On a fixed day, three times a year, in some place where they were
accustomed to assemble--under a particular tree,[1] or near some
river-bank--these hundred champions used to meet their chieftain, and
gather around him when he dismounted from his horse. He then placed his
spear in the ground, and each warrior touched it with his own spear in
token of their compact, and pledged himself to mutual support. At this
assembly criminals were tried, disputes settled, bargains of sale
concluded; and in later times many of these transactions were inserted
in the chartularies of abbeys or the registers of bishops, which thus
became a kind of register too sacred to be falsified. A large number of
the hundreds bear the name of some chieftain who once used to call
together his band of bearded, light-haired warriors and administer rude
justice beneath a broad oak's shade.[2] Others are named after some
particular spot, some tree, or ford, or stone, or tumulus, where the
hundred court met.

Our counties or shires were not formed, as is popularly supposed, by
King Alfred or other royal person by the dividing up of the country into
portions, but were the areas occupied by the original Saxon tribes or
kingdoms. Most of our counties retain to this day the boundaries which
were originally formed by the early Saxon settlers. Some of our counties
were old Saxon kingdoms--such as Sussex, Essex, Middlesex--the kingdoms
of the South, East, and Middle Saxons. Surrey is the Sothe-reye, or
south realm; Kent is the land of the Cantii, a Belgic tribe; Devon is
the land of the Damnonii, a Celtic tribe; Cornwall, or Corn-wales, is
the land of the Welsh of the Horn; Worcestershire is the shire of the
Huiccii; Cumberland is the land of the Cymry; Northumberland is the land
north of the Humber, and therefore, as its name implies, used to extend
over all the North of England. Evidently the southern tribes and