The Fee of Makerfield; with an Account of Some of Its Lords, the Barons ' of Newton
THE FEE OF MAKERFIELD; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF SOME OF ITS LORDS, THE BARONS ' OF NEWTON. By William Beamont, Esq. (BEAD FEBRUARY 22nD, 1872.) ENGLISH historians have joined chorus in ascribing to our immortal Alfred the institution of hundreds and townships into which the country is now divided. Certain it is that when he resumed the throne after his temporary retirement, and found, owing to Danish misrule, the ancient police of the country in ruin, he first set himself to readjust and settle upon their present hasis the shires of the kingdom, and then divided them into hundreds, and these again into vills, town ships, or decennaries. Butyas est ab hoste doceri, and from Denmark where hundreds, each under its own centenarius, had been known both as a civil and military division of the country for two hundred years, Alfred probably introduced that institution into England, although something similar to it had prevailed among the ancient Germans, from whom both the Franks who became musters of Gaul, and the Saxons who settled in England, were derived. In England, however, and particularly in the northern counties, it seems not to have been always necessary that a hundred should contain a hundred townships, for where a large district happened to belong to one owner, such a district, without reference to the number of its vills, was often constituted a hundred. Gayton in Cheshire, and Newton and Warrington u ' 82 in Lancashire, became hundreds of this sort. (Hist. Chesh. ii, 275-285, and the Domesday Survey of South Lancashire.) Alfred's great achievement, of which he is entitled to the full merit, was his dividing the kingdom into tithings, decen naries, vills or townships, each containing ten families, and in each of which an excellent way to preserve the peace every man was made answerable for his neighbour, while in each there was a domestic tribunal where justice was administered to every man at his own door.
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