SHIRE (Sax. seiran, to divide), a term which seems to have originated in the Stir c., and is applied to the districts, otherwise called counties, into which Great Britain is divided. A considerable number of the counties of England, as Kent, Essex, Surrey, Norfolk, Suffolk, were formed out of the petty kingdoms Of the Anglo-Sraons, with the advancing tide of centralization, were gradually becoming consolidated into one great kingdom. As early as S00, an entry in the Saxon chronicle relates that kings had ceased to reign among the Thriceas (the inhabitants of the district afterward known as Worcestershire), and that they were governed by an ealdorman acting under Cyuwttlf, king of Mercia. This substitution of ealdormen (or earls) for kings marks the gradual organization of the counties. It was sometimes found convenient to split up a kingdom into several shires. The civil, military, and judicial head of the shire was the ealdorman, whose office was not necessarily hereditary, thongh.it had sometimes a tendency to become so. Twice a year he held the shire-mote, in which he and the bishop presided with equal jurisdiction. Among other questions which would come before the shire-motes were those that related to the boundaries of the respective shires. As a border thane pushed his occupation toward the frontiers of the shire to which he belonged, and came into collision the occupants of the neighboring shire, questions necessarily arose which could only ba settled by a compromise arranged by the two shire-motes, and these compromises may mount for the irregular jagged boundaries which separate shire from shire, and occa sional isolation of particular portions. Yorkshire, Durham, Cheshire, and Worcestershire derived their name from their ancient bishoprics. Various shires which had once an existence in the n., as IN orhamshire, Islandshire, Hexhamsffire, Hallamshire, Bamborough Shire, have merged into others. The term shire is nearly synonymous with county, yet not quite so, as there are certain counties with whose names the affix "shire" is never used. One explanation which has been given of this usage is, that the object of theadili tion of the syllable "shire" is to distinguish the county from the town of the same name, and that it is therefore only applicable to counties bearing the same name with their Comity town. Another explanation is that shire, being a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, is not properly applied to any of the English counties except those which formed part of the larger Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Neither of these reasons is exactly correspondent
With the actual usage by which, shire terminates the names of all the English counties except the following: Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Durham, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, and Cornwall. In Cheshire we drop the final syllable of the town of Chester. Berkshire, Shropshire, and Hampshire are never used in their simple form, though sometimes abbreviated into Berks, Salop, and Hants. Shire is applied to all the Welsh counties except Anglesea.
In Scotland, the English tendencies of the sovereigns from the time of Malcolm Can more to the war of succession, and the tide of immigration from the brought in, among other innovations, the division into shires. Its introduction seems to have begun early in the 12th century. Twenty-five shires or counties are enumerated in a public ordinance of date 1305. Nearly all the counties of Scotland may receive the terminal addition of shire. It is not applied to the island county of Orkney, and seldom to the counties of Mite and Caithness. Kirkcudbright is neither a shire nor a county, but a Stewartry. See STEWARTRY. The Irish counties are not generally called shires.
In England, s. of the Tees, there was a subdivision of the shires into hundreds, which originally, in theory at least, seem to have been district§inhabited by 100 or 120 families; and were in some localities called wapentalvs, these hundreds or wapentakes being further subdivided into tythiogs, inhabited by ten free families; and it became incum bent on every one to be enrolled in a tything and hundred for the purposes a civil gov ernment. In some of the larger counties there was an intermediate division to which that into hundreds was subordinate. Yorkshire had and still has its ridingx (q.v.), Kent had its lathes, and Sussex its rapes. The division into hundreds and tythings never penetrated into the four northern counties of England, or into Scotland, where the ward and quarter were the immediate subdivisions of the county.
England possessed three counties periettine—Cheshire. Lancashire, and Durham—of which the earls formerly possessed all the judicial and fiscal powers of the crown, a now annexed to the crown (see PALATINE). Similar privileges belonged to the earldon, of Stratherne in Scotland.