wns probably by a group of aldermen, senior burgesses, with
military and police authority, whose office was in some cases
hereditary. These persons assisted the reeve at the great meetings of
the full court, and sat with him as judges at the subordinate meetings
which were held to settle the unfinished causes and minor causes. There
was no compulsion on those not specially summoned to attend these extra
meetings. At these subordinate jurisdictional assemblies, held in
public, and acting by the same authority as the annual gathering of all
the _burh-wara_, other business concerning borough administration was
decided, at least in later days, and it is to these assemblies that the
origin of the town council may in many cases be ascribed. In the larger
towns the division into wards, with a separate police system, can be
traced at an early time, appearing as a unit of military organization,
answerable for the defence of a gate of the town. The police system of
London is described in detail in a record of 930-940. Here the free
people were grouped in associations of ten, each under the
superintendence of a headman. The bishops and reeves who belonged to the
"court of London" appear as the directors of the system, and in them we
may see the aldermen of the wards of a later time. The use of the word
_bertha_ for ward at Canterbury, and the fact that the London wardmoot
at a later time was used for the frankpledge system as well as for the
organization of the muster, point to a connexion between the military
and the police systems in the towns. At the end of the 9th and beginning
of the 10th century there is evidence of a systematic "timbering" of new
burhs, with the object of providing strongholds for the defence of
Wessex against the Danes, and it appears that the surrounding districts
were charged with their maintenance. In charters of this period a "haw,"
or enclosed area within a burh, was often conveyed by charter as if it
were an apanage of the lands in the neighbourhood with which it was
conveyed; the Norman settlers who succeeded to lands in the county
succeeded therewith to houses in the burhs, for a close association
existed between the "thegns" of the shire and the shirestow, an
association partly perhaps of duty and also of privilege. The king
granted borough "haws" as places of refuge in Kent, and in London he
gave them with commercial privileges to his bishops. What has been
called the "heterogeneous" tenure of the