hundred

hundred in English history, a subdivision of a shire, first mentioned in the 10th cent. and surviving as a unit of local government into the 19th cent. It is thought that in origin the hundred comprised 100 geld hides, the geld hide being the basic Anglo-Saxon land unit for taxation purposes; but the hundreds varied considerably in size. The number of hundreds in a shire also varied, and their boundaries were continually changed. The hundred had its own court. The Saxon tithing groups, which had corporate responsibility for the crimes committed by their members, came before it, and personal pleas of debt and trespass were also brought there. Originally presided over by the king's reeves, the hundred courts continued to meet regularly every four weeks until the 13th cent., by which time many of them had been taken over by local lords. They gradually lost importance and from the 16th cent. had little more than a formal existence. In Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, and Leicestershire the unit equivalent to the hundred was called a wapentake; in Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Durham, a ward.

Bibliography: See H. M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (1930, repr. 1963); F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (3d ed. 1971).

hundred An administrative subdivision of an English SHIRE between the 10th century and the Local Government Act (1894), which established District Councils. Hundreds were probably based upon units of 100 hides. (A hide was a measure of land, calculated to be enough to support a family and its dependants, ranging from 25 to 50 ha. (60–120 acres) according to locality.) They did not exist in every shire. Their equivalents in the DANELAW were wapen-takes, in Kent lathes, in Yorkshire ridings, and in Sussex rapes. The hundred court of freeholders met once a month to deal with military defence, private pleas, tax levies, and to prepare indictments for the royal justices. The hundred bailiff served the sheriff's writs and the constable maintained law and order.

hun·dred / ˈhəndrid/ • cardinal number (pl. -dreds or (with numeral or quantifying word) -dred ) (a/one hundred) the number equivalent to the product of ten and ten; ten more than ninety; 100: a hundred yards away there are just a hundred of us here. (Roman numeral: c or C.) ∎  (hundreds) the numbers from 100 to 999: an unknown number, probably in the hundreds, had already been lost. ∎  (hundreds) several hundred things or people: it cost hundreds of dollars. ∎  (usu. hundreds) inf. an unspecified large number: hundreds of letters poured in. ∎  (the —— hundreds) the years of a specified century: the early nineteen hundreds. ∎  one hundred years old: you must be over a hundred! ∎  one hundred miles per hour. ∎  a hundred-dollar bill. ∎  (chiefly in spoken English) used to express whole hours in the twenty-four-hour system: thirteen hundred hours. PHRASES: a (or one) hundred percent entirely; completely: I'm one hundred percent sure. ∎  inf. completely fit and healthy: I wasn't exactly one hundred percent. ∎  inf. maximum effort and commitment: he always gave one hundred percent for the team. DERIVATIVES: hun·dred·fold / -ˌfōld/ adj. & adv. hun·dredth / ˈhəndrid[unvoicedth]; ˈhəndrit[unvoicedth]/ ordinal number . ORIGIN: late Old English, from hund ‘hundred’ (from an Indo-European root shared with Latin centum and Greek hekaton) + a second element meaning ‘number’; of Germanic origin and related to Dutch honderd and German hundert. The noun sense ‘subdivision of a county’ is of uncertain origin: it may originally have been equivalent to a hundred hides of land (see hide³ ).