24β
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
Lbook x.
remain stationary for ages1 ; a holy horror prevents
the alteration of that which has been sanctified in
men’s minds by long continuance, was perhaps
more deeply sanctified at the first by religious cere-
monies. The rights of property universally demand
the jealous guardianship of boundaries. Moreover
the first tithings, or at all events the first hundreds,
must have had elbowroo∏h enough within the Mark
to allow for a considerable elasticity of population
without the necessity of disturbing the ancient
boundary ; and thus we can readily understand two
very distinct things to have grown up together,
out` of one origin, namely a constantly increasing
number of gylds, yet a nearly or entirely stationary
tale of territorial tithings and hundreds. I cannot
but think that, under happier circumstances, this
view might lead us to conclusions of the utmost
importance with respect to the history of our race :
that if it were possible for us now to ascertain the
original number of hundreds in any county of which
Beda in the eighth century gives us the population,
and also the population at the period of the original
division, we should find the two data in exact ac-
cordance, and thus obtain a clue to the movement
of the population itself down to Beda’s time. Look-
ing to the permanent character of land-divisions,
ɪ It is Veryremarkablehowmany modern parishes maybe perambu-
lated with no other direction than the boundaries found in the Codex
Diplomaticus. To this very day the little hills, brooks, even meadows
and small farms, bear the names they bore before the time of Ælfred,
and the Mark may be traced with certainty upon the local information
of the labourer on the modern estate.
CH. ɪɪ.]
THE TITHING AND HUNDRED.
247
and assuming that our present Hundreds nearly
represent the original in number and extent,
might conclude that, if in the year 400 Kent was
first divided, Thanet then contained only one hun-
dred heads of houses, or hydes, upon three thou-
sand acres of cultivated land, while in the time of
Beda, three centuries later, it comprised six hundred
families or hides upon eighteen thousand acres.
It is a common saying that we owe the insti-
tution of shire, tithing and hundred divisions to
Ælfred. Stated in so broad a manner as this, I am
compelled to deny the assertion. No one can con-
template the life and acts of that great prince and
accomplished man without being filled with admi-
ration and respect for his personal energy, his
moral and enlightened policy, and the sound legis-
lative as well as administrative principles on which
he acted. But we must nevertheless not in the
nineteenth century allow ourselves to be blinded
by the passions and prejudices which ruled in the
twelfth. The people, oppressed by foreign power,
no doubt, long looked back with an affectionate
regret to the memory of “England’s Darling;” he
was the hero of a suffering nation ; his activity
and fortune had once cleared the land of Norman
tyranny ; his arm had smitten the forefathers of
those whose iron yoke now weighed on England :
he was the reputed author of those laws, which,
under the amended and extended form enacted by
the Confessor, were now claimed by the English
people from their foreign kings : he was, in a word,
the representative, and as it were very incarnation,