other ruling but that of the king's judges. The political unit was a family, not a person. Ten families were called a tything, thirty a trything, one hundred a township called by that name. These old Saxon divisions still exist in the "ridings" (trythings) and "hundreds" of the northern English counties.
The local authority was settled yearly, each family of the hundred sending its head to a meeting, where one was selected as the leader or justice of the community. When this selection was made, the selectman lowered his spear, and all the others came forward and touched it with their own.
This was the wapentake, or weapon-touch; and there was no higher authority than this in Saxon England, except the king.
The system of wapentake was abolished in the following manner: the Conqueror William divided England into sixty thousand shares, or shires, to each of which was appointed a Norman knight as owner and lord. This was the formal introduction into England of the feudal system, in 1086, by the Great Council of the realm, assembled at Sarum.
As soon as the Norman knights took their shires these became the political units instead of the hundreds, and to each of these they appointed a
