Twelve freeholders were chosen, who, having sworn, together with the
hundreder, or presiding magistrate of that division, to administer
impartial justice,[**] proceeded to the examination of that cause which
was submitted to their jurisdiction. And beside these monthly meetings
of the hundred, there was an annual meeting, appointed for a more
general inspection of the police of the district; for the inquiry into
crimes, the correction of abuses in magistrates, and the obliging of
every person to show the decennary in which he was registered. The
people, in imitation of their ancestors, the ancient Germans, assembled
there in arms; whence a hundred was sometimes called a wapentake, and
its courts served both for the support of military discipline and for
the administration of civil justice.[***]
[* Leges St. Edw. cap. 2.]
[** Foedus Alfred. et Gothurn. apud Wilkins, cap. 3, p. 47.
Leg. Ethelstani cap. 2, apud Wilkins, p. 58. LL. Ethelr.
sect. 4. Wilkins, p. 117.]
[*** Spelman, in voce Wapentake.]
The next superior court to that of the hundred was the county court,
which met twice a year, after Michaelmas and Easter, and consisted
of the freeholders of the county, who possessed an equal vote in the
decision of causes.
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