A HISTORY OF ESSEX unit which contained that church gave its name to the whole area ; and that area found its unity in no other conceivable cause than in the rights possessed over all of it by the single parish church. As the church on a great scale is said to have given unity to the kingdom, so, on a small one, it seems to me, the church gave to the parish its unity and its form. To take three extreme cases, Hornchurch, Berechurch and St. Lawrence are parishes to-day, but they were at first but the names of buildings. The name of West Donyland has given way to Berechurch, even as, a few miles across the Hertfordshire border, the name of Lefstaneschurch, now Layston, has taken the place of those names found in Domesday Book. 1 And ' St. Lawrence ' has supplanted the Domesday names of (East and West) Newland. In Essex Wimbish and Thunderley were once distinct parishes, and they are the subjects in Domesday of distinct entries. But in 1425 the vicarage of Thunderley was united to that of Wimbish, and ' as to the church of Thunderley,' Morant wrote, ' the place where it stood is now part of a field ' (ii. 561). Thunderley accordingly has vanished from the map. Wimbish, which has the church, now gives name to the whole. In the same way, ' Beauchamp St. Ethelbert' was once a distinct parish, but since 1473 ' Ovington and Beauchamp St. Ethelbert have been united together and presented to by the name of Ovington with the chapel of Albright . . . after which the chapel, growing out of use, was suffered entirely to decay ; but there are two distinct parsonage-houses and glebes.' 2 Ovington, because it has the parish church, has long given name to the whole, and indeed I have not even been able to locate Beauchamp St. Ethelbert for the purpose of the Domesday map. Enough has now been said, I hope, to make it clear that the church is the decisive factor in the local divisions of the county. If Springfield or Boreham, Arkesden or Finchingfield, are each of them but one ' civil parish,' it is because there was in each but one parish church. If Laver or Tolleshunt, on the contrary, is divided into three parishes, it is simply because there were three churches. It was not a matter of area at all. We have in Essex no example in which the ecclesiastical origin of such divisions is as obvious as in the cases cited from Norfolk by Professor Maitland himself. 3 Nor have we, as in Suffolk, a Domesday instance of the practice.* But Chignal St. James is still distinguished, as Beauchamp St. Ethelbert once was, by the invocation of its church, while in Margaret Roding and Margaretting we have two parishes distinguished by their patron saint, St. Margaret, from other Rodings and Ings, as ' Genevieve's Fornham ' was distinguished from the other Fornhams in Domesday. It is only when we look at the Domesday map and compare it with 1 See the Victoria History of Hertfordshire, i. 310. 2 Morant, ii. 338. 3 < Wiggenhall St. Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St. German, Wiggenhall St. Peter, Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen, Tilney cum Islington, Tilney All Saints, Tilney St. Lawrence, Terrington St. Clement, Terrington St. John, Walpole St. Peter, Walpole St. Andrew' (Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 367). 4 The present Fornham St. Genevieve is Genovevae [printed ' Genonevas '] Forham ' in Domesday (362/7), a distinction unnoticed by Prof. Maitland, and perhaps unique. 404
