Hundred

In English Law. A division of a county, which some make to have originally consisted of one hundred hides of land, others of ten tithings, or one hundred free families.

See Regan v. R. Co., 60 Conn. ’124, 22 Atl. 503, 25 Am. St. Rep. 30G.

It differed in size in different parts of England; h Steph. Com. 122. In many cases, when an offence is committed within a hundred, the inhabitants are liable to make good the damage if they do not produce the offender.

See 12 East 244.

This system was probably introduced by Alfred (though mentioned in the Poenitentise of Egbert, where it seems to be the addition of a later age), being borrowed from the continent, where it was known to the Franks, under the name ceniena, in the sixth century.

See Charlemagne Capit 1. 3, c.

10; 1 Poll. & Maitl. 543. “The hundred, and the principle that the hundred community is a judicial body, outlived the storms of the folk-wanderings, the political creations of Clovis, the reforms of Charlemagne, the dissolution of the Frankish Empire, the dissolution of the county system.”

Sohm, Die Frhnkische Reichs- und Gerichtsverfassung I. 641.

It had a court attached to it, called the hundred court, or hundred lagh, like a court baron, except in its larger territorial jurisdiction. It was governed by the hundredary (hundredariua); 9 Co. 25. Hundred-penny was a tax collected from the hundred by its lord or by the sheriff. Hundred-fetena signified the dwellers in the hundred; Charta Edg. Beg. Mon. Angl. to.

1, p. 10.

In Dela- England, townships in Pennsylvania, parishes in Louisiana, and the like.