How ancient the division of parishes is, may at present be difficult
to ascertain. Mr. Camden says, England was divided into parishes by
Archbishop Honorius, about the year 630. Sir Henry Hobart lays it down,
that parishes were first erected by the council of Lateran, which was
held A.D. 1179. Each widely differs from the other, and both of them
perhaps from the truth, which will probably be found in the medium,
between the two extremes. We find the distinction of parishes, nay, even
of mother churches, so early as in the laws of King Edgar, about the
year 970. The civil division of England into counties, of counties into
hundreds, of hundreds into tithings, or towns, as it now stands, seems
to owe its original to King Alfred; who, to prevent the rapines and
disorders which formerly prevailed in the realm, instituted tithings;
so called, from the Saxon, because ten freeholders with their families
composed one. These all dwelt together, and were sureties, or
free-pledges to the king for the good behaviour of each other; and if
any offence were committed in their district, they were bound to have
the offender forthcoming. And therefore, anciently, no man was suffered
to abide in England above forty days, unless he were enrolled in some
tithing or decennary. As ten families of freeholders made up a tithing,
so ten tithings composed a superior division, called a hundred. In some
of the more northern counties these hundreds are called wapentakes. The
sub-division of hundreds into tithings seems to be most peculiarly the
invention of Alfred; the institution of hundreds themselves he rather
introduced than invented, for they seem to have obtained in Denmark; and
we find that in France a regulation of this sort was made above 200
years before; set on foot by Clotharicus and Childebert, with a view of
obliging each district to answer for the robberies committed in its own
division. In some counties there is an intermediate division between the
shire and the hundred, as lathes in Kent, and rapes in Sussex, each of
them containing about three or four hundreds a-piece. Where a county is