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386
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
amalgamation of York and Worcester, by the shifting condidons
west of Wiltshire, and by the occasional holding of two
sees by a single bishop. An energetic bishop in a small diocese,
such as Wulfstan in the now independent Worcester and Giso
at Wells, could leave his mark, but evidence ofsuch local and
personal government is scanty.
The lack of organization and the fusion of lay and clerical in
the higher spheres had their counterpart on a lower level. It is
often said, and with truth, that the rural parishes of England
were in great part delimited and village churches in existence
before the Conquest on the sites where their successors still
stand, but the modern term 'parish* has canonical and administrative
implications unknown to pre-Conquest England. Save
for a few districts, such as Kent and Northumbria north of the
Wear, where the
principal
churches were minsters founded by
bishops or by groups of missionary save also for a
priests, few
surviving semi-canonical establishments, the churches of Eng
land were proprietary churches (eigenkircberi) : that is to say, they
had been founded by landowners and other individuals or
groups of individuals who 'owned* them. Churches were in
truth extremely numerous in Anglo/Saxon England, though
the total population ofthe country was probably less than one-
and-a-half millions. They were equally numerous both in
country and town: Suffolk, for example, contained over 420,
and the town of Norwich, with a population of 6,500, had
20 churches and 43 chapels. Their owners came from all
the free classes: many of the richest belonged to the king, the
principal magnates, and bishops; a large number, from the
tenth century onwards, to the monasteries; of the remainder
many belonged to small landowners and (especially in towns
and in the Danelaw) to groups of two or more freemen. It
was not uncommon for six, eight, or even twelve men to
own a church, while afraction ofa church might by inheritance
come to be shared by half a dozen heirs. The ownership of
a church conferred advantages both spiritual and material.
The owner had the right to appoint the priest, from whom
he very frequently demanded a substantial entrance fee; he