s. A
city is a town incorporated, which is or hath been the see of a
bishop; and though the bishoprick be dissolved, as at Westminster, yet
still it remaineth a city[u]. A borough is now understood to be a
town, either corporate or not, that sendeth burgesses to
parliament[w]. Other towns there are, to the number sir Edward Coke
says[x] of 8803, which are neither cities nor boroughs; some of which
have the privileges of markets, and others not; but both are equally
towns in law. To several of these towns there are small appendages
belonging, called hamlets; which are taken notice of in the statute of
Exeter[y], which makes frequent mention of entire vills, demi-vills,
and hamlets. Entire vills sir Henry Spelman[z] conjectures to have
consisted of ten freemen, or frank-pledges, demi-vills of five, and
hamlets of less than five. These little collections of houses are
sometimes under the same administration as the town itself, sometimes
governed by separate officers; in which last case it is, to some
purposes in law, looked upon as a distinct township. These towns, as
was before hinted, contained each originally but one parish, and one
tithing; though many of them now, by the encrease of inhabitants, are
divided into several parishes and tithings: and sometimes, where there
is but one parish there are two or more vills or tithings.

[Footnote t: 1 Inst. 115 _b._]

[Footnote u: Co. Litt. 109 _b._]

[Footnote w: Litt. Sec. 164.]

[Footnote x: 1 Inst. 116.]

[Footnote y: 14 Edw. I.]

[Footnote z: Gloss. 274.]

AS ten families of freeholders made up a town or tithing, so ten
tithings composed a superior division, called a hundred, as consisting
of ten times ten families. The hundred is governed by an high
constable or bailiff, and formerly there was regularly held in it the
hundred court for the trial of causes, though now fallen into disuse.
In some of the more northern counties these hundreds are called
wapentakes[a].

[Footnote a: Seld. _in Fortesc._ _c._ 24.]

THE subdivision of hundreds into tithings seems to be most peculiarly
the invention of Alfred: the institution of hundreds themselves he
rather introduced than invented. For they seem to have obtained in
Denmark[b]: and we find that in France a regulation of this sort was
made above two hundred years before; set on foot by Clotharius and
Childebert, with a view of obliging each district to answer for the
robberies committed in it's own division. These di