''Nomina Villarum'' was a survey carried out in 1316 and contains a list of all cities, boroughs and townships in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and the Lords of them. The document was compiled for
King Edward II
Edward II (25 April 1284 – 21 September 1327), also called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1307 until he was deposed in January 1327. The fourth son of Edward I, Edward became the heir apparent to th ...
. The survey was a
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a wa ...
aid, a payment which by tradition the king could demand from his tenants to finance the knighting of his eldest son or the marriage of his eldest daughter and was in effect, a taxation on land.
The name of the document is mediaeval
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for "Names of towns" — ''villa'', originally meaning a country house, later developed the meaning "town" or "small city".
References
14th-century Latin books
14th-century documents
Demographics of England
14th-century manuscripts
Censuses in the United Kingdom
Taxation in medieval England
1316 in England
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