Also 6–8 (9) ville. [a. AF. vill, vile, OF. vile, vylle, ville farm, country-house, village, collection of villages around a city (mod.F. ville town):—L. villa: see VILLA sb.]
1. Law and Hist. A territorial unit or division under the feudal system, consisting of a number of houses or buildings with their adjacent lands, more or less contiguous and having a common organization; corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon tithing and to the modern township or civil parish.
1596. Bacon, Maxims Com. Law, III. (1630), 14. If … part of the ville is his severall, and part his waste and common.
a. 1625. Sir H. Finch, Law (1636), 261. A plea of land which is for land or other such things in demesne … must alwayes bee brought in a ville, or place knowne out of any ville. And not in a hamlet which is parcell of a vill.
1672. Manley, Cowell’s Interpr., Vill,… is sometimes taken for a Mannor, and sometimes for a Parish, or part of it.
a. 1676. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man. (1677), 235. There are very many more Vills and Hamlets now than there were then, and very few Villages, Towns or Parishes then, which continue not to this Day.
1721. Act Parlt., in Lond. Gaz., No. 5927/6. Any Parish, Township, Vill, or Extraparochial Place.
1768. Blackstone, Comm., IV. 291. The party raising it must acquaint the constable of the vill,… and thereupon the constable is to search his own town, and raise all the neighbouring vills.
1799. E. Hasted, Hist. Canterbury, 106. This borough [i.e., Stablegate] … was some time past erected into a ville, in order to maintain its own poor.
1839. Stonehouse, Axholme, 316. One or two small houses have been built here, but they are hardly sufficient to constitute a hamlet or vill.
1874. Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. iii. 54. The social organisation of the vill may be identical perhaps with that of the mark.
1891. Atkinson, Moorland Par. (ed. 2), 87. If … there were more than one [field] within the vill.
2. poet. A village.
a. 1700. Ken, Hymnotheo, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 383. Parochial Priests were fix’d in ev’ry Vill, Who under him should saving Truth instil.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., VIII. 100. Among the tenantry of thorpe and vill, Or straggling burgh.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., II. 69. In every vill, at morning’s earliest prime, To early-risers many a Hodge is seen.
1834. Sir H. Taylor, Artevelde, II. III. ii. So in field or forest, Or in wall’d town, by stipend lured, or vill Surprised and sack’d, by turns he lived at large.
† 3. A villa. Obs. rare.
1684. trans. Eutropius, X. 170. He [Constantine] died in a publick Vill of the City Nicomedia.
1755. T. Amory, Mem. (1766), II. 61. He saw a vill, that seemed to him of wood, and consisted of ground-rooms. Ibid. (1766), Buncle (1770), III. 203. The vill here was very odd, but a charming pretty thing. The house consisted of [etc.].
