Note 1 — VOLUME VII SLICE VI Coucy-le-Château to Crocodile (continued 2)

The history of the word “leet” is very obscure. It appears in Anglo-French documents as lete and in Anglo-Latin as leta. Professor W. W. Skeat has connected it with Old English láetan, to let, which is very doubtful, though this is the origin of the use of the word in such expressions as “two-” “three-way leet,” a place where cross-roads meet. The New English Dictionary suggests a connexion with “lathe,” a term which survives as a division of the county of Kent, containing several “hundreds.” This is of Old Norwegian origin, and seems to have meant “landed possessions.” There is also another Old Norwegian léith, a court or judicial assembly, and modern Danish has laegd, a division of the country for military purposes. J. H. Round (Feudal England, p. 101) points out that the Suffolk hundred was divided for assessment into equal blocks called “leets” (see further F. W. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Soc. Publications I. lxxiii-lxxvi). “Leet” is also used, chiefly in Scotland, for a list of persons nominated for election to an office. This is, apparently, a shortened form of the French élite, elected.