76 THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND. [book ⅛
land comprised within it is divided into parishes,
hamlets, vills and liberties.
Strictly speaking, the Shire, apart from the units
that make it up, possesses little more land than
that which the town-hall, the gaol, or the hospital
may cover. When for the two latter institu-
tions we substitute the fortress of the king, and
a cathedral, which was the people’s and not the
bishop’s, we have as nearly as possible the Anglo-
saxon shire-property, and the identity of the two
divisions seems proved. Just as the Ga (pagus)
contains the Marks (vic os), and the territory of
them all, taken together, makes up the territory of
the Ga, so does the Shire contain hamlets, parishes
and liberties, and its territorial expanse is distri-
buted into them. As then the word Mark is used
to denote two distinct things,—a territorial division
and a corporate body,—so does the word Ga or
Scir denote both a machinery for government and
a district in which such machinery prevails. The
number of Marks included in a single Ga must have
varied partly with the variations of the land itself,
its valleys, hills and meadows : to this cause may
have been added others arising, to some extent,
from the original military organization and distri-
bution, from the personal character of a leader, or
from the peculiar tenets and customs of a particular
Mark. But proximity, and settlement upon the
same land, with the accompanying participation
in the advantages of wood and water, are ever the
most active means of uniting men in religious and
social communities; and it is therefore reasonable
CH. III.]
THE GA' OR SOΓR.
77
to believe that the influence most felt in the ar-
rangement of the several Gas was in fact a territo-
rial one, depending upon the natural conformation
of the country.
Some of the modern shire-divisions of England
in all probability have remained unchanged from
the earliest times; so that here and there a now
existent Shire may be identical in territory with an
ancient Ga. But it may be doubted whether this
observation can be very extensively applied : ob-
scure as is the record of our old divisions, what
little we know, favours the supposition that the ori-
ginal Gas were not only more numerous than our
Shires, but that these were not always identical in
their boundaries with those Gas whose locality can
be determined.
The policy or pedantry of Norman chroniclers
has led them to pass over in silence the names
of the ancient divisions, which nevertheless were
known to them1. Wherever they have occasion to
refer to our Shires, they do so by the names they
still bear ; thus Florence of Worcester and William of
Malmesbury name, to the south of the Humber, Kent,
Wiltshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Sussex, Southamp-
ton, Surrey, Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall, Glou-
cester, Worcester, Warwick, Cheshire^ Derby, Staf-
ford, Shropshire, Hereford, Oxford, Buckingham,
‘ “ Et ne Iongum faciam, Sigillatim enumeratis provinciis quas vas-
taverunt, hoc sit ad summam complecti, quod, cum numerentur in
Anglia triginta duo pagi, illi iam sedecim invaserant, quorum domina
Propterbarbariem linguae scribere refugio.” Will. Malm., Gest. Reg.
lib. ii. § 165.