ng of trouble sake) in carrying him
to the gaol, if he should be apprehended, or other letting of their
work to escape, the same parish is not only to make fine to the king,
but also the same, with the whole hundred wherein it standeth, to
repay the party robbed his damages, and leave his estate harmless.
Certainly this is a good law; howbeit I have known by my own
experience felons being taken to have escaped out of the stocks, being
rescued by other for want of watch and guard, that thieves have been
let pass, because the covetous and greedy parishioners would neither
take the pains nor be at the charge, to carry them to prison, if it
were far off; that when hue and cry have been made even to the faces
of some constables, they have said: "God restore your loss! I have
other business at this time." And by such means the meaning of many a
good law is left unexecuted, malefactors emboldened, and many a poor
man turned out of that which he hath sweat and taken great pains
toward the maintenance of himself and his poor children and family.

CHAPTER XVIII

OF UNIVERSITIES

[1577, Book II., Chapter 6; 1587, Book II., Chapter 3.]

There have been heretofore, and at sundry times, divers famous
universities in this island, and those even in my days not altogether
forgotten, as one at Bangor, erected by Lucius, and afterward
converted into a monastery, not by Congellus (as some write), but by
Pelagius the monk. The second at Caerleon-upon-Usk, near to the place
where the river doth fall into the Severn, founded by King Arthur. The
third at Thetford, wherein were six hundred students, in the time of
one Rond, sometime king of that region. The fourth at Stamford,
suppressed by Augustine the monk. And likewise other in other places,
as Salisbury, Eridon or Cricklade, Lachlade, Reading, and Northampton;
albeit that the two last rehearsed were not authorised, but only arose
to that name by the departure of the students from Oxford in time of
civil dissension unto the said towns, where also they continued but
for a little season. When that of Salisbury began I cannot tell; but
that it flourished most under Henry the Third and Edward the First I
find good testimony by the writers, as also by the discord which fell,
1278, between the chancellor for the scholars there on the one part
and William the archdeacon on the other, whereof you shall see more in
the chronology here following. In my time there are three noble
universi