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Vill is a term used in English, Welsh and Irish history to describe a basic rural land unit, roughly comparable to that of a parish, manorialism, village or tithing.
The vill remained the basic rural unit after the Norman Conquest—land units in the Domesday Book are frequently referred to as villsG. O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (London 1967) p. 246—and into the late Middle Ages era. Whereas the manor was a unit of landholding, the vill was a territorial one—most vills did not tally physically with manor boundariesG. O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (London 1967) p. 247—and a public part of the royal administration. The vill had judicial and policing functions, including frankpledge, as well as responsibility for taxation, roads and bridges.Paul Vinogradoff, in The Cambridge Medieval History Vol III (Cambridge 1922) p. 483 It would also organise the communal pastures, the seasonal chronology of rural agriculture, and the three-field system.R. D. Davies, The Age of Conquest (1987) p. 130
With the Angevin growth of royal, as opposed to feudal, government, new duties were imposed upon the vill. By the early 12th century, the reeve and four villagers were required to attend the hundred court "on behalf of all";G. O. Sayles, The Medieval Foundations of England (London 1967) p. 443 in the 1166 Assize of Clarendon, "four of the more lawful men of each vill" were required to present malefactors.Quoted in R. Wickson, The Community of the Realm in Thirteenth Century England (London 1970) p. 92 Four men and the reeve were again called on for tax assessment in 1198; the Ordinance of 1242 on policing provided for "continuous watch ... in every vill by six men or four or less according to the number of the inhabitants".Quoted in R. Wickson, The Community of the Realm in Thirteenth Century England (London 1970) p. 101, and cf pp. 40–41
At the same time, the vill emerged as a legal entity in its own right, taking oppressive lords of the manor to court, or suing other vills, or purchasing privileges from the Crown, as well as repairing bridges and churches as required.R. Wickson, The Community of the Realm in Thirteenth Century England (London 1970) pp. 32–33 While retaining and even extending its hierarchical and socially stratified nature to the end, the medieval vill always remained a vibrant part of local rural life.C. Dyer, "The English Village Community and its Decline", Journal of British Studies 33 (1994) pp. 407–429
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