these patronymic local names most thickly within the Roman limes and near to it, points to the fact that the Roman rule was the outside influence which compelled the abandonment of the semi-nomadic and the adoption of the settled form of life.
possibly manorial.
(3) The addition in some cases—most often in Flanders and in England, which were both Roman [p358] provinces—of the suffix ham to the patronymic local name, although most probably a later addition, and possibly the result of conquest, at least reminds us of the possibility already noticed that even a villa or ham or manor, with a servile population upon it, might be the possession of a tribal household, who thus might be the lords of a manorial estate.
Offshoots from Suevic tribes who became Alamanni.
(4) Considering the geographical distribution of the patronymic termination, beginning in Thuringia and Grapfeld, but becoming most numerous in Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates,' it is almost impossible to avoid the inference that it is in most cases connected with settlements in these Roman districts of offshoots from the old Suevic tribe of the Hermunduri—viz. Thuringi, Juthungi, and others who, settling in these districts during Roman rule, became afterwards lost in the later and greater group of the Alamanni.
Forced settlement of Alamanni in Belgic Gaul,
and possibly in England.
This inference might possibly be confirmed by the fact that the isolated clusters of names ending in 'ing' on the west of the Rhine, correspond in many instances with the districts into which we happen to know that forced colonies of families of these and other German tribes had been located after the termination of the Alamannic wars of Probus, Maximian, and Constantius Clorus. These colonies of læti were planted, as we have seen, in the valley of the Moselle, and the names of places ending in 'ing' are numerous there to this day. They were planted in the district of the Tricassi round Troyes and Langres, and here again there are numerous patronymic names. They were planted in the district of the Nervii round Amiens close to the cluster of names ending in 'ingahem,' so many of which in the ninth century are [p359] found to belong to the Abbey of St. Bertin. Lastly—and this is a point of special interest for the present inquiry—we know that similar deportations of tribesmen of the Alamannic group were repeatedly made into Britain, and thus the question arises whether the places ending in 'ing' in England may not also mark the sites of peaceable or forced settlements of Germans under Roman rule.
They lie, as we have seen, chiefly within the district of the Saxon shore, i.e. east of a line between the Wash and the Isle of Wight, just as was the case also with the survivals of the right of the youngest.
If evidence had happened to have come to hand of a similar deportation of Alamannic Germans into Frisia instead of Frisians into Gaul, the coincidence would be still more complete.
Such settlements naturally in tribal households without slaves.
The suggestion is very precarious. Still, it might be asked, where should clusters of tribal households of Germans resembling the Welsh Weles and Gavells be more likely to perpetuate their character and resist for a time manorial tendencies than in these cases of peaceable or forced emigration into Roman provinces? Who would be more likely to do so than troublesome septs (like that of the Cumberland 'Grames' in the days of James I.) deported bodily to a strange country, and settled, probably not on private estates, but on previously depopulated public land, without slaves, and without the possibility of acquiring them by making raids upon other tribes?
Not necessarily Alamannic.
Now, according to Professor Wilhelm Arnold, the German writer who has recently given the closest attention to these local names, the patronymic suffix [p360] 'ingen' is one of the distinctive marks of settlements of Alamannic and Bavarian tribes, and denotes that the districts wherein it is found have at some time or another been conquered or occupied by them. The heims, on the other hand, in this writer's view, are in the same way indicative of Frankish settlements.[545]
The view of so accurate and laborious a student must be regarded as of great authority. But the foregoing inquiry has led in both cases to a somewhat different suggestion as to their meaning. The suffix heim is Anglo-Saxon as well as Frankish, and translating itself into villa and manor seems to represent a settlement or estate most often of the manorial type. So that it seems likely, that whatever German tribes at whatever time came over into the Roman province and usurped the lordship of existing villas, or adopted the Roman villa as the type of their settlements, would probably have called them either weilers or heims according to whether they used the Roman or the German word for the same thing.
And in the same way it also seems likely, that whatever tribes, at whatever time, by their own choice or by forced colonisation, settled in house communities of tribesmen with or without a servile population under them, would be passing through the stage in which they might naturally call their settlements or [p361] homesteads after their own names, using the patronymic suffix ing.
It is undoubtedly difficult to obtain any clear indication of the time[546] when these settlements may have been made. Nor, perhaps, need they be referred generally to the same period, were it not for the remarkable fact that the personal names prefixed to the suffix in England, Flanders, the Moselle valley, round Troyes and Langres, in the old Agri Decumates (now Wirtemburg), and in the old Rhætia (now Bavaria), and even those in Frisia, were to a very large extent identical.
The names are not clan names, but personal names.
But the identity of the names throughout is very remarkable.
This identity is so striking, that if the names were, as some have supposed, necessarily clan-names, it might be impossible to deny that the English and continental districts were peopled actually by branches of the same clans. But it must be admitted that, as the names to [p362] which the peculiar suffix was added were personal names and not family or clan names—John and Thomas, and not Smith and Jones—it would not be safe to press the inference from the similarity too far. Baldo was the name of a person. There may have been persons of that name in every tribe in Germany. The Baldo of one tribe need not be closely related to the Baldo of another tribe, any more than John Smith need be related to John Jones. The households of each Baldo would be called Baldings, or in the old form Baldingas; but obviously the Baldings of England need have no clan-relationship whatever to the Baldings of Upper Germany.[547] Nevertheless, the striking similarity of mere personal names goes for something, and it is impossible to pass it by unnoticed. The extent of it may be shown by a few examples.
In the following list are placed all the local names mentioned in the Domesday Survey of Sussex, beginning with the first two letters of the alphabet in which the peculiar suffix occurs, whether as final or not,[548] and opposite to them similar personal or local [p363] names taken from the early records of Wirtemberg, i.e. the district of the Rhine, Maine, and Neckar, formerly part of the 'Agri Decumates.'
In Sussex.
| Sussex. | Wirtemberg. |
|---|---|
| Achingeworde | Acco, Echo, Eccho, Achelm |
| Aldingeborne | Aldingas |
| Babintone | Babinberch, Babenhausen, Bebingon |
| Basingeham | Besigheim |
| Bechingetone | Bechingen |
| Beddingesjham | Bedzingeswilaeri |
| Belingeham | Bellingon, Böllingerhof |
| Berchinges | Bercheim |
| Bevringetone | |
| Bollintun | Bollo, Bollinga |
| Botingelle | Böttinger |
| Brislinga | Brisgau |
In Picardy.
As regards the supposed patronymic names in the district between Calais and St. Omer, Mr. Taylor states that 80 per cent. are found also in England.[549]
In the Moselle valley.
We may take as a further example the resemblance between names of places occurring in Sprüner's maps of 'Deutschlands Gaue' in the Moselle valley and those of places and persons mentioned in early Wirtemberg charters.
| Moselle Valley. | Wirtemberg. |
|---|---|
| Beringa | Beringerus |
| Eslingis | Esslingen |
| Frisingen | Frieso, Frisingen |
| Gundredingen | Gundrud |
| Heminingsthal | Hemminbah |
| Holdingen | Holda |
| Hasmaringa | Hasmaresheim |
| Lukesinga | Lucas, Lucilunburch [p364] |
| Munderchinga | Mundricheshuntun, Munderkingen |
| Ottringas | Oteric, Otrik |
| Putilinga | Pettili, Pertilo |
| Uffeninga | Ufeninga |
| Uttingon | Uto, Uttinuuilare |
In Champagne.
The following coincidences[550] occur in the modern Champagne, which embraces another district into which forced emigrants were deported.
| Champagne. | England. | Wirtemberg. |
|---|---|---|
| Autigny | Edington | Eutingen |
| Effincourt | Effingham | Oeffingen |
| Euffigneux | Uffington | Offingen |
| Alincourt | Allington | — |
| Arrigne | Arrington | Erringhausen |
| Orbigny | Orpington | Erpfingen |
| Attigny | Attington | Atting |
| Etigny | Ettinghall | Oettinger |
| Bocquegney | Buckingham | Böchingen |
| Bettigny | Beddington | Böttingen |
And so on in about forty cases.
A comparison of the fifteen similar names in Frisia occurring in the Fulda records, with other similar names of places or persons in England and Wirtemberg, gives an equally clear result.
In Frisia.
| Frisia.[551] | Wirtemberg.[552] | England. |
|---|---|---|
| Auinge | Au, Auenhofen | Avington (Berks and Hants) |
| Baltratingen | Baldhart, Baldingen | Beltings (Kent) |
| Belinge | Bellingon | Bellingdon, Bellings (Several counties) |
| Bottinge | Böttingen | Boddington (Gloucester, Northampton) |
| Creslinge | Creglingen, Chrezzingen | Cressing (Essex), Cressingham (Norfolk) |
| Gandingen | ———— | ———— |
| Gutinge | ———— | Guyting (Gloucester), Getingas (Surrey) |
| Hustinga | ———— | ———— |
| Huchingen | Huchiheim, Huc = Hugo | Hucking (Kent) |
| Husdingun | ———— | ———— |
| Rochinge | Roingus, Rohinc | Rockingham (Notts) |
| Suettenge | Suittes, Suitger | ———— |
| Wacheringe | Uuachar | Wakering (Essex) |
| Wasginge | Uuassingun | Washington (Sussex) |
| Weingi | Wehingen | ———— |
The inferences to be drawn from the similarity.
It is impossible to follow out in greater detail these remarkable resemblances between the personal names which appear with a patronymic suffix in the local names in England and Frisia, and certain well-defined districts west of the Rhine, and the local and personal names mentioned in the Wirtemberg charters. The foregoing instances must not be regarded as more than examples. And for the reasons already given it would also be unwise to build too much upon this evident similarity in the personal names, but still it should be remembered that the facts to be accounted for are—(1) The concentration of these places with names having a supposed patronymic termination in certain defined districts mostly within the old Roman provinces. (2) The practical identity throughout all these districts of so many of the personal names to which this suffix is attached.
The first fact points to these settlements in tribal households having taken place by peaceable or forcible emigration during Roman rule, or very soon after, at all events at about the same period. The second fact points to the practical homogeneity of the German tribes, whose emigrants founded the settlements which [p366] in England, Flanders, around Troyes and Langres, on the Moselle, in Wirtemberg, in Bavaria, and also in Frisia, bear the common suffix to their names.
The facts already mentioned of the survival to a great extent in the same districts, strikingly so in England, of the right of the youngest, and in Kent of the original form of the local custom of Gavelkind, point in the same direction.
Taking all these things together, we may at least regard the economic problem involved in them as one deserving closer attention than has yet been given to it.
The settlements in tribal households may have been manors.
In conclusion, turning back to the direct relation of these facts to the process of transition of the German tribal system into the later manorial system, it must be remembered that the holdings of tribal households might quite possibly be, from the first, embryo manors with serfs upon them. They might be settlements precisely like those described by Tacitus, the lordship of which had become the joint inheritance of the heirs of the founder. As a matter of fact, the actual settlements in question had at all events become manors before the dates of the earliest documents. We have seen, e.g., that the villas belonging to the monks of St. Bertin, with their almost invariable suffix 'ingahem,' were manors from the time of the first records in the seventh century, and they may never have been anything else. We have seen that in the year 645 the founder of the abbey gave to the monks his villa called Sitdiu, and its twelve dependent villas (Tatinga villa, afterwards Tatingahem, among them)[553] with the slaves and coloni upon them. They seem to [p367] have been, in fact, so many manorial farms just like those which, as we learned from Gregory of Tours, Chrodinus in the previous century founded and handed over to the Church.
They at least ultimately became manorial.
We have not found, therefore, in this inquiry into the character of the settlements with local names ending in the supposed patronymic suffix, doubtful as its result has proved, anything which conflicts with the general conclusion to which we were brought by the manorial character of the Roman villa and the manorial tendency of the German tribal system as described by Tacitus, viz. that as a general rule the German settlements made upon the conquest of what had once been Roman provinces were of a strictly manorial type. If the settlements with names ending in ing were settlements of læti or of other emigrants during Roman rule, taking at first the form of tribal households, they at least became manors like the rest during or very soon after the German conquests. If, on the other hand, they were later settlements of the conquerors of the Roman provinces, or of emigrants following in the wake of the conquests, they none the less on that account soon became just as manorial as those Roman villas which by a change of lordship and translation of words may have become German heims or Anglo-Saxon hams.
It is certainly possible that during a short period, especially if they held no serfs or slaves, tribal households may have expanded into free village communities. But to infer from the existence of patronymic local names that German emigration at all generally took the form of free village communities would surely not be consistent with the evidence.
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