Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/261

 THE NORTHMEN AND OTHER INVADERS 221 and they brought in a large class of freemen to a land where, for a century or two before, the weak had been falling under the domination of the strong. Alfred and his successors organized their new territory as they occupied it. The land was divided into shires, and the shires were subdivided into hundreds, localgov- 6 wapentakes, and other local units. These shires ernment I still exist to-day with the same names and boundaries, jEach hundred had a court which met monthly and the shire had its superior court which met twice a year. The chief official in each shire was the ealdorman (whence is derived our word "alderman"), some leading noble of the locality whose ancestors had perhaps once been its king. I The bishop also had considerable authority. The ealdor- j man presided at the shire moot or court, and led the quota j for the army furnished by his shire. Alfred had revived i against the Danes the old German custom that all freemen should serve in the army, although he allowed them to take turns so that some might be tilling the fields. It is to be noted that the ealdorman was not so much the king's repre- sentative as was the Carolingian count, but was more akin to the tribal dukes of whom Charlemagne tried to get rid. The Saxon king had another representative in the shire called the " sheriff" (shire-reeve); but he was as yet a rather humble individual, who collected the royal revenues from the king's private estates or the proceeds of justice, but who was not comparable to the ealdorman in dignity. Under this system of government parts of England retained in their shire and hundred courts many distinctive local customs, and even the same thing was called by different names and perhaps done in a slightly different way in dif- ferent places. In the Danelaw many institutions derived from the earlier kingdoms of the Angles or from the Danes survived after Alfred's great-grandson Edgar the Peaceful had become king of all England, and similarly in Kent many Kentish customs were still followed. In other words,
 * divisions similar to the Carolingian counties, The Anglo-
 * though no longer of the same administrative importance.