Definition
Hundreds (singular: hundred) refers to a historical subdivision of an English county, once used as a unit of local government, taxation, military organization, and judicial administration. The hundred was intermediate in scale between the county (shire) and the individual parish or township. Each hundred typically comprised a grouping of vills or townships and was administered through a court — the hundred court — which heard minor civil and criminal matters at regular intervals.
The term survives in modern legal and parliamentary practice almost exclusively through a specific vestige: the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. Certain geographic hundreds in England, including the Chiltern Hundreds in Buckinghamshire, were once notorious for lawlessness and required appointed stewards to maintain order. The office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds long outlasted any genuine administrative function and became a nominal Crown appointment — a sinecure. Because Members of Parliament cannot directly resign their seats under English constitutional convention, acceptance of a paid office of profit under the Crown disqualifies the holder from sitting in the House of Commons. The Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds (along with the Manor of Northstead) therefore serves as the formal mechanism by which an MP effectively resigns: they apply for the stewardship, the Crown grants it, and disqualification follows automatically.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simply the plural of "hundred" — the cardinal number, or a large but indefinite quantity.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A territorial division, specifically a subdivision of an English county or shire.
The gap here is directional. In ordinary modern English, "hundreds" carries no administrative or legal weight whatsoever. A researcher encountering the term in historical legal sources must recognize it as a formal unit of governance with its own courts, officers, and liability rules — not a vague reference to quantity or a mere geographical label.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
— Hundred Court: The local court convened within the hundred, typically held fortnightly, with jurisdiction over minor disputes and presentments. Distinct from the county court and from manorial courts.
— Leet Hundred: In some jurisdictions, hundreds that exercised leet jurisdiction — a form of criminal presentment jurisdiction — overlapping with the functions of the view of frankpledge.
— Chiltern Hundreds (Parliamentary usage): The specific surviving legal application. Three hundreds in Buckinghamshire — Stoke, Desborough, and Burnham — collectively form the Chiltern Hundreds whose stewardship functions as the parliamentary resignation device.
— Manor of Northstead: The alternative Crown sinecure used for the same purpose as the Chiltern Hundreds when both stewardships are simultaneously occupied.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "hundreds" across at least three distinct legal contexts, and conflating them produces serious analytical errors.
First, in historical property, taxation, and local government records — particularly pre-nineteenth-century English materials — the hundred is the operative geographic and administrative unit. Tax assessments, militia obligations, and jury arrays were organized by hundred. A document referencing obligations or liabilities "of the hundred" is invoking a specific administrative body with collective legal responsibilities, including in some periods liability for riot damage under what became the Riot Act framework.
Second, in common law pleading and procedure, the hundred as a legal entity could be sued — most notably under the old doctrine holding the hundred collectively liable for robberies committed within its bounds if the robbers escaped. Bouvier's note about the Chiltern Hundreds being "much infested by robbers" is a compressed reference to this broader liability tradition.
Third, in parliamentary and constitutional law, the Chiltern Hundreds lives on as active procedure. Any research into parliamentary disqualification, resignation mechanisms, or the history of the rule against MP resignation must pass through this term. The device remains in use today and has been invoked in well-documented modern instances.
Trap for historical researchers: the hundred court's jurisdiction shrank dramatically over several centuries as quarter sessions and assizes absorbed its functions. Sources from different periods describe very different courts when they say "hundred court." Do not assume uniform jurisdiction across the historical record.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry is strikingly narrow. It focuses almost entirely on the Chiltern Hundreds parliamentary device, mentioning the historical robber-suppression rationale as backstory and citing Stephens' Commentaries and Wharton's Law Dictionary for support. Bouvier says nothing about hundred courts, collective liability for robbery, or the hundred as a unit of local government more broadly — functions that dominated the term's legal significance for centuries before the parliamentary usage became its primary surviving form.
This reflects the practical orientation of nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries: by Bouvier's era, the administrative hundred was irrelevant in the United States and fading in England, while the Chiltern Hundreds remained a genuine procedural curiosity worth explaining to practitioners who might encounter English parliamentary references. The entry is not wrong, but it is a late-stage snapshot of a term with a much longer and richer legal history than Bouvier acknowledges.
Researchers needing the fuller historical account should consult Blackstone's Commentaries (Book I) and Coke's Institutes, both of which address the hundred in its governmental and jurisdictional dimensions.
Jurisdictional Note
The hundred as an administrative unit was an English institution and has no American legal counterpart. Some American colonial charters referenced hundreds — Delaware's county subdivisions were historically called hundreds and a small number survive as nominal geographic designations — but they carried no ongoing legal significance. For practical research purposes, the term is functionally English only.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — English Local Government; Parliamentary Procedure; Parliamentary Disqualification