THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
183 
venture to trace the full history of Saxon intercourse and rule. 
That is a Herculean task, too great for present treatment, were I 
qualified for the attempt. It is quite true that the Saxon Chronicle 
is the only history that gives us contemporary information worthy 
of the name respecting Saxon Devon ; and that its local references 
are very scanty ; but fortunately there are extant a large number 
of Anglo-Saxon charters and deeds relating to the county, and 
these, when carefully examined, throw much light upon this 
obscure but most interesting period of our western history. The 
Chronicle, so far as Plymouth is concerned, can hardly be said to 
afford any light whatever ; for its only references to the locality 
are to Wembury (?), Tavistock, and Lydford, and these in connec- 
tion with raids by the Danes. 1 
It is to Domesday Book that we must turn as our chief source 
of information concerning Saxon Devon, as well as Saxon England. 
But before I confine myself to more local details there is a branch 
of the history of Saxon Devon which has not, so far as I am aware, 
been brought under special review, and upon which I wish to 
remark, since it plays an important part in bridging over the 
interval between the Prehistoric and the Historic Periods. It has 
already been shown that "the constitution of Devon is purely 
Saxon from village to shire; each of its hundreds has a Saxon 
name; each of its ancient municipalities originated in a Saxon 
community." 
While attempting to bring into one focus the light which the 
Domesday Survey throws upon the conditions of this part of the 
county immediately before and after the Norman Conquest, it 
occurred to me that there were valuable hints to be gleaned, not 
only from the distribution of the place-names, to which I have 
already referred, but from the character and distribution of the 
hundreds — a relic of Saxon organization which has descended to 
us in little more than a nominal form, but which before the inva- 
sion of the Norman had great living force, as the link in the hier- 
archy of jurisdiction between the court of the township or tything 
and that of the shire. 
A hundred in its origin did not, of course, mean what we under- 
stand by a hundred now ; it was a numerical term, not a territorial. 
That a hundred was made up of ten tythings, and that it had a 
1 Asser goes no further. 
M 2 
