184 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
more indefinite relation to a shire, all authorities are agreed ; but 
there is much difference of opinion as to what the numerical 
hundred originally represented. Whether a hundred consisted of 
a hundred families, and the district in which they dwelt ; or a 
hundred warriors, and their district ; or the original settlement of 
the hundred warriors ; and whether the hundred is to be regarded 
as the ordinary hundred or the Saxon long hundred of one hundred 
and twenty — these are all more or less debated points. It is clear, 
however, that territorial hundreds sprang out of numerical hun- 
dreds, which bore some definite numerical relation to their free 
Saxon inhabitants. It is certain also that we cannot be very far 
wrong if we treat the original hundreds as consisting of families, and 
as comprising a free population therefore of five to six hundred souls. 
You see at once what a valuable clue we have here to the density 
and distribution of the population of the country in Anglo-Saxon 
times — in the earliest days of organization and rule. 
We cannot say when the first division into hundreds took place. 
It is one of the many good works popularly ascribed to Alfred, 
who, as the great Anglo-Saxon lawgiver, has been credited with 
almost all pre-Norman reform and progress. But while on the one 
hand hundreds are not mentioned until the time of Eadgar, so, on the 
other, they were then no new invention, but a direct development 
of an earlier polity of the Teutonic race ; and, whatever their exact 
date and origin, we may be sure that when the Saxon Conquest of 
Devon was complete, and the Saxons in Devon assumed their own 
form of administration, then were established the courts of the 
tything, of the hundred, and of the shire. 
As the hundred originally was numerical rather than territorial, 
while it remained a definite administrative factor it retained 
numerical value. Changes therefore were to be expected. The 
smaller the hundred the denser the population; the larger, the more 
scattered. The increase of inhabitants in any particular locality 
was followed by a rearrangement of hundred boundaries, and an 
enlargement of their number. So on the other hand, a loss of 
population would lead to the disappearance of a hundred, or its 
amalgamation with another under the double name. The names 
of the hundreds were probably taken originally from the places 
where the courts met, which were either more central or more 
populous than other spots in the district. And here we have 
another clue to the early relative importance of localities. 
