“This is the ordinance which the bishops and the reeves belonging to London have ordained, and confirmed with pledges, among our friðgylds, as well eorlish as ceorlish, in addition to the dooms which were fixed at Greatley, at Exeter, and at Thundersfield.
“Resolved: That we count every ten men together, and the chief one to direct the nine in each of those duties which we have all ordained, and afterwards the hyndens of them together, and one hynden-man who shall admonish the ten for our common benefit; and let these eleven hold the money of the hynden, and decide what they shall disburse, when aught is to pay, and what they shall receive, should money accrue to us at our common suit[[455]]....
“That we gather to us once in every month, if we can and have leisure, the hynden-men and those who direct the tithings, as well with butt-filling, or as else may please us, and know what of our agreement has been executed. And let these twelve men[[456]] have their refection together, and feed themselves as they themselves think right, and deal the remains of the meat for love of God[[457]].”
Now as this valuable record mentions also territorial tithings, containing different amounts of population[[458]], it seems to me to furnish important confirmation of the conclusion that the gegyldan of Ini and Ælfred, the members of the London tithings or friðgylds of ten, and the York tenmantale, are in truth identical. And it is further in favour of this view that the citizens called the members of such gildships, gegyldan[[459]]:—
“And we have also ordained, respecting every man who has given his pledge in our gyldships, that, should he die, each gyld-brother (gegylda) shall give a gesufel-loaf for his soul, and sing a fifty (psalms), or cause the same to be sung within xxx days.”
Upon a review of the preceding passages it may be inferred that the hynden consisted of ten tithings, and consequently answered to what we more commonly call a hundred: it may perhaps be suggested that, if any distinction existed between these two terms, the hynden represented the numerical, the hundred the territorial division. But their original identity may be argued from an important passage in the law of Ini. He ordains[[460]]: “He that is charged with mortal feud, and is willing to deny the slaying on oath; then shall there be in the hynden one king’s oath of thirty hides, as well for a noble as a churl, be it whichever it be.“
Now hynden can only mean one of two things, viz. a collection of ten or a collection of a hundred, according as we render the word hund. Admitting that at some very early period hund did mean ten, we yet never find it with any such signification in any book or MS., or indeed at all except in the numerals hundseofontig, hundeatatig, hundnigontig, hundtwelftig, where its force is anything but clear, when we compare those words with fíftig, sixtig, twentig, etc. On the other hand the adjective hynde does clearly denote something which has the quality of a hundred; thus a twyhynde or twelfhynde man is he whose life is worth respectively two or twelve hundred shillings. Again it is clear that the Judicia Civitatis Londinensis intends by hynden a collection of a hundred, and not of ten, men, inasmuch as it distinguishes this from the tithings. And further, it must be admitted, upon the internal evidence of the law itself, that a hundred and not a tithing is referred to, since so small a court as that of the ten men could not possibly have had cognizance of such a plea as manslaughter, or been competent to demand a king’s oath of thirty hides. But as such a plea might well be brought before the hundred-court, it is probable that such was meant. Lastly it was the custom for the hundred-court to be holden monthly, and we observe the same provision with the London hynden; at which it is very probable that legal matters were transacted, as well as accounts investigated; for it is expressly declared that their meeting is to ascertain how the undertakings in the record have been executed; that is, how the peace has been kept. I therefore conclude that the Hynden and the Hundred are in fact and were at first identical; with the hypothetical reservation, that at a later period the one word represented a numerical, the other a territorial division, when these two had ceased to coincide: in corroboration of which view it may be observed that the word Hynden does not occur in the laws later than the time of Æðelstán, nor Hundred earlier than that of Eádgár.
It is true that no division founded upon numbers can long continue to coincide with the first corresponding territorial allocation, however closely they may have been at first adjusted. In spite of every attempt to regulate it, population varies incessantly; but the tendency of land-divisions is to remain stationary for ages[[461]]; a holy horror prevents the alteration of that which has been sanctified in men’s minds by long continuance, was perhaps more deeply sanctified at the first by religious ceremonies. The rights of property universally demand the jealous guardianship of boundaries. Moreover the first tithings, or at all events the first hundreds, must have had elbowroom enough within the Mark to allow for a considerable elasticity of population without the necessity of disturbing the ancient boundary; and thus we can readily understand two very distinct things to have grown up together, out of one origin, namely a constantly increasing number of gylds, yet a nearly or entirely stationary tale of territorial tithings and hundreds. I cannot but think that, under happier circumstances, this view might lead us to conclusions of the utmost importance with respect to the history of our race: that if it were possible for us now to ascertain the original number of hundreds in any county of which Beda in the eighth century gives us the population, and also the population at the period of the original division, we should find the two data in exact accordance, and thus obtain a clue to the movement of the population itself down to Beda’s time. Looking to the permanent character of land-divisions, and assuming that our present Hundreds nearly represent the original in number and extent, we might conclude that, if in the year 400 Kent was first divided, Thanet then contained only one hundred heads of houses, or hydes, upon three thousand acres of cultivated land, while in the time of Beda, three centuries later, it comprised six hundred families or hides upon eighteen thousand acres.
It is a common saying that we owe the institution of shire, tithing and hundred divisions to Ælfred. Stated in so broad a manner as this, I am compelled to deny the assertion. No one can contemplate the life and acts of that great prince and accomplished man without being filled with admiration and respect for his personal energy, his moral and enlightened policy, and the sound legislative as well as administrative principles on which he acted. But we must nevertheless not in the nineteenth century allow ourselves to be blinded by the passions and prejudices which ruled in the twelfth. The people, oppressed by foreign power, no doubt, long looked back with an affectionate regret to the memory of “England’s Darling;” he was the hero of a suffering nation; his activity and fortune had once cleared the land of Norman tyranny; his arm had smitten the forefathers of those whose iron yoke now weighed on England: he was the reputed author of those laws, which, under the amended and extended form enacted by the Confessor, were now claimed by the English people from their foreign kings: he was, in a word, the representative, and as it were very incarnation, of English nationality. We may smile at, but must yet respect, the feeling which made him also the representative of every good thing, which connected every institution or custom that his suffering countrymen regretted, with his time-hallowed name. It is unnecessary to detail the many ways in which this traditional character of Ælfred continually reappears; the object of these remarks is merely to point out that the attribution to him of the system of tithings, hundreds and the like, is one of many groundless assertions connected with his name. Not one word in corroboration of it is to be found in Asser or any other contemporaneous authority; and there is abundant evidence that the system existed long before he was born, not only in other German lands, but even among ourselves. Still I am unwilling to incur the responsibility of declaring the tradition absolutely without foundation: on the contrary it seems probable that Ælfred may have found it necessary, after the dreadful confusion and devastation of the Danish wars, to make a new muster or regulation of the tithings, nay even to cause, in some districts, a new territorial division to be established upon the old principle; and this is the more credible, since there is reason to believe that the same causes had rendered a new definition of boundaries generally necessary even in the case of private estates: the strongest argument against this lies however in the total silence of all contemporary writers. A less tenable supposition is, that Ælfred introduced such divisions for the first time into the countries which he united with Wessex; as it is impossible to conceive any Anglosaxon state to have existed entirely without them.
The form and nature of the institution, long known in the English law under the name of Frankpledge[[462]] may be compendiously described in the words of the laws called Edward the Confessor’s[[463]]. According to that document,—