George James Turner

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is important to notice that in the document compiled before the Norman Conquest, and now known as the County Hidage, the number of hides in all the counties are multiples of a hundred, and that in many cases the multiples agree with the number of hundreds ascribed to a county in Domesday Book. The hundreds of Devon, however, seem never to have contained a hundred hides ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”