Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/131

§. 4. as was before hinted, contained each originally but one parih, and one tithing; though many of them now, by the encreae of inhabitants, are divided into everal parishes and tithings: and, ometimes, where there is but one parih there are two or more vills or tithings.

ten families of freeholders made up a town or tithing, o ten tithings compoed a uperior diviion, called a hundred, as coniting of ten times ten families. The hundred is governed by an high contable or bailiff, and formerly there was regularly held in it the hundred court for the trial of caues, though now fallen into diue. In ome of the more northern counties thee hundreds are called wapentakes.

ubdivifion of hundreds into tithings eems to be mot peculiarly the invention of Alfred: the intitution of hundreds themelves he rather introduced than invented. For they eem to have obtained in Denmark : and we find that in France a regulation of this ort was made above two hundred years before; et on foot by Clotharius and Childebert, with a view of obliging each ditrict to anwer for the robberies committed in it’s own diviion. Thee diviions were, in that country, as well military as civil; and each contained a hundred freemen; who were ubject to an officer called the centenarius; a number of which centenarii were themelves ubject to a uperior officer called the count or comes. And indeed omething like this intitution of hundreds may be traced back as far as the antient Germans, from whom were derived both the Franks who became maters of Gaul, and the Saxons who ettled in England: for both the thing and the name, as a territorial aemblage of perons, from which afterwards the territory itelf might probably receive it’s denomination, were well known to that warlike people. “ ” Rh