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69-482: Buckrose was a wapentake of the historic East Riding of Yorkshire , England consisting of the north-west part of the county; its territory is now partly in the modern East Riding and partly in North Yorkshire . Established in medieval times, it ceased to have much significance in the 19th century when the wapentakes were succeeded by other administrative divisions for most local government purposes. Buckrose

138-590: A landskap (province), but since the government reform of 1634, län ("county") took over all administrative roles of the province. A härad functioned also as electoral district for one peasant representative during the Riksdag of the Estates (Swedish parliament 1436–1866). The häradsrätt ( assize court ) was the court of first instance in the countryside, abolished in 1971 and superseded by tingsrätt (modern district courts ). Today,

207-466: A clerk and a knight were sent by the king to each county; they sat with the shire- reeve (or sheriff ), of the county and a select group of local knights. There would be two knights from each hundred. After it was determined what geld had to be paid, the bailiff and knights of the hundred were responsible for getting the money to the sheriff, and the sheriff for getting it to the Exchequer . Above

276-458: A commander. Eventually, that division was superseded by introducing the härad or Herred , which was the term in the rest of the Nordic countries . This word was either derived from Proto-Norse * harja-raiðō (warband) or Proto-Germanic * harja-raiða (war equipment, cf. wapentake) . Similar to skipreide , a part of the coast where the inhabitants were responsible for equipping and manning

345-515: A different origin, signifying the amount of land which could be cultivated by one plough team as opposed to a family holding, but all later became artificial fiscal assessments. In some counties in Domesday Book (e.g. Cambridgeshire), the hide is sometimes shown as consisting of 120 acres (30 acres to the virgate), but as Darby explains: "The acres are, of course, not units of area, but geld acres, i.e. units of assessment". In other words, this

414-434: A fixed place; while in others, courts moved with each sitting to a different location. The main duty of the hundred court was the maintenance of the frankpledge system. The court was formed of twelve freeholders , or freemen. According to a 13th-century statute, freeholders did not have to attend their lord's manorial courts, thus any suits involving them would be heard in a hundred court. For especially serious crimes,

483-582: A foot". The legislation instead introduced the six-mile square township of the Public Land Survey System . In South Australia, land titles record in which hundred a parcel of land is located. Similar to the notion of the South Australian counties listed on the system of titles, hundreds are not generally used when referring to a district and are little known by the general population, except when transferring land title. When

552-555: A hide had a tax burden equivalent to three of his oxen and close upon one-third of the annual value of his land. A more normal rate was 2 shillings on each hide. Domesday Book , recording the results of the survey made on the orders of William I in 1086, states in hides (or carucates or sulungs as the case might be) the assessed values of estates throughout the area covered by the survey. Usually it gives this information for 1086 and 1066, but some counties were different and only showed this information for one of those dates. By that time

621-497: A hide of land to be worth £1, or, put another way, for land producing £1 of income to be assessed at one hide." A number of early documents referring to hides have survived, but these can only be seen as steps in the development of the concept of the hide and do not enable us to see the full story. The document known as the Tribal Hidage is a very early list thought to date possibly from the 7th century, but known only from

690-443: A hide was the amount of land farmed by and required to support a peasant family, but by the eleventh century in many areas it supported four families. Alternatively the hundred may have been an area originally settled by one "hundred" men at arms, or the area liable to provide one "hundred" men under arms. In this early medieval use, the number term "hundred" can itself be unclear, meaning the "short" hundred (100) or in some contexts

759-486: A hundred was the division of a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law , which could have varying extent of common feudal ownership, from complete suzerainty to minor royal or ecclesiastical prerogatives and rights of ownership. Until the introduction of districts by the Local Government Act 1894 , hundreds were the only widely used assessment unit intermediate in size between

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828-476: A later and unreliable manuscript. It is a list of tribes and small kingdoms owing tribute to an overlord and of the proportionate liability or quota imposed on each of them. This is expressed in terms of hides, though we have no details as to how these were arrived at nor how they were converted into a cash liability. The Burghal Hidage (early 10th century) is a list of boroughs giving the hide assessments of neighbouring districts which were liable to contribute to

897-440: A local level in the feudal system . Of chief importance was their more regular use for taxation, and six centuries of taxation returns for the divisions survive to this day. Groupings of divisions, small shires , were used to define parliamentary constituencies from 1832 to 1885. On the redistribution of seats in 1885 a different county subdivision, the petty sessional division , was used. Hundreds were also used to administer

966-399: A peasant and his household or of a 'family', which may have had an extended meaning. It is uncertain whether it meant the immediate family or a more extensive group. Charles-Edwards suggests that in its early usage it referred to the land of one family, worked by one plough and that ownership of a hide conferred the status of a freeman, to whom Stenton referred as "the independent master of

1035-565: A peasant household". Hides of land formed the basis for tax levies used to equip free warriors ( miles ) of the Holy Roman Empire . In 807 it was specified that in the region west of the Seine, for example, a vassal who held four or five hides was responsible for showing up to a muster in person, fully equipped for war. Three men who each possessed one hide, though, merely were grouped such that two of them were responsible for equipping

1104-594: A rural kihlakunta . In a rural hundred the lensmann (chief of local state authorities) was called nimismies ("appointed man"), or archaically vallesmanni (from Swedish). In the Swedish era (up to 1809), his main responsibilities were maintenance of stagecoach stations and coaching inns , supplying traveling government personnel with food and lodging, transport of criminal prisoners, police responsibilities, arranging district court proceedings ( tingsrätt ), collection of taxes, and sometimes arranging hunts to cull

1173-476: A similar subdivision of counties is referred to as a barony , and a hundred is a subdivision of a particularly large townland (most townlands are not divided into hundreds). The origin of the division of counties into hundreds is described by the Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) as "exceedingly obscure". It may once have referred to an area of 100 hides ; in early Anglo-Saxon England

1242-464: A tax on land in 1193-4 to raise money for King Richard's ransom. A hide was usually made up of four virgates although exceptionally Sussex had eight virgates to the hide. A similar measure was used in the northern Danelaw , known as a carucate , consisting of eight bovates , and Kent used a system based on a "sulung", consisting of four yokes , which was larger than the hide and on occasion treated as equivalent to two hides. These measures had

1311-458: A war ship. Hundreds were not organized in Norrland , the northern sparsely populated part of Sweden. In Sweden, a countryside härad was typically divided in a few socken units (parish), where the ecclesiastical and worldly administrative units often coincided. This began losing its basic significance through the municipal reform of 1862 . A härad was originally a subdivision of

1380-587: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This North Yorkshire location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wapentake A hundred is an administrative division that is geographically part of a larger region. It was formerly used in England, Wales, some parts of the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and in Cumberland County in

1449-412: Is based on the equivalent German word Hube , a unit of land a farmer might own. Much work has been done investigating the hidation of various counties and also in attempts to discover more about the origin and development of the hide and the purposes for which it was used, but without producing many clear conclusions which would help the general reader. Those requiring more information may wish to consult

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1518-599: Is often not exact as boundaries often follow local topography. Hide (unit) The hide's method of calculation is now obscure: different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent even in the same county. Following the Norman Conquest of England , the hidage assessments were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there was a tendency for land producing £ 1 of income per year to be assessed at 1 hide. The Norman kings continued to use

1587-408: Is possible. The Norman kings, after the Norman Conquest , continued to use the system which they found in place. Geld was levied at intervals on the existing hidage assessments. In 1084, William I laid an exceptionally heavy geld of six shillings upon every hide. At the time the value of the hide was approximating twenty shillings a year, and the price of an ox was two shillings. Thus the holder of

1656-656: The Domesday Book of 1086, the term is used instead of hundreds in Yorkshire , the Five Boroughs of Derby , Leicester , Lincoln , Nottingham and Stamford , and also sometimes in Northamptonshire. The laws in wapentakes were similar to those in hundreds with minor variations. According to the first-century historian Tacitus , in Scandinavia the wapentake referred to a vote passed at an assembly by

1725-508: The burhs and to help in their initial construction and upkeep. A land tax known as geld was first levied in 990 and this became known as the Danegeld, as it was used to buy off the Danes who were then raiding and invading the country. It was raised again for the same purpose on several occasions. The already existing system of assessment of land in hides was utilised to raise the geld, which

1794-508: The long hundred of 120. There was an equivalent traditional Germanic system. In Old High German a huntari is a division of a gau , but the OED believes that the link between the two is not established. From the 11th century in England, and to a lesser extent from the 16th century in Wales, and until the middle of the 19th century, the annual assemblies had varying degrees of power at

1863-437: The 11th century but to charters of the 7th and 8th centuries. Nevertheless, the hide became the basis of an artificial system of assessment of land for purposes of taxation, which lasted for a long period. The most consistent aspect of the hide is described as follows by Sally Harvey (referring particularly to Domesday Book): "Both Maitland and Vinogradoff long ago noticed that there was a general tendency throughout Domesday for

1932-424: The 11th century, Northamptonshire was assigned 3,200 hides, while Staffordshire was assigned only 500. This number was then divided up between the hundreds in the county. Theoretically there were 100 hides in each hundred, but this proportion was often not maintained, for example because of changes in the hundreds or in the estates comprising them or because assessments were altered when the actual cash liability

2001-642: 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 British House of Commons as a (formerly) remunerated office of the Crown. A wapentake, an Old Norse -derived term as common in Northern England , was the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon hundred in the northern Danelaw . In

2070-579: The 17th century, following the English practice familiar to the colonists. They survive in Delaware (see List of hundreds of Delaware ), and were used as tax reporting and voting districts until the 1960s, but now serve no administrative role: their only official legal use is in real estate title descriptions. The hundred was also used as a division of the county in Maryland . Carroll County, Maryland

2139-700: The British Colony of New South Wales . It is still used in other places, including in Australia (in South Australia and the Northern Territory ). Other terms for the hundred in English and other languages include wapentake , herred (Danish and Bokmål Norwegian ), herad ( Nynorsk Norwegian ), härad or hundare (Swedish), Harde (German), hiird ( North Frisian ), kihlakunta (Finnish), and cantref (Welsh). In Ireland,

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2208-439: The Crown, but by its subjects. Where a hundred was under a lord, a steward , acting as a judge and the chief official of the lord of the manor , was appointed in place of a sheriff. The importance of the hundred courts declined from the 17th century, and most of their powers were extinguished with the establishment of county courts in 1867. The remaining duty of the inhabitants of a hundred to make good damages caused by riot

2277-565: The York Diocese. In Wales an ancient Celtic system of division called cantrefi (a hundred farmsteads; singular cantref ) had existed for centuries and was of particular importance in the administration of the Welsh law . The antiquity of the cantrefi is demonstrated by the fact that they often mark the boundary between dialects . Some were originally kingdoms in their own right; others may have been artificial units created later. With

2346-446: The assessments showed many anomalies. Many of the hide assessments on lands held by tenants-in-chief were reduced between 1066 and 1086 in order to effect an exemption from or reduction in tax; this again shows that the hide is a tax assessment, not an area of land. Sometimes, the assessment in hides is given both for the whole manor and for the demesne land (i.e. the lord's own demesne) included in it. Sally Harvey has suggested that

2415-562: The brandishing of weapons. In some counties, such as Leicestershire, the wapentakes recorded at the time of Domesday Book later evolved into hundreds. In others, such as Lincolnshire , the term remained in use. Although no longer part of local government, there is some correspondence between the rural deanery and the former wapentake or hundred; especially in the East Midlands, the Buckingham Archdeaconry and

2484-407: The coming of Christianity, the llan (similar to the parish) based Celtic churches often took the borders of the older cantrefi, and the same happened when Norman 'hundreds' were enforced on the people of Wales. Each cantref had its own court, which was an assembly of the uchelwyr , the main landowners of the cantref . This would be presided over by the king if he happened to be present, or if he

2553-498: The defence of the borough, each contributing to the maintenance and manning of the fortifications in proportion to the number of hides for which they answered. The County Hidage (early 11th century) lists the total number of hides to be assessed on each county and it seems that by this time at least the total number of hides in a given area was imposed from above. Each county was assigned a round number of hides, for which it would be required to answer. For instance, at an early date in

2622-464: The extent of a territory by the number of families which it supported, as (for instance), in Latin, terra x familiarum meaning 'a territory of ten families'. In the Anglo-Saxon version of the same work hid or hiwan is used in place of terra ... familiarum . Other documents of the period show the same equivalence and it is clear that the word hide originally signified land sufficient for the support of

2691-509: The first five national censuses from 1801 to 1841. The system of county divisions was not as stable as the system of counties being established at the time, and lists frequently differ on how many hundreds a county had. In many parts of the country, the Domesday Book contained a radically different set of divisions from that which later became established. The numbers of divisions in each county varied widely. Leicestershire had six (up from four at Domesday), whereas Devon , nearly three times

2760-590: The hundred was the shire , under the control of a sheriff. Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although often aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties, or a parish could be split between hundreds. Exceptionally, in the counties of Kent and Sussex , there was a sub-division intermediate in size between the hundred and the shire: several hundreds were grouped together to form lathes in Kent and rapes in Sussex. At

2829-538: The hundred was under the jurisdiction of the Crown; the chief magistrate was a sheriff, and his circuit was called the sheriff's tourn . However, many hundreds came into private hands, with the lordship of the hundred being attached to the principal manor of the area and becoming hereditary. Helen Cam estimated that even before the Conquest, over 130 hundreds were in private hands; while an inquest of 1316 found that by that date 388 of 628 named hundreds were held, not by

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2898-403: The hundreds added five more: Pitts Creek, Acquango, Queponco, Buckingham, and Worcester Hundreds. The original borders of Talbot County (founded at some point prior to 12 February 1661 ) contained nine hundreds: Treadhaven Hundred, Bolenbroke Hundred, Mill Hundred, Tuckahoe Hundred, Worrell Hundred, Bay Hundred, Island Hundred, Lower Kent Island Hundred, Chester Hundred. In 1669 Chester Hundred

2967-590: The hundreds serve no administrative role in Sweden, although some judicial district courts still bear the name (e.g. Attunda tingsrätt ) and the hundreds are occasionally used in expressions, e.g. Sjuhäradsbygden (district of seven hundreds). It is not entirely clear when hundreds were organised in the western part of Finland. The name of the province of Satakunta , roughly meaning hundred ( sata meaning "one hundred" in Finnish), hints at influences from

3036-491: The land in the region of the present Darwin, in the Northern Territory, was first surveyed, the territory was administered by South Australia, and the surveyed land was divided up into hundreds. The Cumberland County ( Sydney ) was also allocated hundreds in the nineteenth century, although these were later repealed. A hundred is traditionally one hundred square miles or 64,000 acres (26,000 ha), although this

3105-458: The name Bay Hundred, with state and local governments using the name in ways ranging from water trail guides to community pools, while local newspapers regularly use the name in reporting news. Following American independence, the term "hundred" fell out of favour and was replaced by "election district". However, the names of the old hundreds continue to show up in deeds for another 50 years. Some plantations in early colonial Virginia used

3174-413: The number of hides for which an estate should answer. As each local community had the task of deciding how its quota of hides should be divided between the lands held by that community, different communities used different criteria, depending on the type of land held and on the way in which an individual's wealth was reckoned within that community, it is self-evident that no single comprehensive definition

3243-471: The parish, with its various administrative functions, and the county, with its formal, ceremonial functions. The term "hundred" is first recorded in the laws of Edmund I (939–46) as a measure of land and the area served by a hundred court. In the Midlands , they often covered an area of about 100 hides , but this did not apply in the south; this may suggest that it was an ancient West Saxon measure that

3312-485: The ploughland data in Domesday Book was intended to be used for a complete re-assessment but, if so, it was never actually made. The Pipe Rolls , where they are available, show that levies were based largely on the old assessments, though with some amendments and exemptions. The last recorded levy was for 1162-3 during the reign of Henry II , but the tax was not formally abolished and Henry II thought of using it again between 1173 and 1175. The old assessments were used for

3381-497: The size, had 32. By the end of the 19th century, several single-purpose subdivisions of counties, such as poor law unions , sanitary districts , and highway districts , had sprung up, which, together with the introduction of urban districts and rural districts in 1894, mostly replaced the role of the parishes, and to a lesser extent the less extensive role of hundreds. The division names gave their name to multiple modern local government districts . In south and western England,

3450-458: The system during the 350 years which elapsed between the time of Bede and the Domesday Book remain obscure. According to Sir Frank Stenton , "Despite the work of many great scholars the hide of early English texts remains a term of elusive meaning." The fact that assessments consistently tended to be made in units of 5 hides or multiples of 5 hides goes to show that we are not speaking of fixed or even approximate acreages and this applies not only to

3519-560: The term hundred in their names, such as Martin's Hundred , Flowerdew Hundred , and West and Shirley Hundred . Bermuda Hundred was the first incorporated town in the English colony of Virginia. It was founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1613, six years after Jamestown . While debating what became the Land Ordinance of 1785 , Thomas Jefferson 's committee wanted to divide the public lands in the west into "hundreds of ten geographical miles square, each mile containing 6086 and 4-10ths of

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3588-415: The third, who would go to war in their name. Those holding half-hides were responsible for readying one man for every group of six. This came about as a way of ensuring that the liege took to the field with a fully equipped and provisioned force. In early Anglo-Saxon England , the hide was used as the basis for assessing the amount of food rent (known as feorm ) due from a village or estate and it became

3657-503: The time of the Norman conquest of England , Kent was divided into seven lathes and Sussex into four rapes. Over time, the principal functions of the hundred became the administration of law and the keeping of the peace. By the 12th century, the hundred court was held twelve times a year. This was later increased to fortnightly, although an ordinance of 1234 reduced the frequency to once every three weeks. In some hundreds, courts were held at

3726-530: The times before the Northern Crusades , Christianization , and incorporation into Sweden. As kihlakunta , hundreds remained the fundamental administrative division for the state authorities until 2009. Each was subordinated to a lääni (province/county) and had its own police department, district court and prosecutors. Typically, cities would comprise an urban kihlakunta by themselves, but several rural municipalities would belong to

3795-494: The unit for their tax assessments until the end of the 12th century. The hide was divided into four yardlands or virgates . It was hence nominally equivalent in area to a carucate , a unit used in the Danelaw . The Anglo-Saxon word for a hide was hid (or its synonym hiwisc ). Both words are believed to be derived from the same root hiwan , which meant "family". Bede in his Ecclesiastical History (c. 731) describes

3864-426: The unit on which all public obligations were assessed, including in particular the maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications and the provision of troops for manning the defences of a town or for the defence force known as the 'fyrd'. For instance, at one period, five hides were expected to provide one fully armed soldier in the king's service, and one man from every hide was to be liable to do garrison duty for

3933-536: The wapentake was Norton . Buckrose gave its name to a parliamentary constituency which existed from 1885 to 1950; however, the Buckrose constituency extended well beyond the boundaries of the wapentake, and in fact took most of its electorate from towns in the neighbouring Dickering and Harthill wapentakes. 54°03′14″N 0°46′05″W  /  54.054°N 0.768°W  / 54.054; -0.768 This East Riding of Yorkshire location article

4002-434: The wolf and bear population. Following the abolition of the provinces as an administrative unit in 2009, the territory for each authority could be demarcated separately, i.e. police districts need not equal court districts in number. The title "härad" survives in the honorary title of herastuomari (Finnish) or häradsdomare (Swedish), which can be given to lay judges after 8–10 years of service. The term herred or herad

4071-410: Was a measure of 'the taxable worth of an area of land', but it had no fixed relationship to its area, the number of ploughteams working on it, or its population; nor was it limited to the arable land on an estate. According to Bailey, "It is a commonplace that the hide in 1086 had a very variable extent on the ground; the old concept of 120 acres cannot be sustained." Many details of the development of

4140-474: Was a way of dividing the tax assessment on the hide between several owners of parts of the land assessed. The owner of land assessed at 40 notional (or 'fiscal') acres in a village assessed at 10 hides and paying geld of 2 shillings per hide would be responsible for one-third ( 40 ⁄ 120 ) of 2 shillings—that is, 8 pence—though his land might be considerably more or less than 40 modern statute acres in extent. The surname Huber (also anglicized as Hoover )

4209-415: Was applied rigidly when Mercia became part of the newly established English kingdom in the 10th century. The Hundred Ordinance , which dates to the middle of the century, provided that the court was to meet monthly, and thieves were to be pursued by all the leading men of the district. During Norman times, the hundred would pay geld based on the number of hides. To assess how much everyone had to pay,

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4278-609: Was ended by the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 , when the cost was transferred to the county police rate. The jurisdiction of hundred courts was curtailed by the Administration of Justice Act 1977 . The steward of the Chiltern Hundreds is 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 these duties ceased to be performed in

4347-616: Was formed from parishes of earlier wapentakes, including some from the Domesday-era wapentake of Toreshou. Buckrose consisted of the parishes of Acklam , Birdsall , Bugthorpe , Burythorpe , Cowlam , Fridaythorpe , Helperthorpe , Heslerton , Kirby Grindalythe , Kirby Underdale , Langton , North Grimston , Norton , Rillington , Scrayingham , Settrington , Sherburn , Skirpenbeck , Sledmere , Thorpe Bassett , Weaverthorpe , Westow , Wetwang , Wharram-le-Street , Wharram Percy , Wintringham and Yedingham . The only town in

4416-503: Was formed 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. Maryland's Somerset County, which was established in 1666, was initially divided into six hundreds: Mattapony , Pocomoke, Boquetenorton, Wicomico, and Baltimore Hundreds; later subdivisions of

4485-504: Was given to Kent County. In 1707 Queen Anne's County was created from the northern parts of Talbot County, reducing the latter to seven hundreds (Lower Kent Island Hundred becoming a part of the former). Of these, only Bay Hundred legally remains in existence, as a District 5 in Talbot County. The geographic region, which includes several unincorporated communities and part of present-day Saint Michaels , continues to be known by

4554-420: Was levied at a stated rate per hide (e.g. two shillings per hide). Subsequently the same system was used for general taxation and the geld was raised as required. The hide was a measure of value rather than a measurement of area, but the logic of its assessment is not easy to understand, especially as assessments were changed from time to time and not always consistently. By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it

4623-497: Was not present, by his representative. Apart from the judges there would be a clerk, an usher and sometimes two professional pleaders. The cantref court dealt with crimes, the determination of boundaries, and inheritance. The term hundare ( hundred ) was used in Svealand and present-day Finland. The name is assumed to mean an area that should organise 100 men to crew four rowed war boats, which each had 12 pairs of oars and

4692-403: Was perceived as being too high or too low or for other reasons now unknown. The hides within each hundred were then divided between villages, estates or manors , usually in blocks or multiples of 5 hides, though this was not always maintained. Differences from the norm could result from estates being moved from one hundred to another, or from adjustments to the size of an estate or alterations in

4761-548: Was used in Norway between 1863 and 1992 for rural municipalities, besides the term kommune (heradskommune). Today, only four municipalities in western Norway call themselves herad , as Ulvik and Kvam . Some Norwegian districts have the word herad in their name, of historical reasons - among them Krødsherad and Heradsbygd in eastern Norway. Counties in Delaware , New Jersey and Pennsylvania were divided into hundreds in

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