HUNDRED. In England the term "hundred" is particularly applied to an ancient territorial division intermediate between the villa and the county. Such subordinate districts were also known in different parts of the country by other names; e.g., wapentakes in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Rutland and Leicestershire ; wards in Northumberland, Durham and Cum berland; while some of the hundreds of Cornwall were formerly called shires. In some parts of England a further intermediate division is to be found between the hundred and the county. Thus we have the trithing or riding (q.v.) in Yorkshire, the lathe in Kent, and the rape in Sussex. In Lincolnshire the arrangement is peculiar. The whole county was divided into the three sub counties of Lindsey, Kesteven and Holland. The significance of the name hundred is a matter of some difficulty. The old theory, and perhaps the best, is that the hundred denoted first a group of a hundred families, and then the district which these families occupied. This is not inconsistent with another view, according to which the hundred was originally a term of measurement denot ing a hundred hides of land, for there is good reason for consider ing that the hide was originally as much land as supported one family. It is important to notice that in the document compiled before the Norman Conquest, and now known as the County Hidage, the numbers of hides in all the counties are multiples of a hundred, and that in many cases the multiples agree with the number of hundreds ascribed to a county in Domesday Book. The hundreds of Devon, however, seem never to have contained a hundred hides; but various multiples of five, such as 20, 4o and 6o. Here, and in some of the other western counties, the hun dreds are geographical divisions, to which a varying number of hides was attributed for fiscal purposes.
In the middle ages the hundred was chiefly important for its court of justice; and the word hundredum was as often applied to the court as to the district over which the court had jurisdic tion. According to the compilation known as Leges Henrici, writ ten shortly before '118, it was held 12 times a year, but an ordi nance of 1234, of ter stating that it had been held fortnightly in the reign of Henry II., declares that its ordinary sessions were henceforth to take place every three weeks (Dunstable Annals, 139). Existing court rolls show that from the 13th to the 15th centuries it usually sat 17 times a year, in some hundreds in a fixed place, in others in various places, but in no regular course of rotation. Twice a year a specially full court was held, to which various names such as hundredum legale or hundredum magnum were applied. This was the sheriffs' turn held after Easter and Michaelmas in accordance with the Magna Charta of 1215. The chief object of these sessions was to see that all who ought to be were in the frank-pledge, and that the articles of the view of frank-pledge (q.v.) had been properly observed during the pre ceding half-year. Each township of the hundred was represented by a varying number of suitors who were bound to attend at these half-yearly sessions without individual summons. If the proper number failed to appear the whole township was amerced, the entry on the rolls being frequently of the form "Villata de A. est in misericordia quia non venit plenarie." All the 17 courts, includ ing the two full courts, had jurisdiction in trespass covenant and debt of less than 4o shillings, and in these civil cases such of the freeholders of the county as were present were judges. But the sheriff or the lord of the hundred was the sole judge in the crimi nal business transacted at the full courts.
Owing to the great fall in the value of money the hundred court began to decay rapidly under the Tudor sovereigns. They were for the most part extinguished by the County Courts Act, 1867, which enacts that no action which can be brought in a county court shall thenceforth be brought in a hundred or other inferior court not being a court of record. Until lately the most important of the surviving duties of the hundred was its liability to make good damages occasioned by rioters. By the Riot (Damages) Act, 1886, the liability was thrown on the police rate.
See Pollock and Maitland, Hist. Eng. Law; J. H. Round, Feudal England (1895) ; Annales monastici, "Rolls" series, iii. (Dunstable), 139 ; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (1897). (G. J. T.)