9. Apparently from the smaller Saxon kingdoms we get our older =shires=. Whether the overlord happened to be the King of Mercia, or the King of Wessex, the under-king continued to rule over his old kingdom, or share. When, at length, in the ninth century, the King of Wessex was acknowledged as the overlord or King of England, Wessex and Mercia, and a part of Northumbria, were gradually divided into _shares_, or shires, over each of which the King of England appointed a =reeve= to look after his interests--the shire-reeve or =sheriff=. The King of England still appoints the high sheriff of each county. An =eorlderman=, who, in the case of the older shires, was at first no doubt a descendant of the old under-king, looked after the business of the shire itself. 10. Amongst the older shires we have Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex; while the newer ones were all named after some important central town, which in each case gave its name to the shire; such are Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. =Summary.=--In time ten free families or tuns joined together for protection, formed a _tything_. Gradually the name _tything_ was given to the _district_, though many more tuns had grown up upon it. Then the tythings had to join together, and ten of these formed the _hundred_. These, too, got to be the names of districts, and these are still in use in most counties. The divisions known as _shires_, or shares, came later. The earliest formed were those which had been little kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey. When the bigger kingdoms were broken up, they were named after important towns in the district, like Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire, &c. The king's officer, or reeve, in each county in time was called the shire-reeve, or _sheriff_. CHAPTER X THE EARLY ENGLISH TOWN 1. At first, as we have seen, the Saxons were an agricultural people, and each village or tun produced all that it needed for its own support. But in peaceful times a tun might produce more than it needed; and, by and by, something like trade and exchange between one place and another would begin. There were many places, as for example London, which in Roman times had been great places for commerce, to which ships had come bringing various kinds of goods. In time, as the Saxons settled down, they began to have new wants, and some of them began to be attracted towards places where there were more people than in their native tuns. Some men found that they could make certain articles of common use better than their neighbours could. Thus certain trades took their rise. Those who worked at them would gradually give up the agricultural labour in which everybody else in the tun was employed. We do not know the causes which led certain of these agricultural tuns to become trading-places; but it is quite certain that they did gradually grow to be what we now call =towns=.