The Book of the Hundreds
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THE BOOK OF THE HUNDREDS Fourth Edition Revised - With Updates containing Prolegomena to Current Martial Rule Matters concerning His Lawful assembly The Non-Statutory Abatement Handbook Written by the several bondmen and unprofitable servants of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ Dedication and Acknowledgment Published under the Authority of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ to edify His whole Lawful assembly, on this Glorious day of His Eternal Reign We give thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ for showing us the Way for us to walk in; for being, expressing and revealing the Truth in Love to us; for being the Life and revealing to all what it means to live for our Father, Abba; and confirming all of the foregoing by paying the ultimate price for all of us who believe on Him, Who now has made manifest all Righteous Judgment of and by the Father. We also give thanks to Him for the diligent labors of our fellow-servants -- our Brothers and Sisters of His assemblies throughout His Everlasting Kingdom -- who, without their vast and continuing fellowship, exhortation, and knowledge concerning His Word and the Power thereof, this book would not otherwise be. We also give thanks to Him for their loving and supporting wives and little ones, for without their support and love for their husbands and fathers, the house is divided and cannot stand. Glory be to God for having them maintain their houses under the Blessed Lordship of Jesus the Christ. They are truly a sanctified and peculiar people worthy of the High and Noble calling of "the Christ's bondmen and unprofitable servants." We give thanks to God our Father and His Anointed One for bringing to us His children's love and fellowship, and ask that His called-out ones keep us in their prayers, as we keep them in ours. We know the battle is the Lord's, and that all time, space, and reality is in His Mighty Hand to command as He sees fit. Who can stay it? or who commands Him Who holds the worlds, and their destinies, in His Righteous Hand? Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only Wise God, be Honour and Glory for ever and ever. So be it, so be it. Preface concerning "The Hundreds" of England and America It is from "the Hundreds" of ancient England that the title of this book is derived. It is only the title and this Preface that directs its attention to the Hundreds for the purpose of demonstrating the fact that when our Father's "old paths" are abandoned, all of His children (as it was with the children of Israel) fall into captivity under the lordship and despotism of merchandising men. Long ago in England, while that remote island, at large, was under the rule of the Anglo-Saxon kings of the earth, small groups of Godly men and their families gathered together within their shire (later, the king's county) to deal with that which they knew is upon our Lord's shoulder -- government. Within these shires, groups of families called tithings (ten families) further united into ten tithings under the Lordship of the Christ to form what we know today as "the Hundred." In this, they were aware of our Father's Proverb, "Many wait on the favor of rulers, but justice comes to a man from the Lord" Proverbs 29:26 (LXX). Therefore, the members of each Hundred, as a whole, took responsibility for the crimes and defaults of each and every one of its members, and were therefore diligent as to who remained within their Hundred and who did not belong. With each and every member involved, they formed their own hundred and shire courts, chose their own constable of the hundred and reeve of the shire (later, the king's constable and sheriff), etc., all independent of the so-called "king's prerogative," and dispensed justice as The Word directed. That was the way it was for several centuries, until the subsequent generations composing the Hundred began "to look to the favor of rulers." Though there is little known concerning the specifics of the change that came about, we must recognize that those subsequent generations must have forgotten, as their forefathers never forgot, that their lives were not their own but belonged to the King of Kings, and not to the merchant kings of the earth and their swarms of officers. Hereafter within this Preface is a short history of what is known today of the transition from a government that was upon the Christ's shoulder (the light yoke), to a government that joined itself to the kings and merchants of the earth (the heavy yoke), and took on the burdens that men put upon other men's backs. In its transition, we see how and why we are left with still another history of the un-Godly governments of men contained in the next 92 pages of this book. In Truth, we but only need to look to The Word to know these things, and thereby avoid them before they come about: "If thou sit to sup at the table of a prince, [*Satan is the prince of this world] consider attentively the things set before thee: and apply thine hand, knowing that it behooves thee to prepare such: but if thou art very insatiable, desire not his provisions; for these belong to a false life." Proverbs 23:1-3 (LXX) The following condensed history of the transition from a Godly government within the Hundreds, to a false life under the rulership of earthly kings, and their merchant churches, governors, presidents, etc., is from a book titled "The Hundred and The Hundred Rolls" (1930) 296 pp., by Helen Cam: "Superceded by the Poor Law Union and the Urban and Rural District, the Hundred has receded so rapidly into the mists of the past that the first associations to be called up by its name are likely to be those of remote antiquity--of the Germany of Tacitus, the Gaul of Clovis or the England of Edgar the Peaceable. Both the hundred and the shire courts were held at stated intervals (once a month) during the time of the Anglo-Saxons. Before the Norman conquest of 1066 judicial activities, both secular and spiritual, had been concentrated in these local assemblies, at which the local custom was declared and enforced, titles to property were established, and violence condemned, if not punished. Justice was administered and law declared by those who attended the court. The shire- moot (shire court) and hundred-moot (hundred court) met in the open air. By declaring custom and determining procedure in doubtful cases these courts were in effect making law, though law of only local application; in the Middle Ages no clear dividing line could be drawn between jurisdiction and legislation. The shire-moots of the tenth and eleventh centuries are sometimes referred to as the witan of such or such a shire; they were indeed as organs of self-government of far more practical importance than the central witan--that indeterminate collection of nobles and clergy whose powers varied inversely with those of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Out of the early hundreds came the office of constable who was responsible for keeping the peace, the maintenance of watches, and, for the mustering of the armed men of the hundred. And, while the shire itself did not escape its share of public duties, the men of the hundred had personal status that was outside the purview of the king's law. Then after 1066, William the Conqueror called on the shire-moot for co-operation. For a king who had from the first steadily maintained that he was the lawful heir of the Confessor, and who stood for the principles of justice in accordance with the laws of God and of man, the shire-moot was bound to be the tribunal for settling controversies as to the claims of Norman bishops and earls who had been granted all the lands and the rights of English predecessors. Not only the Archbishop of Canterbury but many other men between 1066 and 1087 made good their claims in a shire court by the witness of the good men, or, more particularly, the old men, of the shire, a specially appointed royal delegate presiding to see that justice was done and to record the judgment. By 1086 the shires must have been used to the sight of the king's justice sitting in their court, and to the new procedure of the sworn inquest as a means of getting definite answers to definite questions. William's successors continued to use the hundred-moot and shire-moot for their own purposes. With the advent of Henry I, it was decided by royal proclamation that it was necessary to forbid sheriffs to summon extraordinary shire-moots and hundred-moots without royal warrant. Under Henry I, as visits of royal justices became more regular, the transformation of shire-moot into king's court must have become a stereotyped process. At a special joint assembly of the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk before a royal steward in 1148, or thereabouts, the old knight whose testimony settles the matter observes incidentally that for fifty years he has been attending shire courts and hundred courts, since before the days of King Henry, when peace and justice flourished in the land. But Henry II did more than return to his grandfather's tradition: he took the decisive step which drew the courts of the shire into the main stream of constitutional development.