act that private citizens possessed of land and military power the only authentically free men in a district also assumed de facto judicial power in their hundreds was to have enormous consequences for England. It gave the nobility a degree of political power over masses of land as well as over virtually all persons of classes lower than theirs, and this was bound to (and did) affect the relationship between the nobility and the king, who also assumed political power over both land and all classes lower than his.
If the whole of England was a kingdom, its largest administrative subdivisions were shires. After that, the next most significant subdivision was the hundred. At each level of governance division, there were corresponding court structures that served to institutionalize the kingdom as well as subsidiary courts within the kingdom. What most English commentators seem at pains to establish was that the institutionalization, though perhaps not refinement, of the hundreds concept, plus the complex ties of governance at th
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