It is more doubtful whether we may ascribe to the Danes alone the introduction of the word “Wapentake” (_Vaabentag_), as the peculiar designation for a district. In the northern counties of England, viz., Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, this term is still used instead of the customary one of “Hundred.” Yet there is some probability that it may have been derived from the circumstance that the Danes, like the ancient inhabitants of the North in general, elected their chiefs, and signified their assent to any proposition at the _Things_, by Vaabentag, or Vaabenlarm (sound, or clang of arms). Vaabentag (Wapentake) might thus have become the name of a small district, having its own chief and its own _Thing_. A law of King Ethelred’s (see Thorpe, _Leges et Instit. Anglo-Sax._, Glossary, _Lahman_), which seems to have been promulgated only for the five Danish burghs, and the rest of the Danish part of England, orders that there shall be in every Wapentake a _Gemot_ or _Thing_. It is at all events very remarkable, that the division into Wapentakes should exist only in old Danish North England. In the towns occupied by the Danes, as in the five burghs—or, if Chester and York be included, in the “seven cities”—there was certainly a Danish _Thing_, as well as in the rural districts. The English word _by-law_—still used to denote municipal or corporate law, which is neither more nor less than the Danish “_By-Lov_,” and which, consequently, must have retained its name ever since the times of the Danes—shows at once that they must at least have had some share in developing the system of judicature in the English cities. It is, besides, well known that there was in remote times a Scandinavian “husting” in Sheppey, London, and Winchester, as well as York and Lincoln, and consequently in places south of Watlinga-Stræt. Of the seven cities before mentioned, only York and Lincoln are with certainty known to have had “hustings;” but nevertheless, it can scarcely be doubted that there must have been similar _Things_ in the other five cities. I may add, that the tribunals existing in them are called, in the Anglo-Saxon text of Ethelred’s laws for the five burghs just alluded to, “_Gethingd_”—a word which bears an undeniable resemblance to the Scandinavian _Thing_; whilst in Anglo-Saxon such courts were called “_Gemot_.” According to old English records, the Danish laws in force in the Danish part of England, though in several respects strikingly similar to the Anglo-Saxon laws, differed from them in many points. It is not, indeed, clearly determined in what these differences and resemblances consisted; but it is at all events certain that the dissimilarity cannot have been confined merely to the difference before mentioned in the amount of the fines, nor to the mode of calculating them; which, as previously stated, was in marks and ores in the Danish part of England, and in pounds and shillings in the Anglo-Saxon districts.