VILL  , the Anglicized

form of the word villa, used in Latin documents to translate the Anglo-Saxon tun, township, " the unit of the constitutional machinery, the simplest form of social organization " (Stubbs, Const . Hist . § 39) . The word did not always and at all times have this meaning in Latin-English documents, but " will " and " township " were ultimately, in English law, treated as convertible terms for describing a village community, and they remained in use in legal nomenclature until the ecclesiastical parishes were converted into areas for civil administration under the Poor Law Acts . This technical sense is derived from the late Latin use of villa for vicus, a village . Thus Fleta (vi. c . 51), writing in the time of Edward I., distinguishes the villa, as a collection of habitations and their appurtenances, from the mansio, a single house, nulli irking, and the manor, which may embrace one or more villae . In classical Latin villa had meant " country-house," " farm," " villa " (see VILLA) ; but the word was probably an abbreviation of vicula, diminutive of vicus, and in the sense of vicus it is used by Apuleius in the 2nd century . Later it even displaced civitas, for city; thus Rutilius Numatianus in his Itinerarium speaks of villae ingentes, oppida parva; whence the French ville (see Du Cange, Glossarium lat. s.v . Villa) . In the Frankish empire villa was also used of the royal and imperial palaces or seats with their appurtenances .