Hundred (division)
A
hundred is an administrative division, frequently used in
Europe and
New England, which historically was used to divide a larger region into smaller geographical units. Alternative names include
"Wapentake",
"Herred" and "Härad".
The name is derived from the number
one hundred and it may in some areas once have referred to a hundred men under arms - in
England, however, it was that amount of land sufficient to sustain one hundred families.
It was a traditional
Germanic system described as early as AD
98 by
Tacitus (the
centeni). Similar systems were used in the traditional administrative regimes of
China and
Japan.
In
England a hundred was the division of a
shire for administrative, military and judicial purposes under the
common law[
1]. Originally, when introduced by the
Saxons between
613 and
1017, a hundred had enough land to sustain approximately one hundred households headed by a
hundred-man or
hundred eolder. He was responsible for administration, justice, and supplying military troops, as well as leading its forces. The office was not hereditary, but by the
10th century the office was selected from among a few outstanding families.
Hundreds were further divided. Larger or more populous hundreds were split into
divisions (or in Sussex,
half hundreds). All hundreds were divided into
tithings, which contained ten households. Below that, the basic unit of land was called the
hide, which was enough land to support one family and varied in size from 60 to 120 old
acres, or 15 to 30 modern acres (6 to 12 ha) depending on the quality and
fertility of the land. Compare with
township.
Above the hundred was the
shire under the control of a shire-
reeve (or
sheriff). Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although often aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties (usually only a fraction), or a parish could be split between hundreds.
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 has. The
Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds than that which would later become established, in many parts of the country. The number of hundreds in each county varied wildly.
Leicestershire had six (up from four at Domesday), whereas
Devon, nearly three times larger, had thirty-two.
Hundreds gradually dropped out of administrative usage, and by the
19th century several different single-purpose subdivisions of counties, such as
Poor Law Unions,
rural sanitary districts, and
Parliamentary divisions, sprung up, filling the administrative role they had previously played. Hundreds have never been formally abolished.
Several ancient hundred names give their name to modern
local government districts.
The
Chiltern Hundreds are notable as a
legal fiction, owing to a quirk of British Parliamentary law. A
Crown Steward was appointed to maintain law and order in the area, but the position's duties ceased to be required in the
16th century, and the holder ceased to gain any benefits during the
17th century. The position has since been used as a procedural device to allow
resignation from the House of Commons.
Other terms
A
wapentake is a term derived from the
Old Norse, the rough equivalent of an
Anglo-Saxon hundred. The word denotes an administrative meeting place, typically a crossroads or a ford in a river where attendance or voting would be denoted or conducted by the show of
weapons.
The counties of
Yorkshire,
Derbyshire,
Leicestershire,
Northamptonshire,
Nottinghamshire,
Rutland and
Lincolnshire were divided into wapentakes, just as most of the remainder of
England was divided into hundreds.
In Yorkshire, a Norse wapentake usually replaced several Anglo-Saxon hundreds. This process was complete by 1086 in the North and West Ridings, but continued in the East Riding until the mid 12th century.
In some counties, such as Leicestershire, the wapentakes recorded at the time of the
Domesday Book evolved into hundreds later on. In others, such as
Lincolnshire, the term remained in use.
The term
ward was used in a similar manner in the four northern counties of
Cumberland,
Durham,
Northumberland and
Westmorland.
Lathes in
Kent and
rapes in
Sussex consisted of several hundreds, and filled some roles usually associated with hundreds.
In the
Scandinavian countries hundreds were used in
Sweden (with
Finland),
Norway and
Denmark.
In older
Sweden (
Svealand), the division was called
Hundare, whereas in
Götaland (Geatland),
Denmark and
Norway it was called
herred and
härad. Eventually that division was superseded by introducing the
härad also in Svealand.
Hundreds were not organized in
Norrland, the northern sparsely populated part of Sweden. It is possible that hundreds were organised in Finland in pre-Christian times – that is even before annexation by Sweden. The name of the province of
Satakunta (roughly meaning
Hundred) hints to this direction.
Counties in
Delaware,
New Jersey and
Pennsylvania were divided into hundreds in the
seventeenth century, in imitation of the British system. They survive in Delaware (see
hundreds), and were used as tax reporting and
voting districts until the
1960s, but now serve no administrative role, their only current official legal use being in real-estate title descriptions.[
2]
The hundred was also used as a division of the county in some of the English colonies in North America, especially in
Maryland and in
Delaware.
Carroll County, Maryland, was composed in
1836 by taking the following hundreds from
Baltimore County: North Hundred, Pipe Creek Hundred, Delaware Upper Hundred, Delaware Lower Hundred and from
Frederick County: Pipe Creek Hundred, Westminster Hundred, Unity Hundred, Burnt House Hundred, Piney Creek Hundred, and Taneytown Hundred.
*
List of hundreds of England and Wales*
Moot Mound The meeting place of an Anglo-Saxon Hundred.
*
Attundaland *
Chiltern Hundreds *
Fjärdhundraland *
Leidang *
Roslagen *
Tiundaland *
Traditional administrative systems *
Feudal measurement
