Foreign Members. Monsieur Maurice Ardant, Limoges Monsieur de Caumont, Hon. F.S.A., Caen Professor Carrara, Spalatra Monsieur Poncin Cassaquay, Seraing-sur-Meuse, near Liége L'Abbé Cochet, Hon. F.S.A., Rouen Monsieur Coste, Marseille Le Vicomte de Courval, au Château de Pinon, near Chavignon Monsieur Dassy, Marseille Monsieur d'Avezac, Rue du Bac, No. 38, Paris Monsieur Léopold Delisle, Hon. F.S.A., Paris Monsieur Antoine Durand, Calais Don Antonio Delgado, Madrid Monsieur Dubosc, St.-Lo, Normandy Monsieur Gustave Dupont, Caen Monsieur Lecointre-Dupont, Hon. F.S.A., Poitiers Monsieur Benjamin Fillon, Fontenay-le-Comte Monsieur H. de Formaville, Caen Monsieur Guizot, Hon. F.S.A., le Val Richer, Normandy Herr Habel, Schierstein, Biberich Monsieur Alexandre Hermand, St.-Omer Monsieur Achille Jubinal, Paris Professor Klein, Mentz Doctor Bernhard Köhne, Berlin Monsieur Edouard Lambert, Bayeux Monsieur Albert Lenoir, Paris Monsieur George Mancel, Caen Monsieur du Méril, Passy-lez-Paris E. G. Squier, Esq., Hon. F.S.A., New York Herr J. J. Worsaae, Hon. F.S.A., Copenhagen THE JOURNAL OF THE British Archaeological Association. MARCH, 1872. ON THE ORIGIN OF THE HUNDRED AND TITHING OF ENGLISH LAW. BY THE REV. WILLIAM BARNES, B.D. It has been set down and taught in our school-books that England was divided into hundreds and tithings by King Alfred; and a ground for such an opinion is, indeed, given by Blackstone in his Commentaries. In book iv, c. 33, he speaks of the new modelling of the constitution as a great work of Alfred, and says that he effected it by reducing the whole kingdom under one regular and gradual subordination of government, wherein each man was answerable to his immediate superior for his own conduct and that of his nearest neighbours; for to him we owe that master-piece of judicial policy, the subdivision of England into tithings and hundreds, if not into counties. I do not know in any SaxonEnglish laws or writings any good ground for this opinion, while the laws and writings of our English forefathers and of other Saxon tribes, and of the Welsh, and even the Romans, would betoken that some such out-sharings of men or homesteads were known to the law for war and the safe custody of men's life and belongings, before the good King Alfred wielded so wisely and righteously the kingship of England; though we might believe that he righted any wrongs that the changes of time had left in the hundreds as land-shares, or in the working of them for the ends of justice; and the laws and land-shares of Wales would go to show that the hundred was an institution of the old Britons. If King Alfred, or Ina, or any other Saxon-English king, whose code is come down to us, had out-marked the hundreds or set up the freeborough (freoburh) which belonged to them, so great a change in the matters of warfare and justice would most likely have been enacted, as it is not, by some one of his laws, and the law would still show the work of the great lawgiver in its very words. The hundred and freeborough are named in the Saxon-English laws as things already known to law-bound men; and so speaks of them a law of King Athelstan, who took his kingdom only twenty-four years after the death of Alfred; and so speaks of the hundred an Anglo-Saxon law-form which bears in its wording the stamp of a very early time of Saxon-English law. The word "hundred" (centuria) might sometimes be found as meaning a hundred men, though by such men the word. would have, at first, meant a hundred landholders; for the hundred was pretty clearly at first what its name (cantref) in Welsh means, an out-sharing of a hundred (cant) homesteads (trefydd) or land-ownerships, for the ends of landwarding and law. Tacitus says that the Germani had, in war, a body of men of whom a hundred were taken out of every pagus (?hundred), and (cap.11) that they met in councils (hundredes gemote) once a month, and that in such a council they chose a head man over the pagus, such as was the "hundredes ealdor," or headborough of our old hundreds. Mr. Kemble says that from the first we find the inhabitants of the mark (mearc) classed in tens and hundreds,—our tithings and hundreds, and he quotes the laws of the Franks as owning the decanus (tithingman) and centuarius (hundredes ealdor). So we have traces of the hundred in the early laws of Rome, in the centuria and the centurio (centurion). The centuria would match with our hundred, and the word would match with the Celtic cantwyr, the hundred men; while the centurio would, at first, have been the "hundredes ealdor" of our forefathers. Then, again, there is good ground for the belief that the Britons had formed hundreds, and even many of our hundreds, long before our English forefathers, and much longer before Alfred made any laws at all. One of the Welsh Triads of the Isle of Britain gives the overflooding by the inlet sea, in the time of Seithenin (about the year 500), of the Cantref y Gwaelod, or Lowland Hundred, where now is Cardigan Bay, in which may yet be seen, at low water, two sea-walls of stone, one of which (Sarn Badrig) runs, as it is said, about twenty miles into the sea. The overflooding of this hundred is the matter of a poem by Taliessin, who, as we are told, was a bard of Elphin, lord of Cantref Gwaelod ; and who, as is known, wrote long before the time of King Alfred. It is true that the word cantref is not welded into the poem; but the heading of the poem, which we may believe is of the time of the poem, is "Caniad pan aeth y môr dros y Cantref Gwaelod" (A song when the sea came over the Lowland Hundred). It has been put to my mind that Davies, in his British Mythology, has proved that the overflooding of the Cantref y Gwaelod is a puerile distortion of the flood of Noah, who is meant by the name Seithenin. It is, indeed, a distortion of the flood to make it only the overflooding of a cantref in Wales; and a distortion of the Bible history of Noah to make him to have been a Welsh waterman or sluice-keeper, and to have himself brought in the flood. And if the name of Seithenin be from saith (seven), it does not very well befit the eighth person saved in the ark; nor do the ten Welsh trefydd quite tally with the cities of the plain. If, however, the heading of the poem of Taliessin is as old as is the poem itself, it shows us that the cantref was known in Wales in his time, the fifth cen tury. Then in the time of Hoel Dda (the tenth century at the latest), the hundred (cantref) was known as such to Welsh law, and was built up of the following under-shares: four erw (ploughland), one tyddyn,-erw from aru, to plough. The erw was a very old land-share, and was sixteen rods (hirjau) long and two broad. A tyddyn seems to have been at first one son's holding :-four tyddyn one gafael (holding or householding), four gafael one tref (homestead, home), as is shown by the word adref (at home), i dref (to home); four tref one true maenor (stone boundary), from maen (a stone), gor (a rim or boundary), whence our manor. But there were sometimes seven tref in a maenor-froi (Lowland manor) and thirteen tref in a maenor withdir (High or heath-land); twelve maenor and two tref (12×4=48 and 2=50 trefydd) in one cummwd, and two cummwd make one cantref; for the law says, "Sef yw hynny, o erif pum eugantref, a hynny yw y cantref yn jawn," so this (the two cummwd) is of 66 the number one hundred, and this is the just cantref." Pentref (head tref) now often means in Welsh a village, though pentref might have meant, at first, the head tref of the cantref (hundred) where the court was holden. Since the lowland maenor had seven, and the highland maenor had thirteen trefydd, and so neither of them was of the true tale of four trefydd, it would seem that the cantrefydd must have been of earlier out-sharing than of the time of Hoel Dda. The four headings or prefaces to four codices would forbid us, as far as they are trustworthy, to hold that Hoel out-shared Wales into cantrefydd, for one of them is, "Hywel Dda, son of Cadell, king of Cymru, made, through the grace of God and fasting and prayer, these laws, as Wales (Cymru) belonged to him in its boundaries, and not otherwise sixty-four cantref in South Wales (Deheubarth), eighteen cantref in Gwynedd (North Wales), sixty tref in Trachyrchell, and sixty tref in Buellt," now a township in Brecknock. Trachyrchell would mean Beyond ring or bounds, from tra (beyond) and cyrchell (ring, rim, or bound); and it might have been so called, as odd y trefydd (out of the cantref. The headings to two other codices say that Hoel called to his council six men out of every cantref; and they would show, as far as they are trustworthy, that the cantrefydd were already formed at the time of the council. The cantref shows itself in the writings of the middle ages, and is found in the Mabinogion, as in the tale of "Math, the Son of Mathonwy," and in the tale of "Manawyddan, the Son of Llyr," in which we read of seven cantrefydd, with the words, "Nyt oes seith cantref well noc wy" (there are not seven cantrefs better than they). The matter and names and word-shapes of the Mabinogion would betoken that they are very old, and at least they were written before the t was worn down into d or the c into a g, as in catw for the later cadw, and cruc for crug, and Caratoc (Caractacus) for Caradog. In 26 Edward III (1352), a land-roll of Anglesey was taken, and it had then three cantrefs, Aberfraw, Cemaes, and Rhosir. Whoever might have first out-marked the hundreds and tithings, the law for which they were out-marked, that of the freeborough (freoburh), or, as the Normans called it, francplege, was a most early institution of our tribes, with other races, and grew out of the right and might of the |