George James Turner

“ The significance of the name hundred is a matter of some difficulty. The old theory, and perhaps the best, is that the hundred denoted first a group of a hundred families, and then the district which these families occupied. This is not inconsistent with another view, according to which the hundred was originally a term of measurement denoting a hundred hides of land, for there is good reason for considering that the hide was originally as much land as supported one family. ”

“ Wapentakes are not found outside the parts of England which were settled by the Danes. They varied in size in different counties; those of Yorkshire, for instance, being very much larger than those of Lincolnshire. As a general rule each wapentake had its own court, which had the same jurisdiction as the hundred courts of the southern counties. ”

“ After the Norman Conquest the earl was occasionally appointed sheriff of his county, but in general his only official connexion with it was to receive the third penny of its pleas, and the earldom ceased to be an office and became merely a title. In the 12th century the office of coroner was created, two or more of them being chosen in the county court as vacancies occurred. ”

“ The royal control over the county was strengthened from the 14th century onward by the appointment of justices of the peace. This system was further developed under the Tudors, while in the middle of the 16th century the military functions of the sheriff were handed over to a new officer, the lord-lieutenant, who is now more prominently associated with the headship of the county than is the sheriff. The lord-lieutenant now usually holds the older office of custos rotulorum, or keeper of the records of the county. ”

“ In constitutional law it signifies the act by which an ecclesiastical office or benefice is conferred by a person having competent authority for the purpose; and the word is specially used of appointments made by the pope in derogation of the rights of ecclesiastical patrons. ”

“ Here, and in some of the other western counties, the hundreds are geographical divisions, to which a varying number of hides was attributed for fiscal purposes.
In the middle ages the hundred was chiefly important for its court of justice; and the word hundredum was as often applied to the court as to the district over which the court had jurisdiction. ”

“ TRINODA NECESSITAS, the name used by modern historians to describe the threefold obligation of serving in the host (fyrd) , repairing and constructing bridges (bryc-geweorc) , and the construction and maintenance of fortresses (burhbot) , to which all freeholders were subject in Anglo-Saxon times. The obligations are usually mentioned in charters as the sole exceptions to grants of immunities; sometimes, however, a fourth obligation (singulare praetium contra alium) is reserved, as in the charter granted by Wiglaf of Mercia on the 28th of December 831 (Cod. dip. i. 294) . ”

“ As a general rule they were personally free, but performed many of the agricultural services of the villains. It is generally-supposed they were called sokemen because they were within the lord’s soke or jurisdiction. Mr Ballard, however, holds that a sokeman was merely a man who rendered services, and 'that a sokeland was land from which services were rendered, and was not neces; sarily under the jurisdiction of a manor. The law term, socage, used of this tenure, is a barbarism, and is formed by adding the French age to soc. ”

“ Some confirmation of this is to be found in the Words of the Norman chronicler, Dudo of St Quentin, who states that Rollo in distributing Neustria “suis fidelibus terrain funiculo divisit” (J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus completus, tom. cxli. p. 652) . ”

“ The word was first introduced after the Norman Conquest as the equivalent of the old English “shire,” which has survived as its synonym, though occasionally also applied to divisions smaller than counties, e.g. Norhamshire, Hexhamshire and Hallamshire. The word “county” is also sometimes used, alternatively with “countship,” to translate foreign words, e.g. ”

“ The popes had taken up their residence at Avignon and had become mere creatures of the kings of France. The English nobility and gentry were bitter at seeing vast sums of money pass out of the country into the hands of their enemies. ”

“ Although there were corresponding obligations in the Frankish Empire which were called by Charles the Bald (antiquam et aliarum gentium consuetudinem) , Stubbs held that the arguments which refer them to a Roman origin want both congruity and continuity. ”

“ The counties to the south of the Thames (except Cornwall) already existed in the time of Alfred, but those of the midlands seem to have been created during the reign of Edward the Elder (901–925) and to have been artificially bounded areas lying around some stronghold which became a centre of civil and military administration. ”

“ RIDINGS are the three districts into which from ancient times Yorkshire has been divided for administrative purposes. Formerly there were similar districts in Lindsey in Lincolnshire. The word riding was originally Written as thfithing or thriding, but the initial th has been absorbed in the final th or t of the words north, south, east and west, by which it was normally preceded. Ridings are Scandinavian institutions. ”

“ In some versions of the much used tract Interpretotiones uocobulorum soke is defined “aver fraunc court,” and in others as “ interpellacio maioris audientiae, ” which is glossed somewhat ambiguously as “ claim ajustis et requeste. ”