of the smaller regions, afterwards called hundreds. These courts were commonly held in the open air at well-known meeting-places, as in Germany and Scandinavia. Even as late as the thirteenth century the States of East Friesland assembled under three large oaks which grew near Aurich,[1] and open-air courts of the hundreds survived in England to a later date.
The various tribal names that were in use in England before the origin of the present Shires either must have been brought by the original settlers from the Continent or have been newer designations that arose after their settlement. Such names as Engle, Waring, Gewissas, Ymbres or Ambrones, Wilsæte, Thornsæte, and others, are native names that no doubt came in with the settlers themselves. Others that are met with appear to have had their origin from topographical and other local circumstances. Few tribal names in use on the Continent survived as names for tribal areas of England, which shows that the provinces in England were not commonly settled by people of one tribe. New designations would thus become necessary for the people of various Continental tribes living in one English tribal area. These new names would thus become the collective names of people of various older tribal origins, and the older names would survive in England, if at all, not as tribal names, but as names of settlements, and in many instances of places that were called after the heads of families or small communities of people of the same kin. There is a list of Anglo-Saxon tribes preserved in the Harley MSS. known as the Tribal Hidage, the earliest of which is of the tenth or eleventh century, but refers to a considerably earlier date. Some of these tribal areas were large and some small, and others are known to have existed, for they are mentioned in early records. They will be referred to later under the several parts
- ↑ Mallet, M., ‘Northern Antiquities,’ translated by Bishop Percy, ed. 1847, p. 511, note.
