But British cities, towns, villages, hamlets, and farms also generally ran themselves unless the crown needed to step in for some reason. They still do, and this is also true of everywhere else in every other legal regime. The colonies only differ in that they're so far away that the crown generally can't step in even when it wants to.

Jews in medieval Europe were generally subject to Jewish law and not subject to the law that applied to the rest of the city. That's self-rule.