TOWN, in its popular sense, is a large assemblage of adjoining or nearly ad joining houses, to which a market is usually incident. Formerly a wall seems to have been considered necessary to con stitute a town ; and the derivation of the word, in its Anglo-Saxon form 'tun,' is usually referred to the verb • tinan,' to shut or enclose ; in its Dutch form • tuyn,' it signifies a garden; and in its German form zaun,' it means a hedge. In legal language ' town ' corresponds with the Norman vill,' by which latter term it is frequently spoken of in order to dis tinguish it from the word town in its popular sense. A will or town is a sub division of a county, as a parish is part or subdivision of a diocese; the sill, the civil district, being usually co-extensive with the parish, the ecclesiastical district and, prima' fade, every parish is a vill, and every vill a parish. Many towns, however, not only in the popular, but in the legal sense of the term, contain several parishes ; and many parishes, particularly in the north of England, where the parishes are exceedingly large, contain several vills, which vills are usually called tithings or townships. As until the contrary is shown the law presumes towns (or villa) and parishes to be co extensive, Lord Coke goes so far as to say that it cannot be in law a vill unless it bath, or in times past hath had, a church, and celebration of divine service, sacra ments, and burials. But this, for which
no authority is given, appears to confound parish and vill, and to be inconsistent with the cases in which it has been held that a parish may consist of several villa. (1 Lord Raymond, 22.) The test pro by Lord Holt is, that a will must ravea constable, and that otherwise the place is only a hamlet, an assemblage of houses having no specific legal character. Hence a vill is sometimes called a con stablewick. Towns are divided into cities, boroughs, and upland towns, or (as we should now call them) country towns. Towns belonging to the last of these classes have been described as places which, though enclosed, are not governed, as cities and boroughs are, by their own elected officers. The Anglo Saxon tun' terminates the names of a Amid number of places in England ; and in the southern counties the farm enclo sure in which the homestead stands is usually called the barton in Law Latin, bertona.