240
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book i.
record of the financial system of the early Teutonic
monarchs, even those of Charlemagne himself, which
would have been invaluable guides to us through
the intricacies of that dark subject of enquiry. The
second meaning given to gegylda would rest upon
the assumption of some private and as it were hero-
worship, common to the gyld-brothers,—a fact fa-
miliar enough to us in the Athenian φυλal and
Roman gentes ; but the existence of any such foun-
dation for the gyld among the Anglosaxons is ex-
tremely improbable, when we consider the small
numbers that appear to have constituted the as-
sociation, and that no trace of any such worship
remains in our heathen mythology ɪ. I therefore
prefer the first rendering of the word, and look upon
gegyldan as representing those who mutually pay
for one another ; that is, under a system of pecu-
niary mulcts, those who are mutually responsible
before the law,—the associates in the tithing and
the hundred.
It is well known that in the later Anglosaxon
law, and even to this day, the tithing and hundred
appear as local and territorial, not as numerical
divisions : we hear of tithings where there are more,
and tithings where there are fewer people ; we are
told of the spoor of cattle being followed into one
hundred, or out of another2. I do not deny that
in process of time these divisions had become ter-
1 The later guilds of trades, dedicated to particular Saints, are quite
a different thing ; in form these bear a most striking resemblance to
the φυλαι'.
a Leg. Eadg. Hund. § 6. Thorpe, i. 260.
CH. IX.]
THE TITHING AND HUNDRED.
241
ritorial ; but this does not of necessity invalidate the
doctrine that originally the numbers were calculated
according to the heads of families, or that the ex-
tent of territory, and not the taxable, military or cor-
porate units, formed at first the varying quantity.
Had it been otherwise we should naturally have
found a much greater equality in the size of the
territorial hundreds throughout at least each Saxon
kingdom ; nor in all probability would the num-
bers of the hundreds in respective counties differ so
widely,—a difference intelligible only if we assume
population, and not space, to have been the basis of
the original calculation. Moreover to a very late
period, in one part of England the abstract word
Teo1Sung was replaced by the more concrete Ten-
mantale (tyn-manna-tæl) ɪ, to which it is impossible
to give any meaning but the simple one the words
express, viz. the tale or count of ten men. Again,
as late as the tenth century, in a part of England
where men, and not acres, became necessarily the
subjects of calculation, viz. in the city of London2,
we find the citizens distributing themselves into
FriSgylds or associations for the maintenance of the
peace, each consisting of ten men ; while ten such
’ Leg. Ed. Conf. xx.
2 I do not for a moment imagine that this was an entirely new or-
ganization. The document which contains the record seems to he the
text of a solemn undertaking, almost a treaty of alliance, between the
City and king Æh'elstan, for the better maintenance of the public peace.
Itis perhaps worth attention that the Tyn-manna-tæl was a denomina-
tion peculiar to another large city—York : but the same authority from
which we learn this fact, identifies the institution with that in common
use throughout the land. Leg. Ed. Conf. xx.
VOL. I. R