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The name is derived from the number One Hundred and it may in some areas once have referred to a hundred men under arms - in England , however, it was that amount of land sufficient to sustain one hundred families. It was a traditional Germanic system described as early as AD 98 by Tacitus (the ''centeni''). Similar systems were used in the traditional administrative regimes of China and Japan . ENGLAND In England a hundred was the division of a Shire for administrative, military and judicial purposes under the Common Law . Originally, when introduced by the Saxons between 613 and 1017 , a hundred had enough land to sustain approximately one hundred households headed by a ''hundred-man'' or ''hundred eolder''. He was responsible for administration, justice, and supplying military troops, as well as leading its forces. The office was not hereditary, but by the 10th Century the office was selected from among a few outstanding families. in the early 19th Century .]] Hundreds were further divided. Larger or more populous hundreds were split into ''divisions'' (or in Sussex, ''half hundreds''). All hundreds were divided into '' Tithings '', which contained ten households. Below that, the basic unit of land was called the '' Hide '', which was enough land to support one family and varied in size from 60 to 120 old Acres , or 15 to 30 modern acres (6 to 12 ha) depending on the quality and Fertility of the land. Compare with '' Township ''. Above the hundred was the Shire under the control of a shire- Reeve (or Sheriff ). Hundred boundaries were independent of both parish and county boundaries, although often aligned, meaning that a hundred could be split between counties (usually only a fraction), or a parish could be split between hundreds. The system of hundreds was not as stable as the system of counties being established at the time, and lists frequently differ on how many hundreds a county has. The Domesday Book contained a radically different set of hundreds than that which would later become established, in many parts of the country. The number of hundreds in each county varied wildly. Leicestershire had six (up from four at Domesday), whereas Devon , nearly three times larger, had thirty-two. Hundreds gradually dropped out of administrative usage, and by the 19th Century several different single-purpose subdivisions of counties, such as Poor Law Unions , Rural Sanitary Districts , and Parliamentary Divisions , sprung up, filling the administrative role they had previously played. Hundreds have never been formally abolished. Several ancient hundred names give their name to modern Local Government Districts . The Chiltern Hundreds are notable as a Legal Fiction , owing to a quirk of British Parliamentary law. A Crown Steward was appointed to maintain law and order in the area, but the position's duties ceased to be required in the 16th Century , and the holder ceased to gain any benefits during the 17th Century . The position has since been used as a procedural device to allow Resignation From The House Of Commons . Wapentakes and wards A wapentake is a term derived from the Old Norse , the rough equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon Hundred . The word denotes an administrative meeting place, typically a crossroads or a ford in a river where attendance or voting would be denoted or conducted by the show of Weapon s. The counties of Yorkshire , Derbyshire , Leicestershire , Northamptonshire , Nottinghamshire , Rutland and Lincolnshire were divided into wapentakes, just as most of the remainder of England was divided into hundreds. In Yorkshire, a Norse wapentake usually replaced several Anglo-Saxon hundreds. This process was complete by 1086 in the North and West Ridings, but continued in the East Riding until the mid 12th century. In some counties, such as Leicestershire, the wapentakes recorded at the time of the Domesday Book evolved into hundreds later on. In others, such as Lincolnshire , the term remained in use. The term ward was used in a similar manner in the four northern counties of Cumberland , Durham , Northumberland and Westmorland . SCANDINAVIA In the Scandinavia n countries hundreds were used in Sweden (with Finland ), Norway and Denmark . In older Sweden ( Svealand ), the division was called ''Hundare'', whereas in Götaland (Geatland), Denmark and Norway it was called ''herred'' and ''härad''. Eventually that division was superseded by introducing the ''härad'' also in Svealand. Hundreds were not organized in Norrland , the northern sparsely populated part of Sweden. It is possible that hundreds were organised in Finland in pre-Christian times – that is even before annexation by Sweden. The name of the province of ''Satakunta'' (roughly meaning ''Hundred'') hints to this direction. UNITED STATES Counties in Delaware , New Jersey and Pennsylvania were divided into hundreds in the Seventeenth Century , in imitation of the British system. They survive in Delaware (see Hundreds ), and were used as tax reporting and Voting District s until the 1960s , but now serve no administrative role, their only current official legal use being in real-estate title descriptions. {Link without Title} The hundred was also used as a division of the county in some of the English colonies in North America, especially in : Pipe Creek Hundred, Westminster Hundred, Unity Hundred, Burnt House Hundred, Piney Creek Hundred, and Taneytown Hundred. SEE ALSO
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