It is true that no division founded upon numbers can long continue to coincide with the first corresponding territorial allocation, however closely they may have been at first adjusted. In spite of every attempt to regulate it, population varies incessantly; but the tendency of land-divisions is to remain stationary for ages[461]; a holy horror prevents the alteration of that which has been sanctified in men’s minds by long continuance, was perhaps more deeply sanctified at the first by religious ceremonies. The rights of property universally demand the jealous guardianship of boundaries. Moreover the first tithings, or at all events the first hundreds, must have had elbowroom enough within the Mark to allow for a considerable elasticity of population without the necessity of disturbing the ancient boundary; and thus we can readily understand two very distinct things to have grown up together, out of one origin, namely a constantly increasing number of gylds, yet a nearly or entirely stationary tale of territorial tithings and hundreds. I cannot but think that, under happier circumstances, this view might lead us to conclusions of the utmost importance with respect to the history of our race: that if it were possible for us now to ascertain the original number of hundreds in any county of which Beda in the eighth century gives us the population, and also the population at the period of the original division, we should find the two data in exact accordance, and thus obtain a clue to the movement of the population itself down to Beda’s time. Looking to the permanent character of land-divisions, and assuming that our present Hundreds nearly represent the original in number and extent, we might conclude that, if in the year 400 Kent was first divided, Thanet then contained only one hundred heads of houses, or hydes, upon three thousand acres of cultivated land, while in the time of Beda, three centuries later, it comprised six hundred families or hides upon eighteen thousand acres. ----- Footnote 461: It is very remarkable how many modern parishes may be perambulated with no other direction than the boundaries found in the Codex Diplomaticus. To this very day the little hills, brooks, even meadows and small farms, bear the names they bore before the time of Ælfred, and the Mark may be traced with certainty upon the local information of the labourer on the modern estate. -----