Thus the royal domains of Frankish kings were apparently under manorial management, and practically divided up into manors. The boundaries or 'marchæ' of one manor often divided it from the next manor;[353] while one 'villa' or 'heim' often had sub-manors upon it, as in the case of Tidenham.[354]
Thus the 'villa,' 'heim,' or 'manor,' seems to have been the usual fiscal and judicial territorial unit under Frankish rule, as the manor once was and the parish now is in England. And this alone seems to afford a satisfactory explanation of the use of the word 'villa' in the early Frankish capitularies, and in the Salic laws. It is there used apparently for both private estates and the smallest usual territorial unit for judicial or fiscal purposes.[355]
When a law speaks of a person attacking or taking possession of the 'villa' of another, the 'villa' is clearly a private estate. But when it speaks of a [p260] crime committed 'between two villas,' the word seems to be used for a judicial jurisdiction, just as if we should say 'between two parishes.'
This double use of the word becomes intelligible if 'villa' may be used as 'manor,' and if the whole country—the terra regis with the rest—were divided in the fifth century into 'villas' or 'manors,' but hardly otherwise.
The remarkable passage in the Salic laws 'De Migrantibus,' which provides that no one can move into and settle in another 'villa' without the license of those 'qui in villa consistunt,' but that after a twelvemonth's stay unmolested he shall remain secure, 'sicut et alii vicini,' seems at first sight to imply a free village.[356] But another clause which permits the emigrant to settle if he has the royal 'præceptum' to do so,[357] suggests that the 'villa' in question was one of the royal 'villas'—a 'villa fiscalis' in the demesne of the Crown.[358]
Ham and villa in the Salic laws,
The Salic law has come down to us in Latin versions, but the Malberg glosses contain some indications that the word villa was used as a translation of variations of the word ham, then applied by the Franks to both kinds of villas in the manorial sense.
The old tradition recorded in the prologue to the [p261] later versions of the Salic laws, whatever it be worth, attributes their first compilation to four chosen men, whose names and residences are as follows:—Uuisogastis, Bodogastis, Salegastis, Uuidogastis, in loca nominancium, Bodochamæ, Salchamæ, Uuidochamæ.
In another version of the prologue instead of the words 'in loca nominancium,' the reading is 'in villis,' and the termination of the names is 'chem,' 'hem,' and 'em.' [359]
and in the Malberg glosses.