1) ‘Functions that are today performed by nurses, physicians, social workers, secretaries, real estate agents and lawyers were among the countryfolk of Elizabethan and Stuart days performed by neighbours for each other’ – so wrote Mildred Campbell in <i>The English Yeoman</i>, finding the right words to define the word ‘neighbour’ as it came to be understood in the Tudor period.
The word is found in numerous contexts where it is clearly more than just a reference to a person living next door or close by: c.1545 agreyd … that all maner ways and gates shall be hade and occupyd after the old maner and custom amang all neghburs, Thurstonland
1578 every tenant of this manner … who kepe any cattell goinge on the Common, shall bear and pay all layes, taxes and assessments rateably ... and shall be assessed by their neighbours, Dewsbury. In 1584, a papist named Richard Lumby died in Leeds: he had been excommunicated but his body was taken to the church by hys kynsfolks and neighbours in an attempt to have him buried there. Note the by-name or surname: 1481 William Gudeneghbour, Doddington in Northumberland.