Page:The statutes of Wales (1908).djvu/186

54 the same, If suit be made for or after them upon any outcry, hute, or fresh suit of or for any felony robbery, murder and manslaughter, committed and done from henceforth: And that the King's Justiciars of Peace within every the said Counties of Gloucester and Somerset at their Quarter Sessions shall have full power and authority to call before them all such persons which hereafter shall keep any of the said passages, or any other ferry or passage over the said water into or the said forest, or out of  or the said forest into England, and to bind them with sufficient sureties with them in recognizance in such sums of money as it shall seem to the discretion of the said Justiciars of peace, that they and every of them being passengers and Keepers of ferries and passages as is aforesaid, from henceforth shall not after the said times before limited and appointed convey or carry, nor cause to be conveyed nor carried, any manner of person or persons or any kind of cattle, but such persons as they do know and will answer for, and know where their abidings, dwellings and habitations be, and upon request made to them or any of them as is above said shall from time to time disclose as well the same person or persons as the goods and cattles so passing the said passages upon fresh suit made or hereafter to be made upon any felony murder or robbery, committed and done in the borders of the Counties aforesaid, or in any other place within this realm or South.

A.D. 1534]

"Forasmuch as the People of and Marches of the same, not dreading the good and wholesome Laws and Statutes of this Realm, have of long Time continued and persevered in Perpetration and Commission of divers and manifold Thefts, Murthers, Rebellions, wilful Burnings of Houses and other scelerous Deeds and abominable Malefacts, to the high Displeasure of God, Inquietation of the King's well-disposed Subjects, and Disturbance of the Publick Weal, which Malefacts and scelerous Deeds be so rooted and fixed in the same People, that they be not like to cease, unless some sharp Correction and Punishment for Redress and Amputation of the Premisses be provided, according to the Demerits of the Offenders": Be it therefore enacted by the King our Sovereign