Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/241

 Deputie and Councell they may all be amended. Therfore now you may come unto that generall reformation which you spake of, and bringing in of that establishment, by which you said all men should be contained in duty ever after, without the terror of warlike forces, or violent wresting of things by sharpe punishments.

Iren. I will so at your pleasure, the which (me thinkes) can by no meanes be better plotted then by ensample of such other realmes as have beene annoyed with like evills, that Ireland now is, and useth still to bee. And first in this our realme of England, it is manifest by report of the Chronicles, and auncient writers, that it was greatly infested with robbers and out-lawes, which, lurking in woods and fast places, used often to breake foorth into the highwayes, and sometimes into small villages to rob and spoyle. For redresse whereof it is written, that King Alured, or Aldred, did divide the realme into shires, and the shires into hundreds, and the hundreds into lathes or wapentackes, and the wapentackes into tythings: So that tenne tythings make an hundred, and five made a lathe or wapentake, of which tenne, each one was bound for another, and the eldest or best of them, whom they called the Tythingman or Borsolder, that is, the eldest pledge became surety for all the rest.