This page needs to be proofread.
240
VIEW OF THE STATE OF IRELAND.
shall take the lesse exception to partiality, and yet be the more tyed thereby. But when I come to the Head Borough, which is the head of the lathe, him will I make an English man, or an Irish man of speciall assurance: As also when I come to appoint the Alderman, that is the head of the hundreth, him will I surely choose to he an English man of speciall regard, that may be a stay and pillar of all the borough under him.
Eudox. What doe you meane by your hundred, and what by your borough? By that, that I have read in auncient records of England, an hundred did containe an hundreth villages, or as some say an hundred plough-lands, being the same which the Saxons called [o 1] Cantred; the which cantred, as I finde it re-
- ↑ Cantred;] Cantred is a Brittish word, answering to the Saxon Hun?epe?. How much land a cantred containeth, is variously delivered. Some hould that it containes 100 townes. So Gir. Barry or Cambrensis, in his Itinerary of Wales, (lib. 2. cap. 7.) " Dicitur autem cantredus, (saith he) composito vocabulo tarn Britannica quam Hibernica lingua, tanta terra portio, quanta 100. villas continere solet." The author here cites a record which makes it containe but 30. towne-lands: and Iohn Clynn, (if my copy therein be not mistaken) hath but 20. But another more auncient MS. sometime belonging to the Friars Minors of Multifeman, hath 30. "Quælibet cantreda (saith Clinne) continet xx. (al. xxx.) villatas terræ, quælibet villata potest sustinere 300 vaccas in pascuis, ita quod vaccæ in X. (al. 1111.) partes divisa, nulla alteri appropinquabit, quælibet villata continet viii. carucatas." We finde also there the provinces of Ireland thus divided into cantreds. Ultonia continet 35. cantredas, Conacia 30. Lagenia 31. Midia 18. & Momonia 70. See more concerning cantreds in Sir Hen. Spehnann's excellent Glossary. As cantreds are diversly estimated, so are also carues or plowlands. Sir James Ware.
