The law of Eádweard the Confessor shows this clearly: “Cum autem viderunt quod aliqui stulti libenter forisfaciebant erga vicinos suos, sapientiores coeperunt consilium inter se, quomodo eos reprimerent, et sic imposuerunt iusticiarios super quosque decem friðborgos, quos decanos possumus dicere, Anglice autem tyenðe-heved vocati sunt, hoc est caput decem. Isti autem inter villas, inter vicinos tractabant causas, et secundum quod forisfacturae erant, emendationes et ordinationes faciebant, videlicet de pascuis, de pratis, de messibus, de certationibus inter vicinos, et de multis huiusmodi quae frequenter insurgunt.” § xxviii. How clearly has the jurisdiction of the Tithing here superseded that of the ancient _Mark_! ----- Footnote 466: In what may be called the Act of Constitution of Orcy’s Gyld at Abbotsbury, this feature is very prominent. I have therefore appended the instrument in an Appendix to this chapter, although as a voluntary gyld it differs in some respect from those heretofore under consideration. The trade-guilds of the Middle Ages paid also especial attention to the religious communion of their members. Much of what has been observed respecting the tithing, applies also to the hundred. This, it has been seen, was originally a collection of ten tithings, and was presided over by a hundredes ealdor[467], or hundred-man, who exercised a jurisdiction over his circuit and its inhabitants. From the concurrent practice of later periods we may conclude that his court was holden monthly for the hearing of such civil and lighter criminal causes as could not be settled in the tithing, or interested more tithings than one[468]. It is not probable that the higher criminal causes could at any period be pursued in the hundred[469], but that they were necessarily reserved for the consideration of the folcmót or shire-court, which met three times in the year. In the later legislation, trial of capital offences was reserved for the scyremót, and the words of Tacitus[470] seem to imply that this was the case in his time also: perhaps even such causes as involved the penalties of outlawry may have been beyond the jurisdiction of the hundred. It is however less as a court of justice than as part of a system for the maintenance of peace, that we are to contemplate the hundred. It may be securely affirmed that where the tithing alone could not be made responsible, or more tithings than one were involved in a similar difficulty as to crimes committed by their members, resort was had to the responsibility of the collective hundred,—a principle which, it is well-known, subsists even to this day. ----- Footnote 467: The word Borseholder renders it probable that the _capitalis_, tynmanna heáfod, yldesta, etc., bore among the Saxons the name of Borgesealdor, _princeps plegii_. Footnote 468: