the Isle of Ely was formerly of the independent nature of a county
palatine, but ceased to be so under acts of 1836 and 1837. Its area is
238,048 acres, and that of the administrative county of Cambridge
315,171 acres. Cambridgeshire contains seventeen hundreds. The municipal
boroughs are Cambridge, the county town (pop. 38,379), in the
administrative county of Cambridge, and Wisbech (9381) in the Isle of
Ely. The other urban districts are--in the administrative county of
Cambridge, Chesterton (9591), and in the Isle of Ely, Chatteris (4711),
Ely (7713), March (7565) and Whittlesey (3909). Among other considerable
towns Soham (4230) and Littleport (4181), both in the neighbourhood of
Ely, may be mentioned. The town of Newmarket, which, although wholly
within the administrative county of West Suffolk, is mainly in the
ancient county of Cambridgeshire, is famous for its race-meetings. The
county is in the south-eastern circuit, and assizes are held at
Cambridge. Each administrative county has a court of quarter sessions,
and the two are divided into ten petty sessional divisions. The borough
of Cambridge has a separate court of quarter sessions, and this borough
and Wisbech have separate commissions of the peace. The university of
Cambridge exercises disciplinary jurisdiction over its members. There
are 168 entire civil parishes in the two administrative counties.
Cambridgeshire is almost wholly in the diocese of Ely and the
archdeaconries of Ely and Sudbury, but small portions are within the
dioceses of St Albans and Norwich. There are 194 ecclesiastical parishes
or districts wholly or in part within the county. The parliamentary
divisions are three, namely, Northern or Wisbech, Western or Chesterton,
and Eastern or Newmarket, each returning one member. The county also
contains the parliamentary borough of Cambridge, returning one member;
and the university of Cambridge returns two members.

_History_.--The earliest English settlements in what is now
Cambridgeshire were made about the 6th century by bands of Engles, who
pushed their way up the Ouse and the Cam, and established themselves in
the fen-district, where they became known as the Gyrwas, the districts
corresponding to the modern counties of Huntingdonshire and
Cambridgeshire being distinguished as the lands of the North Gyrwas and
the South Gyrwas respectively. At this period the fen-district stretched
southward as far as Cambridge, and the essential unity which