hundreds and wapentakes were numerous, and its bys and thorpes also numerous within these larger areas. In Domesday Book we find some of the hundreds, such as Hazebi, Alesbi, Fenbi, and Walesbi, named after some of the bys, apparently from the places where the Hundred Courts met. We find also in the Domesday account of Lincolnshire instances in which wapentakes are mentioned, and also the hundreds contained within them.
The -bys are much more common than the -thorpes in the wold district—a circumstance which appears to indicate that the open parts of the county were first settled, the thorpes having probably had their origin as offshoots from the bys.
Lincolnshire contains about sixty places whose names have the -by termination, and are of Scandinavian origin, but it also contains fifty-six places[1] whose names have the -ham ending, and these must be traced to Anglian and Frisian or other Germanic settlers. It is probable that the early place-names ending in -burh, -berh, and -berge denoted places where the people had common rights and privileges; i.e., the places were folk villages, more or less free, rather than estates belonging to a lord, and the inhabitants more or less subject to him. A curious survival of the early burh has apparently come down in the name burley-men, birla-men, or by-law-men.[2] The burley-men were inhabitants of certain manors who were appointed annually, with the object of settling disputes among the inhabitants. In some old records the name is spelt bye-law-men, and they existed in various places in Yorkshire in the seventeenth century. The ancient by-law was derived from the old common-law power to make by-laws that belonged to parishes and manors. The difference between burly and by-law, says Skeat, ‘is merely one of dialect. In Iceland people say bær, in Norway bö, in Sweden and Denmark by. Thus,
