ABSTRACT
There are no traces of such a system in rural England, but communal churches may have existed in some towns. Here, two generalizations have been made: 'places with many churches became urban during the Anglo-Saxon period, and the founders of the churches were usually laypeople'.6 Some certainly did so in a collective capacity, and Domesday Book contains evidence for communal ownership, but normally advowson and profits remained with an individual.7 Many old English towns distinguished themselves by a large number of parishes: while Braunschweig, Rostock, and Hamburg each contained four, Cologne 12, and Toledo in Castile 28, York possessed 40, Norwich 46, and London 110.8 A generous supply of clergymen appears to be a general characteristic of the late medieval Ecclesia Anglicana. In the pre-Reformation diocese of Geneva, there may have been 50 households per secular priest, in sixteenth-century Castile over 40, but in England just 22.9
c.1075 and c.1125. By the twelfth century, parochial boundaries could ?e disputed down to the last yard. 12 A jury of elected townsmen, to take JUSt one example, defined the respective territories of Ely and Wisbech shortly after this date.U The priests were estate officials, chosen and invested by local lords, and the rights and endowments of the church were treated as seigneurial property, which could be sold and divided.'4
