house-father, whose stead the headborough or "hundredes ealdor" had in some points taken up; while the landowning house-father was borough for his wife, daughters, and boys, and theowes. In the deed of standing at the mot for another man, so as to be burh for him, a man was said to "thing" (thingian), or give word or pledge for him; and if a man could not "thing" for himself, but was "thinged" for by a landowning house-father, he became his theow (a stub-root form of the word thing, and meaning one "thinged" over; whereas a thaegn thaen, thane, was a man who had "thinged" or pledged himself to another, as a king's thaen to the king, or a common thaen to a landholder.

The hundred seems to have been known to Saxon-English law before it took the name hundred, as the hundred was theretofore called hynden, and hundred and hynden are words akin to the word hand, which has been, at some times or places, hund, hond, hand; and the two hands, reckoned in fingers and thumbs, are ten; or the hands' times the hands, ten times ten, or our hundred: sometime called hand-teontig or hand-tenty; or the hands by ten, or the hynden. In a law of King Ina of Wessex, who took the headship of Wessex about one hundred and eighty years before Alfred's kingship, is the law: "Se de bid werfaehde betogen and he onsacan wille Saes sleges mið aðe, donne sceal beon on Saere hyndenne an cyningase be prittig hida" (whoever is charged with deadly feud, and will deny the slaying on oath, then there shall be in the hundred [hynden] a kingoath of thirty hides).

Cornwall as well as Devon is out-shared into hundreds; and yet in the time of Cenwalh (659), and on to the time of the Ceawlin, in 577, the Parrett and Upper Axe (rivers) seem to have been the understood boundary between the two races, English and British. And in 835 the West Welsh of Cornwall helped the Danes against the West Saxons under Egbert. And even Exeter was a British town till the time of King Athelstan, in 940, after the death of Alfred; and it is not very likely that King Alfred had already pushed the law of freeborough and the hundred into Cornwall; nor has it been written what later king brought the Cornish under the English "hundredes ealdor."

Jersey is out-shared into a kind of wardships called centaines, or hundreds, under peace officers called centeniers ;

and, under the centaines, into vigntaines, or twenties, with their vignteniers; though I know not how old these divisions may be; and Winne, in his History of Ireland, says of Dermod, the king of Leinster, who sought from Henry II the help of English swords for the quelling of a rebellion against himself, that he promised to the two English leaders, Fitzgerald and Fitz-Stephen, the city of Wexford and two cantreds, or hundreds, adjoining, if they would levy a band of men to assist him in his undertaking. These two so-called cantreds, or hundreds, are now, I believe, called the baronies of Forth and Bargy; and if the Irish had theretofore called them hundreds, they betoken an early land-sharing into hundreds in Ireland.

In Scotland, which was heretofore the land of the Scots (who were Irish) and Picts, most likely of the same race, and in the northern shires of England, which were British till the battle of Cattraeth, in the sixth year hundred, we do not find the English hundred by name or in kind, unless the wairds or wards, or small districts, may answer to either our hundreds or tithings.

In Yorkshire, south of which the hundred by name takes on, we have Ridings or Trithings, and the Waepentaece, or weapon-taking, or teaching, or muster, which in law matches the hundred; and over the hundreds in Kent are the "laths" or muster-shires, so called from "ge-laxian," to gather or muster. It is said that in Kent the hundreds are small, as if they are British out-sharings, which would not be unlikely, since in Cæsar's time the buildings or houses were very thick; and the landholdings might, at the out-marking of the hundreds, have been small.

Now the under-shares of the English hundred were tithings, and as it is, therefore, clear that the Welsh did not take their under-sharings from the English, but built up their cantref of other and many more under-shares, so it is less likely that they took from the English the hundred itself. It is not at all likely that the British first out-marked the hundred, and then out-dealt them into the lower shares, since we could not take sketches of unforemeted land, and then out-share them into a gwentale of ploughlands of foregiven size. Moreover, the heads or mot-spots of many of our hundreds are out-step places, such as British barrows or earthworks, or lone hill-tops, where there was never an English

population; and which, while they would be of great interest to the British mind, would very lightly, if at all, hold the mind of Englishmen.

In Dorset is the hundred of Culliford Tree, with the hundred barrow which was opened some years ago by Captain Damer, who found in it the bones of four bodies, on the neck of one of which, that of a lady, was an amber necklace with a golden bob; the hundred of Eggerdon, an earthwork on a bare hill; and Bradbury, another such fastness; with the hundreds of Hundred's barrow, Rowbarrow, and Loosebarrow, which are barrows or earthworks. Among hundred's mot-grounds in out-step places are Combsditch or Congresdike, a dike running north of Whitchurch; Uggescombe, a lonely hollow; Cogdean, a hill near Wimborne; and other out-step places, as Godderthorn, Tollerford, Brownshall, and Red Lane.

The upshot of my reasoning on these grounds is that England was not divided into hundreds by King Alfred, nor by any one king of the English people. I believe that the Saxon-English found the hundred (cantref) as an institution of the Britons, as we know the Britons had a freeborough of kindred, from which the English, who did not settle here on the land by kindreds, took the freeboroughship of landholders, whether of one kindred or not. The tithing might have been one of the institutions of English law, as we are not bound to believe that the English out-shared the hundreds into so many tithings each, as I do not think they have all an even toll of tithings.

ON THE MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES OF DORSET.

BY J. O. HALLIWELL, ESQ., F.R.S., F.S.A.

THE Corporate towns of Dorset, on which I had to report, were Blandford, Poole, Wareham, Corfe Castle, Dorchester, Weymouth, and Lyme Regis. This list includes all the corporate towns except Shaftesbury, which it will be my business to visit at another opportunity. On this occasion it was too remote from the centre of our operations to be included in my researches. The town of Corfe Castle was also left unnoticed, owing to want of information from that place. Probably on the occasion of the visit to be paid to that place on the last day of the Congress, something may be done in the way of inquiry to fill up the blank. Blandford offers nothing for investigation, its muniments having been destroyed in the great fire which occurred there in 1731. Poole possesses muniments considerable in quantity, but at this time they are widely dispersed. The Mayor gave authority for me to inspect them in London, where they, or a large part of them, have been sent, and placed in the hands of the law advisers of the Corporation on account of a suit at law respecting harbour-dues. Every facility was given to me by the solicitors; but then I found that a further separation had been made by dividing the documents amongst the learned counsel, and so that at present it was impossible to obtain any general view of the muniments of Poole. From Wareham I ascertained that nothing exists there but one charter of the time of Queen Anne. The group of western boroughs has been much more fruitful. At Weymouth I find that a large part of the town papers are in private hands, belonging to Mr. Sherren, who acquired them at the time when the Municipal Reform Act, amongst other evils, led to the ousting of what in many places was deemed dusty rubbish. It is fortunate that Mr. Sherren intervened to save from the waste-paper basket, by purchase, a quantity of curious matter of great local interest. Mr. Sherren has kindly placed the whole of them in my hands for examination; but the only documents I propose to produce are some relating to ecclesiastical affairs in Melcombe Regis.

These Mr. Black will read and expound. Others of these papers have been largely used in that excellent book, Roberts on the Social History of the Southern Counties, and from that book some idea of their very miscellaneous character can be gained. Still belonging to the Corporation is a curious grant of arms of 1592, and a series of charters which Mr. Black should observe upon. The town books do not go back farther than 1617, and appear to me to be of no general interest. Of the Dorchester records I believe that I can note most of any antiquarian value:

1. A petition for erecting a prison for the county, 33 Edward I. A deed in fine preservation.

2. The Doomsday Book of Dorchester, at least a MS. so called. It is a stoutish folio, on vellum, of the fifteenth century, containing copies of deeds, wills, and charters, chiefly, if not entirely, relating to the town. It would take a week to read properly, and I doubt if the result would be worth the trouble; but it is a book you should glance over. In one of the charters of 6 Henry IV there is a mention of a chapel of St. Rowland in Dorchester.

3. Stewards' accounts, 1554-1610. I never read through a more uninteresting series of accounts. The only thing of the slightest interest is the following entry under A.D. 1583: "Paid Thomas Stillerd for the chest and lock in the church wherein the writinges are, viijs.," which I copy because you may like to note it if a paper is written about Dorchester Church.

The Corporation minutes do not begin until 1619. The sessions' books commence in 1618. There are also heaps of Corporation leases. None of them appear to be of any general interest.

In the matter of the Bridport records, the principal MSS.

are:

1. An old MS. of the statutes of the realm, on vellum. 2. Thousands of old deeds.

3. A folio MS. called the Dome Book. It is a compotus of the bailiffs and cofferers, commencing in the thirty-second year of Henry VI. It relates chiefly to officers' elections, and is very uninteresting.

4. A grant of fairs, 36 Eliz.

5. Proceedings of the Court of Record.