HUNDRED. In English Law. A division of a county, which some make to have orig inally 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. 306.
It differed in size in different parts of England; Steph. Com. 122. In many cases, when an offence is committed with in a hundred, the inhabitants are liable to make good the damage if they do not pro duce the offender. See 12 East 244.
This system was probably introduced by Alfred (though mentioned in the Pceniten tile of Egbert, where it seems to be the ad dition of a later age), being borrowed from the continent, where it was known to the Franks, under the name centena, 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, out lived 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 sys tem." Sohm, Die Frankische Reichs- and
Gerichtsverfassung I. 541.
It had a court attached to it, called the hundred court, or hundred lagh, like a court baron, except in its larger territorial juris diction. It was governed by the hundredary (hundredcwius) ; 9 Co. 25. Hundred-penny was a tax collected from the hundred by its lord or by the sheriff. Hundred-fetena sig nified the dwellers in the hundred; Charta Edg. Reg. Mon. Angl. to. 1, p. 16. In Dela ware the subdivisions of a county are called hundreds, . They correspond to towns in New England, townships in Pennsylvania, par ishes in Louisiana, and the like.