There was a chief magistrate
for the hundred, known originally as the hundredman, but after the
Norman conquest as the high constable.
[Sidenote: Decay of the hundred.]
[Sidenote: Hundred meetings in Maryland]
By the thirteenth century the importance of the hundred had much
diminished. The need for any such body, intermediate between township
and county, ceased to be felt, and the functions of the hundred were
gradually absorbed by the county. Almost everywhere in England, by the
reign of Elizabeth, the hundred had fallen into decay. It is curious
that its name and some of its peculiarities should have been brought
to America, and should in one state have remained to the present day.
Some of the early settlements in Virginia were called hundreds, but
they were practically nothing more than parishes, and the name soon
became obsolete, except upon the map, where we still see, for example,
Bermuda Hundred. But in Maryland the hundred flourished and became the
political unit, like the township in New England. The hundred was the
militia district, and the district for the assessment of taxes. In the
earliest times it was also the representative district; delegates
to the colonial legislature sat for hundreds.
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