Edgar, Ethelred, etc., endeavoured more
and more to store themselves at the full with ships of all quantities, but
chiefly Edgar, for he provided a navy of 1600 _alias_ 3600 sail, which he
divided into four parts, and sent them to abide upon four sundry coasts of
the land, to keep the same from pirates. Next unto him (and worthy to be
remembered) is Etheldred, who made a law that every man that hold 310
hidelands should find a ship furnished to serve him in the wars. Howbeit,
as I said before, when all their navy was at the greatest, it was not
comparable for force and sure building to that which afterward the Normans
provided, neither that of the Normans anything like to the same that is to
be seen now in these our days. For the journeys also of our ships, you
shall understand that a well-builded vessel will run or sail commonly
three hundred leagues or nine hundred miles in a week, or peradventure
some will go 2200 leagues in six weeks and a half. And surely, if their
lading be ready against they come thither, there be of them that will be
here, at the West Indies, and home again in twelve or thirteen weeks from
Colchester, although the said Indies be eight hundred leagues from the
cape or point of Cornwall, as I have been informed. This also I understand
by report of some travellers, that, if any of our vessels happen to make a
voyage to Hispaniola or New Spain (called in time past Quinquegia and
Haiti), which lieth between the north tropic and the Equator, after they
have once touched at the Canaries (which are eight days' sailing or two
hundred and fifty leagues from St. Lucas de Barameda, in Spain) they will
be there in thirty or forty days, and home again in Cornwall in other
eight weeks, which is a goodly matter, beside the safety and quietness in
the passage, but more of this elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF SUNDRY KINDS OF PUNISHMENT APPOINTED FOR OFFENDERS.

[1577, Book III., Chapter 6; 1587, Book II., Chapter 11.]

In cases of felony, manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape, piracy, and such
capital crimes as are not reputed for treason or hurt of the estate, our
sentence pronounced upon the offender is, to hang till he be dead. For of
other punishments used in other countries we have no knowledge or use; and
yet so few grievous crimes committed with us as elsewhere in the world. To
use torment also or question by pain and torture in these common cases
with us is greatly abhorred, since we are found alwa