The hundred was a division of the shire, having come to refer to a geographical area rather than a number of households. The monthly hundredmote could be attended by any freeman holding land (or a lord's steward), but was usually attended only by reeve, thegns, parish priest, and four representatives selected by each agrarian community or village - usually villeins. Here transfers of land were witnessed. A reeve, sometimes the sheriff, presided over local criminal and peace and order issues ["leet jurisdiction", which derived from sac and soc jurisdiction] and civil cases at the hundred court. All residents were expected to attend the leet court. The sheriff usually held each hundred court in turn. The suitors to these courts were the same as those of the shire courts. They were the judges who declared the law and ordered the form of proof, such as compurgatory oath and ordeal. They were customarily thegns, often twelve in number. They, as well as the king and the earl, received part of the profits of justice. Summary procedure was followed when a criminal was caught in the act or seized after a hue and cry. Every freeman over age twelve had to be in a hundred and had to follow the hue and cry. "No one shall make distraint [seizure of personal property out of the possession of an alleged wrongdoer into the custody of the party injured, to procure a satisfaction for a wrong committed] of property until he has appealed for justice in the hundred court and shire court". In 997, King Ethelred in a law code ordered the sheriff and twelve leading magnates of each shire to swear to accuse no innocent man, nor conceal any guilty one. This was the germ of the later assize, and later still the jury.