rly towns, especially about St. Albans, a portion of
which will be found in the Appendix.--W.

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_ 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.

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 years
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, complaineth likewise of the decay of parishes in great
cities and towns, missing in some six or eight or twelve churches and
more, of all which he giveth particular notice. For albeit that the
Saxons builded many towns and villages, and the Normans well more at
their first coming, yet since the first two hundred years after the
latter conquest, they have gone so fast again to decay that the
ancient number of them is very much abated. Ranulph, the monk of
Chester, telleth of general survey made in the fourth, sixteenth, and
nineteenth of the reign of William Conqueror, surnamed the Bastard,
wherein it was found that (notwithstanding the Danes had overthrown a
great many) there were to the number of 52,000 towns, 45,002 parish
churches, and 75,000 knights' fees, whereof the clergy held 28,015. He
addeth moreover that there were divers other builded since that time,
within