Wapentake
or WAPENTAC, a name formerly given in some of the N. shires of England, and still retained in Yorkshire, to a territorial division of the county corresponding to the hundred of the S. counties. The word means "weapon-touching" and refers to the custom of the chiefs of a particular district meeting at a certain day at a specified spot, when the head chief alighting from his horse, raised his spear in the air, and the inferior chiefs, also on foot, touched this spear with their lances, and so acknowledged their fealty.