Lucie, daughter of the 1st Lord Harington Exton, was born at Combe Abbey near Coventry, and married Eduoard Russell 3rd Earl of Bedford. She was truly remarkable woman of the early Eighteenth Century and died in 1638. She had no children and seems to have crowded her life with interests rather foreign to the women of that age.  She was renowned as a patroness of arts and learning and was called “the favorite of the Muses.”

Her most remarkable characteristic seems to have been her passion for accumulating real estate.  Her brother the 2nd Lord Harrington, who died without issue, left he two thirds of his estate, and history relates that she owned property in many Midland counties.  The thrill of having the having the opportunity of investing in, and becoming a large shareholder, in the Bermuda Company of 1615 must have been great!  Lefroy gives the following:-

“The names of the Original Adventurers of the planatacon of the Somers Islands taken out of the Letters Patents of King James of blessed memorie.  In the Twelfth yeare of his Reigne over England, etc. and of Scotland the eight and fortieth (1615)”

Bedford, Lucie, Countess of Cavendish; William, Lord Pagett; William, lord Pembroke; William, Earl of Southampton, Henrie, Earle of ---------------.  These head the list of one hundred and seventeen names in all which Lefroy quotes Smith as saying were previously Adventurers in the Virginia Company. The honour of having such a Godmother to the name of Harington Sound (which should be spelled with only one R) is great, and it seems fitting that one of the most beautiful bits of water in the world should bear the maiden name of our woman “Adventurer.”!

One could write pages of comparison with her character in the changing lights and shade, the various combinations of colour in the water the raging storms which sometimes bring even more beauty to the sound than its peaceful days.

So much for the historical association of the name Harington with part of Smith’s and Hamilton Parishes and incidentally with the new land development near.  It may be of interest to those who are not familiar with the old Saxon term ‘hundreds’ to know what various authorities say on the subject.  The Encyclopedia Britannica give the following;-

Hund-red, the suffix meaning reckoning, an ancient territorial division.  Some of the hundreds in Cornwall were called Shires, thus we have the tithing now called the Riding in Yorkshire, and the rape in Sussex.  The division into hundreds is general ascribed to the creative genius of Alfred the Saxon King who, according to Malmesbury, divided his Kingdom into Counties, and the Counties into hundreds, and the hundreds into tithings – The old theory, and perhaps the best, is that a hundred denoted first a group of a hundred families, and then the district which families occupied.

There is also a theory that the hundreds denoted a hundred hides of land and there is good reason for supposing that the hide was as much land as would support a family.  In the Middle Ages the hundred was chiefly important for its court of Justice and I am not indebted to the Hon. Trounsell Gilbert for this extract from English Constitutional History by Thomas Pitt Taswell-Landmead B.C.L. the unit of the territorial division was the tun, township or vicus, occupied by a body of alodial owners associated by the tie of local contiguity, and also as representing either the original maegth community of allottees, or the dependent settlers on the estate of the immigrant chief.  Each township had its headman or chief executive officers.  The townships were grouped together into hundreds, or as they were called in the Anglian districts, wapentakes.  An aggregation of hundreds constituted the shire, and the union of shires made up the later kingdom.

The Hundred, or Wapentake, a district answering to the pagus of Tactitus, probably has its origin in the primitive settlements, varying in geographical extend, of each hundred warriors of the invading host.  The term Wapentake, which clearly has reference to the armored gathering of the freemen, points to the military origin of the hundred, like that of the haerred in the Scandinavian kingdoms.  In England the names Hundred and Wapen take first appeared in the laws of Eadgar (A.D. 959-975) in connection with the police organization of the kingdom.  By this time the term Hundred, originally denoting certain personal relations of the inhabitants of a district, had probably acquired its territorial signification as a subdividion of the shire or kingdom to which it belonged.  It had its hundred-gemot, which took cognizance of all matters, criminal and civil, arising within the hundred, and was attended by the thegns of the hundred and by the representative townreve and for men from each township.  The chief executive officer was the hundred-man or hundred-ealdor, who convened the hundred-gemot.  He was generally, and at first always, elective; but as the personal gradually gave way to the territorial influence, he was in many places nominated by the thegn or other great man to whom the hundred belonged.

There is no definite historical story with regard to the Bermuda hundred in Virginia.  On theory is, that, as many of the Shareholders in the Virginia Co. and the Bermuda Co. were one and the same persons that a alive of land in Virginia was added to the small Bermuda’s square mileage.  Another theory is, that tobacco was grown there and added to the amount that Bermuda as to produce each year for the Company.  I have been told that Delaware contains a Christiana Hundred.  I find in Webster’s Dictionary that the Old Saxon Hunderer had as its counterpart in Denmark Hunderder, and in Iceland Hundradh.  As Delaware was settled by Danes, Dutch and Swedes it seems likely that they brought their own terms for the division of land with them.

So, with such historical associations, we wish all happiness and peace to the Harrington Hundreds.  May the standards of Anglo-Saxon RIGHT be fostered and maintained.

Perchance such names as Lucie’s Vale, Bedford Gardens, King Alfred’s farm, Combe Cottage, Harrington Highlands etc. etc. , may be adopted for their homes by our new “Adventures,” and so carry even further the historical link.