wapentakes

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wapentakes in England were, from the 10th cent., subdivisions of shires in the Danelaw, corresponding to hundreds elsewhere. The terms applied in Derbyshire, part of Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, and Yorkshire, though perhaps not in the East Riding. The early 12th-cent. (unofficial) Laws of Edward the Confessor raise a problem. They say that when anyone accepted the headship of a wapentake, all the leading men met him at the usual meeting-place, and as he dismounted and raised his lance, they touched it with theirs. This account, whether representing truth or learning, takes the ‘wapentake’ back to an ancient Germanic world.

James Campbell

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