as was before hinted, contained each originally but one pariſh, and one tithing; though many of them now, by the encreaſe of inhabitants, are divided into ſeveral parishes and tithings: and, ſometimes, where there is but one pariſh there are two or more vills or tithings.
As ten families of freeholders made up a town or tithing, ſo ten tithings compoſed a ſuperior diviſion, called a hundred, as conſiſting of ten times ten families. The hundred is governed by an high conſtable or bailiff, and formerly there was regularly held in it the hundred court for the trial of cauſes, though now fallen into diſuſe. In ſome of the more northern counties theſe hundreds are called wapentakes[1].
The ſubdivifion of hundreds into tithings ſeems to be moſt peculiarly the invention of Alfred: the inſtitution of hundreds themſelves he rather introduced than invented. For they ſeem to have obtained in Denmark[2]: and we find that in France a regulation of this ſort was made above two hundred years before; ſet on foot by Clotharius and Childebert, with a view of obliging each diſtrict to anſwer for the robberies committed in it’s own diviſion. Theſe diviſions were, in that country, as well military as civil; and each contained a hundred freemen; who were ſubject to an officer called the centenarius; a number of which centenarii were themſelves ſubject to a ſuperior officer called the count or comes[3]. And indeed ſomething like this inſtitution of hundreds may be traced back as far as the antient Germans, from whom were derived both the Franks who became maſters of Gaul, and the Saxons who ſettled in England: for both the thing and the name, as a territorial aſſemblage of perſons, from which afterwards the territory itſelf might probably receive it’s denomination, were well known to that warlike people. “Centeni ex ſingulis pagis ſunt, idque ipſum inter ſuos vocantur; et quod primo numerus fuit, jam nomen et honor eſt.[4]”
