244
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
charged with mortal feud, and is willing to deny the
slaying on oath ; then shall there be in the hynden
one king’s oath of thirty hides, as well for a noble
as a churl, be it whichever it be.”
Now hynden can only mean one of two things,
viz. a collection of ten or a collection of a hundred,
according as we render the word hund. Admitting
that at some very early period hund did mean ten,
we yet never find it with any such signification in
any book or MS., or indeed at all except in the nu-
merals hundseofontig, hundeatatig, Iiundnigontig,
hundtwelftig, where its force is anything but clear,
when we compare those words with ffftig, sixtig,
twentig, etc. On the other hand the adjective
hynde does clearly denote something which has
the quality of a hundred ; thus a twyhynde or twelf-
hynde man is he whose life is worth respectively two
or twelve hundred shillings. Again it is clear that
the Judicia Civitatis Londincnsis intends by hynden
a collection of a hundred, and not of ten, men,
inasmuch as it distinguishes this from the tithings.
conclusion : “ It has been already observed that the hynden consisted
of ten persons, and, like hynde in the words tw√hj nde, sixhynde, twelf-
hynde, appears to have been formed from hund, of which the original
meaning was ten. The hynden therefore will correspond to the turba
of the Civil Law (‘ quia Turba decern dicuntur.’ Leg. Præt. 4. § Tur-
bam), the Tourbe of the French Coutumes: ‘ Coutume si doit verefier
par deux tourbes et chacun d’icelles par dix témoins.’ Loisel. liv. v.
tit, 6. c. 13.” But the correspondence noted will entirely depend upon
the fact of the hynden really being a collection of ten men, which I do
not admit. There is no dispute as to the meaning of Turba or Tourbe :
but if, as it is not impossible, turba should be really identical with porp,
υicus, it might deserve consideration whether the original tillage was
not supposed to consist of ten families and so to form the tithing or
gy)dscipe.
CH. rκ.]
THE TITHING- AND HUNDRED.
245
And further, it must be admitted, upon the internal
evidence of the law itself, that a hundred and not a
tithing is referred to, since so small a court as that
of the ten men could not possibly have had cogni-
zance of such a plea as manslaughter, or been com-
petent to demand a king’s oath of thirty hides.
But as such a plea might well be brought before
the hundred-court, it is probable that such was
meant. Lastly it was the custom for the hundred-
court to be holden monthly, and we observe the
same provision with the London hynden ; at which
it is very probable that legal matters were trans-
acted, as well as accounts investigated ; for it is
expressly declared that their meeting is to ascer-
tain how the undertakings in the record have been
executed ; that is, how the peace has been kept. I
therefore conclude that the Hynden and the Hun-
dred are in fact and were at first identical; with
the hypothetical reservation, that at a later period
the one word represented a numerical, the other a
territorial division, when these two had ceased to
coincide : in corroboration of which view it may be
observed that the word Hynden does not occur in
the laws later than the time of ÆSelstan, nor Hun-
dred earlier than that of Eadgar.
It is true that no division founded upon numbers
can long continue to coincide with the first cor-
responding territorial allocation, however closely
they may have been at first adjusted. In spite of
every attempt to regulate it, population varies in-
cessantly ; but the tendency of land-divisions is to