Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/302

Chap. VIII. lib. i. c. 18. a. 12.— Ware c. 8, Howel lib. ii. c. 17. a. 3, Mona p. 122, 12th of Edw. I., and 34—35th of Henry 8th c. 26. Item 91.— Silas Taylor, the first critick who deduced the custom from the Britons, and the only one except Wotton 149 and his prefacer derives the word Gavelkind, as Wotton also derives it, from the Welch Gavel Cenedl a Noble Estate. But as the Irish is much nearer than the Welch to the old Celtic (see Lhuyd p. 1), so it furnishes the very word, Kinead or Kind— Ware c. 8, 12 Edw. I, and 34—35 Hen. VIII.— Howel I. ii. c. 17. a. 3. and p. 338, Ware c. 8, 12 Ed. I, and Howel p. 347 and 348.— Ibid.— Lib. ii. c. 14. a. 8 and p.347.— See lib. ii. e. 22. a. 6. compared with c. 20. a. 1.— P. 348— Ibid.— Ware c. 8 and Davies passim.— Ware c. 8. And see a great mistake in Carte p. 179 &c, and in the sensible Silas Taylor p. 24 and 28, Powel's Hist. of Wales, Davis's Dictionary, &c. &c.

IN this disposition of the Sistuatian lands, it was necessary to have the country cantoned into particular regions and divided into lesser or greater districts. Such an internal partition of a kingdom is necessarily one of the earliest efforts of its civil polity. And the assignment of particular lands to each of the chiefs at first must have necessarily produced such divisions very early in our own county; and Lancashire must have been parcelled into districts coevally with the first plantation of it.

These divisions must have been similar to our present townships, and the actual origin of them. The Tref or Mansion of the lord and of his more immediate attendants, the neighbouring though dispersed cotes of his ambacton, and the lands immediately adjacent to both, must necessarily have formed one division or township. Such undoubtedly were the Vici of the Gauls, of which the Helvetii had four hundred though they had only twelve towns, which were certainly considerable mansions, and which were also particular diftricts. And such were in the earliest ages and are at this period the Trevs of the Welch,