of a body of advisers."[5]

[Footnote 5: Law and Custom of the Constitution,
II., Pt. 1., 7. Cf. W. Stubbs, Constitutional
History of England, I., 127.]

*5. Township, Borough, and Hundred.*--By reason of their persistence,
and their comparative changelessness from earliest times to the later
nineteenth century, the utmost importance attaches to Anglo-Saxon
arrangements respecting local government and administration. The
smallest governmental unit was the township, comprising normally a
village surrounded by arable lands, meadows, and woodland. The
town-moot was a primary assembly of the freemen of the village, by
which, under the presidency of a reeve, the affairs of the township
were administered. A variation of the township was the burgh, or
borough, whose population was apt to be larger and whose political
independence was greater; but its arrangements for government
approximated closely those of the ordinary township. A group of
townships comprised a hundred. At the head of the hundred was a
hundred-man, ordinarily elected, but not infrequently appointed by a
great landowner or prelate to whom the lands of the hundred belonged.
Assisting him was a council of twelve or more freemen. In the (p. 005)
hundred-moot was introduced the principle of representation, for to
the meetings of that body came regularly the reeve, the parish priest,
and four "best men" from each of the townships and boroughs comprised
within the hundred. The hundred-moot met as often as once a month, and
it had as its principal function the adjudication of disputes and the
decision of cases, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical.

*6. The Shire.*--Above the hundred was the shire. Originally, as a
rule, the shires were regions occupied by small but independent
tribes; eventually they became administrative districts of the united
kingdom. At the head of the shire was an ealdorman, appointed by the
king and witan, generally from the prominent men of the shire.
Subordinate to him at first, but in time overshadowing him, was the
shire-reeve, or sheriff, who was essentially a representative of the
crown, sent to assume charge of the royal lands in the shire, to
collect the king's revenue, and to receive the king's share of the
fines imposed in the courts. Each shire had its moot, and by reason of
the fact that the shires and bishoprics were usually coterminous, the
bishop sat with the ealdor