" [7] The parish
officers, including overseers of the poor, assessors, and way-wardens,
are still elected in vestry-meeting by the freemen of the township. And
while the jurisdiction of the manorial courts has been defined by
charter, or by the customary law existing at the time of the manorial
grant, "all matters arising outside that jurisdiction come under the
management of the vestry."
In England, therefore, the free village-community, though perhaps
nowhere found in its primitive integrity, has nevertheless survived in
partially transfigured forms which have played no unimportant part in
the history of the English people. In one shape or another the assembly
of freemen for purposes of local legislation has always existed. The
Puritans who colonized New England, therefore, did not invent the
town-meeting. They were familiar already with the proceedings of the
vestry-meeting and the manorial courts, but they were severed now from
church and from aristocracy. So they had but to discard the
ecclesiastical and lordly terminology, with such limitations as they
involved, and to reintegrate the separate jurisdictions into one,--and
forthwith the old assembly of the township, founded in immemorial
tradition, but revivified by new thoughts and purposes gained through
ages of political training, emerged into fresh life and entered upon a
more glorious career.
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