In old English law, a tithing consisted of how many families?

• A. Five
• B. Ten
• C. Twenty
• D. Thirty

Answer: (B)

In old English law, local order rested on tightly organized, small communities. A tithing was the basic neighborhood-level unit, a group of families living in close proximity and sharing responsibility for each other’s conduct, with a tithingman overseeing the group. The standard size of that unit was ten families, which is why this option fits the historical arrangement. This tithing then fed into the larger system—ten tithings formed a hundred—showing how the social structure scaled from families to bigger administrative divisions. Other numbers don’t align with how the system was actually organized.