ingham_,
"home of the Cressings." Town names of this sort, with which the map of
England is thickly studded, point us back to a time when the town was
supposed to be the stationary home of a clan.

[Footnote 1: Pronounced "toon."]

[Sidenote: The Old English township.]
[Sidenote: The manor.]
The Old English town had its _tungemot_, or town-meeting, in
which "by-laws" were made and other important business transacted.
The principal officers were the "reeve" or head-man, the "beadle" or
messenger, and the "tithing-man" or petty constable. These officers
seem at first to have been elected by the people, but after a while,
as great lordships grew up, usurping jurisdiction over the land, the
lord's steward and bailiff came to supersede the reeve and beadle.
After the Norman Conquest the townships, thus brought under the sway
of great lords, came to be generally known by the French name of
manors or "dwelling places." Much might be said about this change, but
here it is enough for us to bear in mind that a manor was essentially
a township in which the chief executive officers were directly
responsible to the lord rather than to the people. It would be
wrong, however, to suppose that the manors entirely lost their
self-government. Even the ancient town-meeting survived in them, in a
fragmentary way, in several interesting assemblies, of which the most
interesting were the _court leet_, for the election of certain
officers and the trial of petty offences, and the _court baron_,
which was much like a town-meeting.

[Sidenote: The parish.]
Still more of the old self-government would doubtless have survived
in the institutions of the manor if it had not been provided for in
another way. The _parish_ was older than the manor. After the
English had been converted to Christianity local churches were
gradually set up all over the country, and districts called parishes
were assigned for the ministrations of the priests. Now a parish
generally coincided in area with a township, or sometimes with a group
of two or three townships. In the old heathen times each town seems to
have had its sacred place or shrine consecrated to some local deity,
and it was a favourite policy with the Roman missionary priests to
purify the old shrine and turn it into a church. In this way the
township at the same time naturally became the parish.

[Sidenote: Township, manor, and parish.]
[Sidenote: The vestry-meeting.]
As we find it in later times, bo