Vill

Administrative unit containing about 5 to 10 Hides and inhabitants. Equivalent to the secular parish. The vill usually contained several manors. As the feudal system declined, the vill took over importance from the hundred and manor. Later, the parish took on the duties and responsibilities, for example during the nineteenth century, the sick, poor, and destitute sometimes relied on the parish for aid.

In Devonshire at the time of the Domesday Book there were 980 vills containing about 9000 hamlets or farms.

Ideas return! The UK government policy in recent years has been to devolve many duties and responsibilities to secular parish councils. (Note. These secular parish councils may share common boundaries with the Church of England parishes, but are different institutions.)

♦ Township, local district; small unit of lordship or fiscal assessment.

(Frame, Robin. Colonial Ireland, 1169-1369, 145)

♦ The smallest unit of government covering the village, or township, and the surrounding countryside. It was roughly equivalent to the parish, the smallest unit in ecclesiastical administration.

(Waugh, Scott. England in the Reign of Edward III, 238)

♦ A township; part of a territorial unit called a hundred, which is, in turn, a part of a county.

(Hogue, Arthur R. Origins of the Common Law, 258)