[OE. túnscipe, f. tún (see TOWN) + -scipe, -SHIP. Cf., for sense, landscipe, and Ger. dorfschaft. After the OE. period the word was app. disused till 15th c: see sense 2.]
† 1. In OE., The inhabitants or population of a tún or village collectively; the community dwelling in and occupying a tún (TOWN sb. 1). Obs.
c. 890. trans. Bæda’s Hist., V. xi. [x.] (1890), 416. Þa wæs he swiðe eorre; sende þa weord þider & heht ðone tunscipe ealne ofslean, & þone tun forbernan [orig. mittens occidit vicanos illos omnes, vicumque incendio consumpsit].
962–3. Laws K. Edgar, IV. c. 8. Cyðe hit þonne he ham cyme, and … mid his tunscipes ʓewitnysse on ʓemænre læse ʓebringe. ʓif he swa ne deð ær fir nihtum, cyðan hit þæs tunes men þam hundrodes ealdre.
1154. O. E. Chron., an. 1137 § 4. ʓif twa men oþer iii coman ridend to an tun, al þe tunscipe fluʓæn fer heom.
1155–8. in Calr. Charter Rolls (1912), IV. 183. Homines suos liberos et quietos de … placitis et querelis et portmannesmot et tuncipesmot.
2. The inhabitants of a particular manor, parish, or division of a hundred, as a community, or in their corporate capacity. Now chiefly Hist.
1444. Rolls of Parlt., V. 111/1. [To] assesse well and duly every Tounship withinne the seid Hundredes.
1494. Fabyan, Chron., VII. 575 (anno 1410). With prouycion yt euery towneshyp shuld kepe all poore people of theyr owne dwellers, whiche myght nat labour for theyr lyuynge.
1547. in E. Anglian, May (1885), 69. Itm solde Ao primo Ed. sexti Regis &c. by the Townshippe and Churchewardens [of Beccles] so moche plate as amounteth to the Summe of xl li.
1593. Shaks., 2 Hen. VI., I. iii. 27. Alas Sir, I am but a poore Petitioner of our whole Towneship.
1628. Wither, Brit. Rememb., IV. 203. When halfe the Towneship, and the Hamlets nigh Are met to revell, at some Parish, by.
1817. W. Selwyn, Law Nisi Prius (ed. 4), II. 773. The court held, that all the subjects of England, of common right, might fish in the sea,… and that therefore a prescription for it as appurtenant to a particular township was void.
b. Applied to the manor, parish, etc., itself, as a territorial division. Now chiefly Hist.
1414. Rolls of Parlt., IV. 571. The maner and Tounshipe of Chestreton.
1422. trans. Secreta Secret., Priv. Priv., 172. He desyrith more grete lordshuppe, othyr lytill rente, than a townshup of londe othyr a grete Some of catele to charlys appertenynge.
1491. Act 7 Hen. VII., c. 16 § 1. Honours lordshippes townshippes maners londes … and all other hereditamentes.
1523. Fitzherb., Husb., § 57. That there be no maner of sycknes amonge the cattell in that towneshyp or pasture that thou byest thy catel oute of.
1527. Plumpton Corr. (Camden), 227. For the right and intrest of one spring liing within the tewinship of Litle Ribston.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit. (1637), 807. Hexham … a manour or Township belonging to the Archbishops of Yorke.
1670. Pettus, Fodinæ Reg., 33. All which are in the Township of Skibery Coed.
a. 1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., II. x. 234. In this Book are entred the Names of the Mannors or inhabited Townships, Boroughs and Cities,… the Number of Plough-Lands that each contains, and the Number of the Inhabitants upon them.
1819. Scott, Ivanhoe, xxv. A less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting of the Saxon inhabitants of the neighbouring township.
c. spec. Each of the local divisions of, or districts comprised in, a large original parish, each containing a village or small town, usually having its own church (formerly a chapel of the mother church of the original parish, whence such divisions were also known ecclesiastically as chapelries).
Township in this sense is chiefly retained in the north of England for the ancient divisions of such original parishes as Crosthwaite, Grasmere, Windermere, and Kendal, e.g., the townships of Borrowdale, Langdale, Rydal, and Ambleside; but it is applied in the Ordnance maps also to the ancient divisions of such original parishes as Cumnor and St. Giles’, Camberwell, which for most purposes are now distinct parishes and are usually so called.
1540. Test. Ebor. (Surtees), VI. 117. Beinge of the townshipe of Witley.
1662. Act 14 Chas. II., c. 12 § 21. That all and every the poore … persons within every Township or Village within the severall Counties aforesaid shall from and after the passing of this Act be maintained … and sett on worke within the several and respective Towneship and Village … and that there shall be yearely chosen and appointed … twoe or more Overseers of the Poore within every of the said Townships or Villages.
1764. Burn, Poor Laws, 111. The head of a township or village is the constable; and there are many townships in a parish wherein there is no churchwarden.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), I. 141. In the northern counties, where the parishes sometimes embrace 30 or 40 square miles, the poor laws, the due administration of which must always depend on an intimate knowledge of the situation and character of every one applying for relief, could not be properly carried into effect. To remedy this inconvenience, an act was passed in the 13th of Charles II., permitting townships and villages, though not entire parishes, severally and distinctly to maintain their own poor. Hence townships in the north of England may be regarded as divisions subordinate to parishes; and are, in practice, as distinctly limited as if they were separate parishes.
1891. J. P. Earwaker, Manch. Constables’ Accts., I. Introd. 17. The two constables whose proceedings are recorded in the following pages, were appointed for the Township of Manchester alone; but, as that then embraced the whole of the town, they had entire charge of the town.
1906. S. & B. Webb, Eng. Local Govt., I. ii. 70. The great parish of Manchester, which extended over an area of quite 54 square miles, included no fewer than thirty semi-independent townships—one of them having, like the whole parish, the name of Manchester.
3. transf. Often rendering L. pagus, Gr. δῆμος (DEME), and thus applied to independent or self-governing towns or villages of ancient Greece, Italy, and other lands, and sometimes to foreign towns or villages of mediæval or modern times.
1602. Fulbecke, Pandectes, 57. So likewise Pagi, towneships, are deriued of the Doricke word πάγα, which signifieth a fountaine, and in the Atticall dialect is πήγη.
1681. Nevile, Plato Rediv., 74. The Swisses consist of Thirteen Soveraignties; some Cities … and some Provinces which have but a Village for their head Township.
1798. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., V. 3. Now, the land of Cush (Genesis x. 7,) comprehended the five subdivisions or townships of Seba, Havilah, Sabtha, Raamah, and Sabthechah.
1838. Thirlwall, Greece, II. xi. 11. The incorporation of several scattered townships in one city, such as took place in Attica.
1841. Elphinstone, Hist. India, I. 39. His internal administration is to be conducted by a chain of civil officers, consisting of lords of single townships or villages, lords of ten towns, lords of 100, and lords of 1000 towns.
1846. Grote, Greece, II. viii. II. 587. Rescuing the Arcadian townships from their dependence on Sparta.
1872. Yeats, Growth Comm., 301. An insignificant township named Calcutta.
1905. Expositor, Feb. 81. A Jebusite township existed around or beside the stronghold Zion.
1908. S. A. Cook, Relig. Anc. Palestine, i. 8. The small townships of Palestine and Syria—the average city was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, sometimes with an outer wall.
4. Sc. A farm held in joint tenancy.
1813. J. Headrick, Agric. Surv. Forfar., 561. A township is a farm occupied by two or more farmers, in common, or in separate lots, who reside in a straggling hamlet, or village.
1884. Marq. of Lorne, in Pall Mall G., 10 May, 1/2. Recommending that the State should prop the fast vanishing feudal tenure of the ‘township’ of the crofter.
1886. Sir K. Mackenzie, ibid., 3 March, 11/2. Its Gaelic equivalent ‘Baile’ … designates a farm held by a number of joint tenants, but it also designates a farm held by an individual tenant…. To the Gaelic language, the distinction between farm and township is unknown; and the illusions which seem to hang round this word township would be dispelled if it were realized that it merely means a farm held in joint tenancy by a greater or less number of persons.
1901. Scotsman, 4 March, 7/2. They found … about forty men from the township of Lemreway [in Lewis] outside ready to resist.
5. U.S. and Canada. A division of a county having certain corporate powers of local administration; the same that in New England is called a town (TOWN sb. 6 a).
In the newer states, in which the divisions were laid off by government survey, a township is a division six miles square, and is so called even when still unsettled. The name is similarly used in the western provinces of Canada, from Ontario to British Columbia, and in Eastern Quebec and Prince Edward Island.
1685. Penn, Further Acc. Pennsylv., 5. We do settle in the way of Townships or Villages, each of which contains 5000 Acres in square, and at least Ten Families.
1714. S. Sewall, Diary, 23 Feb. This Court a large Township, of 12 miles square, is granted near Wadchuset.
1775. J. Adams, in Fam. Lett. (1876), 120. The division of our … counties into townships … gives every man an opportunity of showing and improving that education which he received at college or at school.
1779. Hist. Europe, in Ann. Reg., 91. The settlement of Wyoming consisted of eight townships, each containing a square of five miles.
1801. Farmer’s Mag., April, 164. Method of clearing New Land,… as practised in several parts of New Hampshire, particularly in the Township of Dartmouth.
1824. Syd. Smith, Wks. (1859), II. 45/2. All the public lands … are divided into townships of six miles square, by lines running with the cardinal points, and consequently crossing each other at right angles.
1866. J. E. H. Skinner, After the Storm, I. 85. A ‘township’ is here a territorial division like a parish with us, and need not necessarily contain any houses.
1871. Athenæum, 27 May, 660. From 20 to 30 feet of pure graphite are stated to exist on the Ottawa river, in the township of Buckingham.
1883. Bryce, Amer. Commw., II. II. xl. 91, note. A town or township means … generally in the United States, a small rural district, as opposed to a city. It is a community which has not received representative municipal government.
1899. Crosskill, Prince Edward Isl. (1904), 16. The parish lines are but little recognized, the more general sub-division being by lots or townships, of which there are 67 running numerically from west to east.
1912. Province of Quebec for Brit. Emigr., 13. The Eastern townships have also a well deserved reputation as a grazing country.
6. In Australia, A site laid out prospectively for a town, meanwhile often consisting of a few ‘shanties’ grouped around a railway station, store, hotel, post office, or the like; a village or hamlet. (Cf. the town-site (TOWN sb. 10) of U.S. and Canada.)
1802. Barrington, Hist. N. S. Wales, x. 419. The timber of 120 acres was cut down … a township marked out, and some few huts built.
1861. Mrs. Meredith, Over the Straits, II. 40. It used to seem to me a strange colonial anomaly to call a very small village a ‘township,’ and a much larger one a ‘town.’ But the former is the term applied to the lands reserved in various places for future towns.
1890. Melbourne Argus, 14 June, 4/2. Will you come into the township to-night?
1892. A. Sutherland, Elem. Geog. Brit. Col., xiii. 276. Villages, which are always called ‘townships,’ spring up suddenly round a railway station or beside some country inn.
† 7. The state or condition of a town; also, a jocular title for a town. Obs. rare.
1665. Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (1677), 193. They … have little or no civility save in Zagathai, where they associate in Township.
1780. Mirror, No. 105, ¶ 2. Such people are apt to assume in conversation [a consequence], which, I think, goes beyond the just prerogative of township, and is a very unfair encroachment on the natural rights of their friends … in the country.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas, II. ix. ¶ 1. Olmédo looks like a … town. I beg its township’s pardon, replied the barber.
8. By some 19th-c. historical writers, adopted to designate what they consider to have been the simplest form of local or social organization in primitive Old English times.
This modern use of the term does not agree with the OE.; it appears to be founded on a confusion of OE. tún and túnscipe (sense 1), and the carrying back into early Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic times of the ME. sense 2, 2 b. (See W. J. Ashley, The Anglo-Saxon ‘Township,’ in Q. Jrnl. Economics (Harvard) VIII. April, 1894.)
1832. Sir F. Palgrave, Eng. Commw., I. iii. 65 (marg., Anglo-Saxon state composed of Townships.) Ascending in the analysis of the Anglo-Saxon State, the first and primary element appears to be the community, which, in England, during the Saxon period, was denominated the Town, or Township.
1853. Creasy, Eng. Const., iv. 45. We may safely follow him [Palgrave] in taking the Anglo-Saxon townships as the integral molecules, out of which the Anglo-Saxon State was formed.
1867. Pearson, Hist. Eng., i. 16. The stronger and more warlike tribes secured themselves from surprise in townships or camps,… fortified with felled timber and a ditch.
1874. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. v. § 39. The unit of the constitutional machinery, the simplest form of social organisation, is the township, the villata or vicus. It may represent the original allotment of the smallest subdivision of the free community, or the settlement of the kindred colonising on their own account, or the estate of the great proprietor who has a tribe of dependents.
1881. Green, Making of Eng., iv. 180. The unit of social life, indeed, was the cluster of such farmers’ homes, each set in its own little croft, which made up the Township or the tun.
1889. G. E. Howard, Local Const. Hist. U.S., I. i. 18. In the early records of English history the tunscipe or township appears as the lowest form of self-government and the primary division of the state.
1910. J. W. Harper, Soc. Ideal, xxi. 243. The township is older than the manor … English feudalism destroyed the territorial organisation and reared itself on the ruins of the townships.
9. attrib. and Comb., esp. in senses 5, 6: township bridge, drain, road, a bridge, etc., made and kept up by the township; township farm = sense 4; township trustee (U.S.), a member of a committee elected to administer the affairs of a township.
1868. Rep. U.S. Commissioner Agric. (1869), 43. Harrison County, Ind.—The township trustee of Corydon has paid out to farmers, for loss of sheep by dogs … three hundred and ninety-eight dollars.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., II. II. xlviii. 335, note. Any county desiring to forsake township organization nay do so by a vote of the electors.
1904. Daily Chron., 19 Oct., 8/3. A simple and traditional dramatisation of some scene in early English township life.
1910. W. L. Mathieson, Awakening Scot., vi. 276. In the first half of the eighteenth century the type of agriculture which was all but universal in Scotland was still that of the township farm.
