Anglo Saxon Law

The Wanderer Anglo Saxon History, mythology, and religion

Apart from high policy and legislation, the business of government lay with the local authority, and the local authority was the local assembly of freemen. The local unit was the tun or township, the village, the group of households whose members occupied the surrounding land and settled such of their affairs - as a required settlement in the town's meeting.

The townships were grouped in hundreds, a term which probably originated in days when the normal village contained ten households or thereabouts, and ten villages or thereabouts, making up approximately a hundred households, were grouped together for military purposes and for the common settlement of their affairs. Apart from high policy and legislation, the business of government lay with the local authority, and the local authority was the local assembly of freemen. The local unit was the tun or township, the village, the group of households whose members occupied the surrounding land and settled such of their affairs - as a required settlement in the town's meeting.

The townships were grouped in hundreds, a term which probably originated in days when the normal village contained ten households or thereabouts, and ten villages or thereabouts, making up approximately a hundred households, were grouped together for military purposes and for the common settlement of their affairs.

Administering justice
Justice was administered in these "folk moots" or popular meetings, each under the presidency of its reeve - town-reeve, hundred-reeve, or shire-reeve. Primarily it appears that the whole body was judged.

At a later stage, when the number of households in the hundred had very much in­creased, a kind of representation took the place of the general assembly of all freemen. The principal landholders were expected to attend and from each township the parish priest, the reeve, and the four "best men," as well as those who were personally concerned in any questions arising.

Judges and reeves
Further, it seems to have become customary for a sort of committee of twelve to act as judges in place of the whole body; and probably it is to this custom, already established by the time of Alfred, that we must attribute the tradition that Alfred himself invented Trial by Jury.

On the other hand, it is also likely, though not certain, that the prestige attaching to the person of the reeve of the court gave him a practical authority, which gradually made him in effect a superior magistrate; and that out of the jurisdiction thus acquired by him grew the jurisdiction of the lord of the manor.