ij% T THE HISTORY : fctfckl. Welch, deriving their denomination from their origin, and de- claring the one by the other ' Thus did the little diftri&s of < our townftuj * in. Lancafliire ' -commence with the firft colony that fettled' in 'it.' • The lands within the compafs of one town fhip were affigned to one chief, and became a lordfhip under him, the grazing grounds undoubt- edly of his domeftic flock. The reft of his cattle were fent ihoft probably, either into fuch of the neighbouring heaths artd woods as afforded a common right of pafture, or into the fells £f . Furnefs and the mountains of Weftmoreland, or into both. And the ordinary care and- the common guard of the towns and forts that were raifed by the Siftuntians afterwards, raifed in the depth -of extenfive woods, and confequently upon lands belong- ing to the crown as having never been ceded to a feudatory % . was configned thy the king without doubt to a determinate num- ber of the neighbouring townfhips. Thefe little diftri&s muft have fubfifted by themfelves only for a fhort period after their appointment. The more regular adminiftration of jiiftice in th6 fcangdoiji mirft <bou have occa-
fioned the combination of feveral townfhips into one cymmwd
i or commot, and of many into-one cantref or hundred. Such di- vifions we actually find among the Gauls, among the Welch, .and among the Irifli, aftd in the earlieft inftitutes of the Welch referred to the primaeval Britons 4 . And as the denomination of Cantref was given to a divifion by the Britons from the number of townfliips of which it confided, Cantrev fignifying an hun- dred trevs, fo the Helvetian Gauls had four hundred vici or townfhips and juft four pagi or cantrevs *. Such was thfc firft beginning of thofe larger regions or diftri&s in Lancafliire which we now denominate the Hundreds of it. Formed fome time before the towns were conftru&ed, they muft <natu rally have adopted their appellations from the moft remark- able obje&s of nature within the extent of them. And from the partition of the large country of Helvetia into four cantrevs only, a country fpreading about tVo hundred and twenty Roman miles in length an4 one hundred . aad eighty in breadth but loaded ■V * ~ with
