The entries quoted are sufficient, it seems, to establish the following facts:—
1. The hundredors of the Ely Minster are people holding tenements burdened with the obligation of representing the manor in the hundred and in the county.
2. The tenure may be quite distinct from the personal condition of the holder. A knight may possess the tenement of a hundredor in one place and a military fee in another (Philip de Insula in Wilburton and in Lyndon.)
3. A free tenant is not eo ipso a hundredor. Some holdings are singled out for the duty. (Henry Torel, William 'Nuncius,' and Thomas filius Olive in Wyvelingham. Cf. Lyndon.)
4. In many cases the hundredors are mentioned without being expressly so called, and such cases present the transition between the Ely Surveys and other Cartularies which constantly speak of privileged tenants holding by suit to the hundred and to the county. (See the quotations on p. 189, n. 2, and p. 191, n. 1.)
But there is another side to the picture. In the cases of which we have been speaking till now the obligation to attend the hundred and the county is treated as a service connected with tenure, and has to meet the requirements of the State which enforces the representation of the villages at the Royal Courts. Such a system of representation follows from the conception of the County and of the Hundred as political parts of the kingdom on the one hand, and as composed of Manors and Villages or Vills, on the other. This may be called the territorial system. But another conception is lingering behind it—that namely of the County, as a folk, and of the Hundred, as an assembly of the free and lawful population. The great Hundred is derived from it, but even in the ordinary meetings all the freeholders are entitled, if not obliged, to join. The Manor and the Vill have nothing to do with this right, which is not one of representation, but an individual one and extends to a whole class. This may be called the personal system of the Hundred. It is embodied in the so-called 'Leges' of Henry I. And therefore we find constantly in the documents, that the suit to the hundred, to the county, and also that to the sheriff's tourn and to meet the justices, are mentioned in connection with two different classes of people. On one hand stand the representatives of the township, on the other the free men, free tenants or socmen bound individually to attend the hundred and to perform other duties which are enforced on the same pattern. The Hundred Rolls give any number of examples.
I. 55: liberi homines de Witlisford et quatuor homines et prepositus solebant venire ad turnum vicecomitis set post bellum de Evesham per Baldewynum de Aveny subtracta fuit illa secta, set nesciunt quo warranto.
I. 154: Idem abbas (de Wauthan) subtraxit ad turnum vicecomitum sectam 4 hominum et prepositi de manerio suo de Esthorndone et de liberis hominibus suis in eadem villa et in villa de Stanford.
I. 180: Omnes liberi tenentes et quatuor homines et prepositus de Morton Valence subtraxerunt sectam ad turnum vicecomitis bis in anno ad idem hundredum.
In Shropshire we find the question put to the jurors of the inquest (II. 69): Si homines libere tenentes et 4 homines et prepositus de singulis villis venerint ad summonicionem sicut preceptum est.