o make a
formal perambulation of the parish boundaries on Ascension day or during
Rogation week. The latter is in the north of England still called "Gang
Week" or "Ganging Days" from this "ganging" or procession. The priest
of the parish with the churchwardens and the parochial officials headed
a crowd of boys who, armed with green boughs, beat with them the parish
border-stones. Sometimes the boys were themselves whipped or even
violently bumped on the boundary-stones to make them remember. The
object of taking boys was obviously to ensure that witnesses to the
boundaries should survive as long as possible. In England the custom is
as old as Anglo-Saxon days, as it is mentioned in laws of Alfred and
Aethelstan. It is thought that it may have been derived from the Roman
Terminalia, a festival celebrated on the 22nd of February in honour of
Terminus, the god of landmarks, to whom cakes and wine were offered,
sports and dancing taking place at the boundaries. In England a
parish-ale or feast was always held after the perambulation, which
assured its popularity, and in Henry VIII.'s reign the occasion had
become an excuse for so much revelry that it attracted the condemnation
of a preacher who declared "these solemne and accustomable processions
and supplications be nowe growen into a right foule and detestable
abuse." Beating the bounds had a religious side in the practice which
originated the term Rogation, the accompanying clergy being supposed to
beseech (_rogare_) the divine blessing upon the parish lands for the
ensuing harvest. This feature originated in the 5th century, when
Mamercus, bishop of Vienne, instituted special prayers and fasting and
processions on these days. This clerical side of the parish
bounds-beating was one of the religious functions prohibited by the
Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth; but it was then ordered that the
perambulation should continue to be performed as a quasi-secular
function, so that evidence of the boundaries of parishes, &c. might be
preserved (Gibson, _Codex juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani_ (1761) pp.
213-214). Bequests were sometimes made in connexion with bounds-beating.
Thus at Leighton Buzzard on Rogation Monday, in accordance with the will
of one Edward Wilkes, a London merchant who died in 1646, the trustees
of his almshouses accompanied the boys. The will was read and beer and
plum rolls distributed. A remarkable feature of the bequest was that
while the will is read one of th