Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/303

 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