Hundreds Assemblies (First Courts) / Districts (jan 1, 939 – 8h 47min, jun 19, 2025 y)

Description:

- Anglo-saxon society was ordered into Hundreds (division of the land said to have such name for holding roughly 100 homesteads)
- Hundreds had their own Assemblies to deal with minor cases.
- More serious cases were dealt with by the Shire Courts
- Hundreds Assemblies existed in order to organize and to apply the laws.

HUNDREDS
A hundred is an administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region. It was formerly used in England, Wales, some parts of the United States, Denmark, Southern Schleswig, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Norway. It is still used in other places, including South Australia, and The Northern Territory.
n England a hundred was the division of a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law, which could have varying extent of common feudal ownership, from complete suzerainty to minor royal or ecclesiastical prerogatives and rights of ownership.[1] Until the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894, hundreds were the only widely used assessment unit intermediate in size between the parish, with its various administrative functions, and the county, with its formal, ceremonial functions.[2]

The term "hundred" is first recorded in the laws of Edmund I (939–46) as a measure of land and the area served by a hundred court. In the Midlands, they often covered an area of about 100 hides, but this did not apply in the south; this may suggest that it was an ancient West Saxon measure that was applied rigidly when Mercia became part of the newly established English kingdom in the 10th century. The Hundred Ordinance, which dates to the middle of the century, provided that the court was to meet monthly, and thieves were to be pursued by all the leading men of the district.[3] The name of the hundred (called "wapentake" in the Danelaw) was normally that of its meeting-place.[4]

During Norman times, the hundred would pay geld based on the number of hides.[5] To assess how much everyone had to pay, a clerk and a knight were sent by the king to each county; they sat with the shire-reeve (or sheriff), of the county and a select group of local knights.[5] There would be two knights from each hundred. After it was determined what geld had to be paid, the bailiff and knights of the hundred were responsible for getting the money to the sheriff, and the sheriff for getting it to the Exchequer.[5]

Above the hundred was the shire, under the control of a sheriff. Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although often aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties, or a parish could be split between hundreds. Exceptionally, in the counties of Kent and Sussex, there was a sub-division intermediate in size between the hundred and the shire: several hundreds were grouped together to form lathes in Kent and rapes in Sussex. At the time of the Norman conquest of England, Kent was divided into seven lathes and Sussex into four rapes.

The system of hundreds was not as stable as the system of counties being established at the time, and lists frequently differ on how many hundreds a county had. In many parts of the country, the Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds from that which later became established. The numbers of hundreds in each county varied widely. Leicestershire had six (up from four at Domesday), whereas Devon, nearly three times the size, had 32.

DISTRICT (IN ENGLAND)
In England a hundred was the division of a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law, which could have varying extent of common feudal ownership, from complete suzerainty to minor royal or ecclesiastical prerogatives and rights of ownership.[1] Until the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894, hundreds were the only widely used assessment unit intermediate in size between the parish, with its various administrative functions, and the county, with its formal, ceremonial functions.[2]

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