Wapentake

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Wapentake

A local division of a shire or county in old English Law; the term used north of the Trent River for the territory called a hundred in other parts of England.

The name wapentake is said to come from weapon and take, an indication that it referred to an area organized for military purposes.

WAPENTAKE. An ancient word used in England as synonymous with hundred. (q.v.) Fortesc. De Laud. ch. 24.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Dudding, "Addlethorpe and Ingoldmells Churchwardens' Accounts," Lincolnshire Notes and Queries 17 (1922-1923): 151-80; Edmund Oldfield, A Topographical and Historical Account of Wainfleet and the Wapentake of Candleshoe, in the County of Lincoln (London: Lungman, 1829), 110-12.

The lost playing places of Lincolnshire

The wapentakes lost their significance in the second half of the 19th century as modern borough and county councils developed, but well into the Kirklees era some modern council services were using Agbrigg as the name for the south-eastern parts of Kirklees.

Upper Agbrigg history

In northern Yorkshire, for instance, the bailiffs of Langbaurgh and of the wapentakes of Richmondshire, all appointees of the Earl of Salisbury, carried out the duties and exercised the powers of the king's sheriff.