Note 177 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES

Another objection that may be raised to my hypothesis is that the Hundred, as an area for police and rating, was a comparatively late institution, and that if the artificial system of assessment were as ancient as I suggest, it could not have operated, as we saw, in Cambridgeshire, it did operate, through the 'Hundred'. It is, however, admitted that the thing represented by the 'Hundred' was, whatever its original name, of immemorial antiquity, as the intermediate division between the Vill and the Shire or kingdom. Approaching the subject from the legal standpoint, Professor Maitland has pointed out that the Hundred having a proper court, which the Vill had not, was the older institution of the two, and has skilfully seized on the differentiation of villages originally possessing one name in common as a hint that some such subdivision may have been going on more widely than is known. It seems to me to be at least possible that the district originally representing a Hundred, and named, as we are learning, in most cases from the primitive meeting-place of its settlers, was reckoned as so many multiples of five or ten hides, and that this aggregate was subsequently distributed by its community among themselves.177