I

III

THE COUNTY

§ 1. The County in its Beginnings.

T is now time for us to treat of the county,

and we may as well begin by considering

its origin. In treating of the township we began by sketching it in its fullest development, as seen in New England. With the county we shall find it helpful to pursue a different method and start at the beginning.

If we look at the maps of the states which make up our Union, we see that they are all divided into counties (except that in Louisiana the corresponding divisions are named parishes). The map of England shows that country as similarly divided into counties.

Why do we have

counties?

If we ask why this is so, some people will tell us that it is convenient, for purposes of administration, to have a state, or a kingdom, divided into areas that are larger than single towns. There is much truth in this. It is convenient. If it were not so, counties would not have survived, so as to make a part of our modern maps. Nevertheless, this is not the historic reason why we

have the particular kind of subdivisions known as counties. We have them because our fathers and grandfathers had them; and thus, if we would find out the true reason, we may as well go back to the ancient times when our forefathers were establishing themselves in England.

tribes

We have seen how the clan of our barbarous ancestors, when it became stationary, was established as the town or township. But in those early times clans were generally united more or less closely into tribes. Among all primitive or barbarous races of men, so far as we can make Clans and out, society is organized in tribes, and each tribe is made up of a number of clans or family groups. Now when our English forefathers conquered Britain they settled there as clans and also as tribes. The clans became townships, and the tribes became shires or counties; that is to say, the names were applied first to the people and afterwards to the land they occupied. A few of the oldest county names in England still show this plainly. Essex, Middlesex, and Sussex were originally "East Saxons," "Middle Saxons," and "South Saxand on the eastern coast two tribes of Angles were distinguished as "North folk and "South folk," or Norfolk and Suffolk. When you look on the map and see the town of Icklingham in the county of Suffolk, it means

ons;

that this place was once known as the "home" of the "Icklings" or "children of Ickel," a clan which formed part of the tribe of "South folk."

The English nation, like

the Ameri

can, grew out of the

union of

In those days there was no such thing as a Kingdom of England; there were only these groups of tribes living side by side. Each tribe had its leader, whose title was ealdorman,1 or " elder man." After a while, as some tribes increased in size and power, their ealdormen small states took the title of kings. The little kingdoms coincided sometimes with a single shire, sometimes with two or more shires. Thus there was a kingdom of Kent, and the North and South Folk were combined in a kingdom of East Anglia. In course of time numbers of shires combined into larger kingdoms, such as Northumbria, Mercia, and the West Saxons; and finally the king of the West Saxons became king of all England, and the several shires became subordinate parts or "shares" of the kingdom. In England, therefore, the shires are older than the nation. The shires were not made by dividing the nation, but the nation was made by uniting the shires. The English nation, like the American, grew out of the union of little states that had once been independent of one

1 The pronunciation was probably something like yáwldorman.

another, but had many interests in common. For not less than three hundred years after all England had been united under one king, these shires retained their self-government almost as completely as the several states of the American Union.1 A few words about their government will not be wasted, for they will help to throw light upon some things that still form a part of our political and social life.

The shire was governed by the shire-mote (i. e. "meeting"), which was a representative body. Lords of lands, including ab

Shire-mote, ealdorman, and sheriff

bots and priors, attended it, as well as the reeve and four selected men from each township. There were thus the germs of both the kind of representation that is seen in the House of Lords and the much more perfect kind that is seen in the House of Commons. After a while, as cities and boroughs grew in importance, they sent representative burghers to the shire-mote. There were two presiding officers: one was the ealdorman, who was now appointed by the king; the other was the shire-reeve (i. e. "sheriff"), who was still elected by the people and generally held office for life.

This shire-mote was both a legislative body and a court of justice. It not only made laws for the shire, but it tried civil and criminal 1 Chalmers, Local Government, p. 90.

1

causes. After the Norman Conquest some changes occurred. The shire now began to be called by the French name county," because of its analogy to the small pieces of territory on the Continent that were governed by "counts. The shire-mote became known as the The county county court, but cases coming before court it were tried by the king's justices in eyre, or circuit judges, who went about from county to county to preside over the judicial work. The office of ealdorman became extinct. The sheriff was no longer elected by the people for life, but appointed by the king for the term of one year. This kept him strictly responsible to the king. It was the sheriff's duty to see that the county's share of the national taxes was duly collected and paid over to the national treasury. The sheriff also summoned juries and enforced the judgments of the courts, and if he met with resistance in so doing he was authorized to call out a force of men, known as the posse comitatus (i. e. "power of the county"), and overcome all opposition. Another county officer was the coroner, or crowner, so called because

2

The coroner

originally (in Alfred's time) he was appointed by the king, and was especially the

1 Originally comites, or companions" of the king.

2 This form of the word, sometimes supposed to be a vulgarism, is as correct as the other. See Skeat, Etym. Dict.,

S. v.