[41] We do not mean to imply that there were not wide stretches of waste land which were regarded as being ‘extra-villar,’ or common to several vills.
[42] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 547.
[43] This of course would not be true of cases in which the lands of various villages were intermixed in one large tract of common field. As to these ‘discrete vills,’ see Hist. Eng. Law, i. 549.
[44] This name-giving cluster will usually contain the parish church and so will enjoy a certain preeminence. But we are to speak of a time when parish churches were novelties.
[45] See Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Germanen, especially ii. 119 ff.
[46] When the hamlets bear names with such ancient suffixes as -ton, -ham, -by, -worth, -wick, -thorpe, this of course is in favour of their antiquity. On the other hand, if they are known merely by family names such as Styles’s, Nokes’s, Johnson’s or the like, this, though not conclusive evidence of, is compatible with their modernity. Meitzen thinks that in Kent and along the southern shore the German invaders founded but few villages. The map does not convince me that this inference is correct.
[47] When more than five-and-twenty team-lands or thereabouts are ascribed to a single place, we shall generally find reason to believe that what is being described is not a single vill. See above, p. [13].
[48] Inq. Com. Cant. 51 fol. In a few cases our figures will involve a small element of conjecture.
[49] D. B. i. 248. We have tried to avoid vills in which it is certain or probable that some other tenant in chief had an estate.
[50] D. B. i. 88. We have tried to make sure that no tenant in chief save the bishop had land in any of these vills, and this we think fairly certain, except as regards Harptree and Norton. There are now two Harptrees, East and West, and four or more Nortons.