In the days of our ancestors the Anglo-Saxons, Devonshire was governed much in the same way as it is governed now. That is to say, while the people had to obey the laws that were drawn up under the direction of the King, they had a great deal of what we now call self-government. Every little group of houses in Devonshire had its own "tun-moot" or village council, which made its own by-laws (from the Danish _by_, a town) and managed its own affairs. The large divisions of the county called Hundreds--groups of a hundred families--had their more important "hundred-moot"; while the general business of the whole shire was conducted by the "shire-moot," with its two chief officers, the "ealdorman," or earl, for military commander, and the "shire-reeve" for judicial president. The Devonshire shire-moot met twice in the year. These three assemblies may fairly be said to correspond to the Parish Councils, the District Councils, and the County Council of the present time. Our lord-lieutenant corresponds to the ealdorman of other days, and the present sheriff to the ancient shire-reeve. The division called a Hundred may have been named, as already suggested, because it contained a hundred families. But the present Devonshire Hundreds, of which there are 32, vary a good deal in population. The Hundred of Black Torrington, for example, contains 38 parishes, and the Hundred of Hemyock only three. The Parish is another ancient institution, and was originally "a township or cluster of houses, to which a single priest ministered, to whom its tithes and ecclesiastical dues were paid." Many of the 516 ecclesiastical parishes or parts of parishes situated wholly or partly within the Ancient Geographical County of Devon fairly correspond to the manors described in Domesday Book; but the whole country was not divided up into parishes until the reign of Edward III. The parishes, again, vary much in size and population. Thus, the parish of Lydford, which includes a large part of Dartmoor, and measures more than 50,000 acres, being the largest parish in England, contains 325 inhabited houses and a population of 2812. The parish of Haccombe, on the other hand, contains three inhabited houses and nine people. Queen Elizabeth made the parishes areas of taxation, partly, at any rate, to provide funds for the relief of the poor. In modern times, with the idea of taking still better care of the poor, the parishes have been grouped together in Poor Law Unions, of which there are 20 in Devonshire, each provided with a workhouse, which was meant to be a place in which the able-bodied poor might find employment. Now, however, the workhouse is little more than a refuge for the destitute, the idle, and the incapable. The local government of Saxon times was swept away by the feudal system of the Normans, which transferred the power of making and carrying out laws from the freemen to the lords of the various manors, and was only restored as recently as 1888 and 1894.