IN ENGLAND.

[1577, Book II., Chapter 7; 1587, Book II., Chapter 13.]

As in old time we read that there were eight-and-twenty flamines and
archflamines in the south part of this isle, and so many great cities
under their jurisdiction, so in these our days there is but one or two
fewer, and each of them also under the ecclesiastical regiment of some one
bishop or archbishop, who in spiritual cases have the charge and oversight
of the same. So many cities therefore are there in England and Wales as
there be bishoprics and archbishoprics.[70] For, notwithstanding that
Lichfield and Coventry and Bath and Wells do seem to extend the aforesaid
number unto nine-and-twenty, yet neither of these couples are to be
accounted but as one entire city and see of the bishop, sith one bishopric
can have relation but unto one see, and the said see be situate but in one
place, after which the bishop doth take his name.[71]

* * * * *

Certes I would gladly set down, with the names and number of the cities,
all the towns and villages in England and Wales, with their true
longitudes and latitudes, but as yet I cannot come by them in such order
as I would; howbeit the tale of our cities is soon found by the
bishoprics, sith every see hath such prerogative given unto it as to bear
the name of a city and to use _Regaleius_[72] within her own limits. Which
privilege also is granted to sundry ancient towns in England, especially
northward, where more plenty of them is to be found by a great deal than
in the south. The names therefore of our cities are these: London, York,
Canterbury, Winchester, Carlisle, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Lincoln,
Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford, Salisbury, Exeter, Bath, Lichfield,
Bristol, Rochester, Chester, Chichester, Oxford, Peterborough, Llandaff,
St. Davids, Bangor, St. Asaph, whose particular plots and models, with
their descriptions, shall ensue, if it may be brought to pass that the
cutters can make despatch of them before this history be published.[73]

Of towns and villages likewise thus much will I say, that there were
greater store in old time (I mean within three or four hundred year
passed) than at this present. And this I note out of divers records,
charters, and donations (made in times past unto sundry religious houses,
as Glastonbury, Abingdon, Ramsey, Ely, and such like), and whereof in
these days I find not so much as the ruins. Leland, in sundry places,
complainet