It seems probable that the creation of parishes in England was the gradual result of circumstances, and was not fully effected till near the time of the Con quest. As Christianity became the uni versal religion, and as population in creased, the means of divine worship supplied by the bishoprics and monas teries became inadequate, and lords of manors began to build upon their own demesnes churches and oratories for the religious purposes of their families and tenants. Each founder assigned a de finite district, within which the functions of the minister officiating at his church were to be exercised, and expressly limited the burthen as well as the ad vantages of his ministry to the inhabi tants of that district. As these acts of piety tended to the advance of religion, and were in aid of the common treasury of the diocese, they were encouraged by the bishops, who readily consecrated the places of worship so established, and con sented that the minister or incumbent should be resident at his church, and receive for his maintenance, and for the use of that particular church, the tithes and offerings of the inhabitants, as well as any endowment or salary which the founder annexed to it. This endowment or salary usually consisted of a glebe, or a portion of land appropriated to that purpose, the produce of which, and of the ecclesiastical profits which arose within the territory limited by the found er, became the settled revenue of the church, and annexed to it in perpetuity. The last concession made to the lay founder was probably the patronage or right of presenting the clerk to the church, which, by the primitive constitu tion, belonged exclusively to the bishop ; and when this was obtained, these limited territories differed in no material respect from our modern parishes. Indeed it can scarcely admit of doubt that our parochial divisions arose chiefly from these lay-foundations, the differences in extent being accounted for by the vary ing limits appointed for them at their origin. Their names were derived from some favourite saint, from the site, or the lordship to which they belonged, or from the mere fancy of the respective founders. Such appears to have been the origin of the lay parishes ; and it is reasonable to conclude that as soon as this practice was established, the bishops and religious houses, in the districts or parishes in which they had reserved to themselves the right of presentation, followed the same course, by limiting the ecclesiastical profits of each church to the particular incumbent, and restricting the devotions as well as the offerings of the inhabitants to that church only.
The earliest notice of these lay founda tions of parishes is by Bede, about the year 700 (Hist. Eccl., lib. v. c. 4 and 5). By the end of the eighth century they had become frequent, as clearly appears from the charters of confirmation made to Croyland Abbey, by Bertulph, king of Mercia, in which several churches of lay-foundation are comchended. In the laws of king Edgar A.D. 970) there is an express provision t t every man shall pay his tithes to the most antrent church or monastery where he hears God's service ; " which I understand not otherwise," says Selden, " than any church or monastery whither usually, in respect of his commorancy or his parish, he repaired ; that is, his parish church or monastery." (History of Tithes, chap. ix. 1, 4.) Although the origin of parishes gene rally in England is pretty clearly ascer tained, the history of the formation of particular parishes is almost wholly un known, and no evidence whatever can be produced on the subject.
However satisfactory this account of the origin of parishes may be with refer ence to country parishes, it furnishes no explanation of the origin of parishes in towns—a subject which is involved in great obscurity ; and indeed the changes which the latter may be shown to have undergone within time of memory seem to point to a different principle of forma tion.
The country parishes appear to be nearly the same in name and number at the present time as they were at the time of Pope Nicholas's Taxation,' com piled in the reign of Edward I. (A.D. 1288); but in some of the large towns the number of parishes has very considerably decreased. Thus, in the city of London there are at present 108 parishes, though at the time of the 'Taxation' the number was 140; in like manner in Norwich the number has been reduced from 70 in the time of Edward I., to 37 at the present
day. In other antient towns, such as Bristol, York, and Exeter, the number does not appear to have materially changed, hut the names have been often altered. The particular causes of these variations it would be difficult to trace ; but greater changes might reasonably be expected in towns than in the country parishes, in consequence of more frequent fluctuations of wealth and population in the former. Where a decrease has taken place in the number of town parishes in the three last centuries, it is probably to be accounted for by the great reduction since the Re formation in the amount of oblations and what are called personal tithes, which in cities were almost the only provision for the parochial clergy.
The size of English parishes varies much in different districts. In the northern counties they are extremely large, forty square miles being no unusual area for a parish ; and, generally speaking, parishes in the north are said to average seven or eight times the area of the southern coun ties. (See Rickman's Preface to Popula glen Returns of 1831.) The boundaries of parishes in former times appear to have been often ill-defined and uncertain : but since the establishment of a compulsory provision for the poor by means of assess ments of the inhabitants of parishes, the limits have in general been ascertained with sufficient precision.
It is not easy to ascertain the exact number of parishes in England and Wales; Air although they have been enumerated on several occasions, the number ascer tained has usually depended upon the object and purpose of the particular enu meration. Thus in the returns under the Poor Law Commission, a parish is gene rally considered as a place or district supporting its own .r, and from these returns it appears t t the total number of such places is 14,490. But in this number are included many subdivisions of parishes, such as the townships in the northern counties, which by stet. 13 & 14 Car. II., c. 12, f. 21, are permitted to maintain their own poor, and also other places which by act of parliament, though not parishes, have the same privilege. An other difficulty, which has probably affected all the enumerations which have hitherto been made, is the large number of doubtful parishes. It is somewhat un certain at the present day what circum stances constitute a parish church. In the Saxon times, and for some centuries after the Conquest, the characteristics which distinguished a parish church from what were called field-churches, oratories, and chapels, were the rites of baptism and sepulture. (Selden, History of Tithes, ch. ix. 4; Digge's Parsons' Counsellor, part i., chap. xii.) But in modern times this line of distinction would include as parish churches almost all chapels-of-ease, and also the churches and parochial chapels erected under the stet. 58 Geo. III., c. 45, " for building additional churches in populous places." The various views entertained of the constituents of a parish will in a great measure account for the different results of the several enumera tions which have been made ; and this is in fact one of the reasons assigned by Camden for the difference between the number of the parish churches in Eng land and Wales stated to Henry VIII. in 1520, by Cardinal Wolsey, and that stated about a century after to James I., the former being 9407, and the latter 9284. (Camden's Britannia, 161-2.) The sum total of the parishes mentioned in Pope Nicholas's Taxation' above referred tq as nearly as can be ascertained, appears to be between these two accounts. Black stone says that the number of parishes in England and Wales had been computed at 10,000, but gives rather a questionable authority for his statement. (Comnien taries, vol. i., p. 111.) In the Preface to the Population Returns' of 1831, above referred to, the number of parishes and parochial chapelries in England and Wales is said to be 10,700, and in Scot land 948; but in the next page, where a summary of the number of parishes in the different dioceses is given, the total is stated as 11,077. Perhaps the number of parishes in England and Wales (mean ing by the term simply a district annexed to a church whose Incumbent is by law entitled to the perception of tithes in that district) may be taken to be about 11,000.
(See Holland's ' Observations on the Origin of Parishes,' in Hearne's Dis courses, vol. i., p. 194 ; and Whitakees History of Whalley, book ii., chap. 1.)