[Sidenote: The hundred court.]
The ancient Romans had the brotherhood, and called it a _curia_.
The Roman people were organized in clans, curies, and tribes. But for
military purposes the curia was called a _century_, because
it furnished a quota of one hundred men to the army. The word
_century_ originally meant a company of a hundred men, and it was
only by a figure of speech that it afterward came to mean a period
of a hundred years. Now among all Germanic peoples, including the
English, the brotherhood seems to have been called the hundred.
Our English forefathers seem to have been organized, like other
barbarians, in clans, brotherhoods, and tribes; and the brotherhood
was in some way connected with the furnishing a hundred warriors to
the host. In the tenth century we find England covered with small
districts known as hundreds. Several townships together made a
hundred, and several hundreds together made a shire. The hundred
was chiefly notable as the smallest area for the administration of
justice. The hundred court was a representative body, composed of the
lords of lands or their stewards, with the reeve and four selected men
and the parish priest from each township.
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