Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
In the twelve years of peace which followed his fifty-six battles, this great man composed his body of laws; divided England into counties, hundreds, and tithings, and founded the University of Oxford.
To answer this end, the whole kingdom was divided into Shires, these into Hundreds, and the Hundreds into Tithings.
Functionaries become sovereigns, with hereditary, not delegated, right to own the people, to tax their roads and rivers, to take tithings of their blood and sweat, to harass them in all the relations of life. There is no longer a metropolis to protect them from official oppression. Power, the more sub-divided, becomes the more tyrannical.
Herein also they somewhat find themselves grieved that the laity may at every taxation help themselves, and so they do, through consideration had of their decay and hindrance, and yet their impoverishment cannot but touch also the parson or vicar, unto whom such liberty is denied, as is daily to be seen in their accounts and tithings.
The power to read and write helped the clergy to much wealth. Privileges and charters from petty princes, gifts and devises from private persons, were documents which few, save ecclesiastics, could draw or dispute. Not content, moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmen perpetually devised new burthens upon the peasantry.
This prince reigned twenty-seven, years, and died at last of a disorder in his bowels, which had afflicted him, without interrupting his designs or souring his temper, during the greatest part of his life. They have likewise attributed to him the distribution of England into shires, hundreds, and tithings, and of appointing officers over these divisions.
After this the cottages and houses came in little groups, some up crooked lanes, hidden away by elms as if out of sight in a cupboard, and some dotted along the brooks, scattered so that, unless you had connected them all with a very long rope, no stranger could have told which belonged to the village and which did not. They drifted into various tithings, and yet it was all the same place.
The shire he divided into hundreds, the hundreds into tithings; every freeman was obliged to be entered into some tithing, the members of which were mutually bound for each other, for the preservation of the peace, and the avoiding theft and rapine. For securing the liberty of the subject, he introduced the method of giving bail, the most certain fence against the abuses of power.
To remedy the disorders in the government, he revived, improved, and digested all the Saxon institutions; insomuch that he is generally honoured as the founder of our laws and constitution. They have likewise attributed to him the distribution of England into shires, hundreds, and tithings, and of appointing officers over these divisions.
In a kingdom subdivided into so many counties, hundreds, tithings, manors, cities and boroughs, each having a judicial or police organization of its own, it is evident that many of the officers must have been chosen by the people, else the government could not have mainlined its popular character.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking