The Hundred served as the fundamental intermediate tier of local government in Anglo-Saxon and post-Conquest England, situated between the vill and the shire. Functioning primarily as a judicial and fiscal unit, it was governed by the Hundred Court, which met monthly to handle civil disputes, criminal matters, and the collection of taxes. Under the feudal system, the Hundred was the mechanism through which the Crown managed the frankpledge system and ensures that royal justice reached the agrarian level. While many Hundreds remained under royal control, others were granted as 'private hundreds' to high-ranking nobility or ecclesiastical lords, who exercised jurisdictional rights and collected associated fines.
In the context of the Domesday Book of 1086, the Hundred played a critical role as the primary venue for data collection. The commissioners relied upon the testimony of a jury composed of the local priest, the reeve, and six villeins from each township within the Hundred to swear as to the value and ownership of holdings. This granular administrative structure allowed the Norman administration to formalize the complex web of Anglo-Saxon land tenure into the structured feudal hierarchy that would define English social and legal organization for centuries.