Leland is deceived in his Commentaries, lib. 13, lately come to my hands, which thing he especially noted in his travel over this isle.  A common plague and enormity, both in the heart of the land and likewise upon the coasts.  Certes a great number complain of the increase of poverty, laying the cause upon God, as though he were in fault for sending such increase of people, or want of wars that should consume them, affirming that the land was never so full, etc.; but few men do see the very root from whence it doth proceed.  Yet the Romans found it out, when they flourished, and therefore prescribed limits to every man’s tenure and occupying.  Homer commendeth Achilles for overthrowing of five-and-twenty cities:  but in mine opinion Ganges is much better preferred by Suidas for building of three score in India, where he did plant himself.  I could (if need required) set down in this place the number of religious houses and monasteries, with the names of their founders, that have been in this island:  but, sith it is a thing of small importance, I pass it over as impertinent to my purpose.  Yet herein I will commend sundry of the monastical votaries, especially monks, for that they were authors of many goodly borowes and endwares,[5] near unto their dwellings although otherwise they pretended to be men separated from the world.  But alas! their covetous minds, one way in enlarging their revenues, and carnal intent another, appeared herein too, too much.  For, being bold from time to time to visit their tenants, they wrought oft great wickedness, and made those endwares little better than brothel-houses, especially where nunneries were far off, or else no safe access unto them.  But what do I spend my time in the rehearsal of these filthinesses?  Would to God the memory of them might perish with the malefactors!  My purpose was also at the end of this chapter to have set down a table of the parish churches and market towns throughout all England and Wales; but, sith I cannot perform the same as I would, I am forced to give over my purpose; yet by these few that ensue you shall easily see what I would have used according to the shires, if I might have brought it to pass.

      [5] The first is a variant on a Keltic, the second on a Saxon
      word, both relating to matters sufficiently indicated in the
      text.—­W.

Shires.  Market Towns.  Parishes.

Middlesex 3 73
London within the walls and without 120
Surrey 6 140
Sussex 18 312
Kent 17 398
Cambridge 4 163
Bedford 9 13
Huntingdon 5 78
Rutland 2 47
Berkshire 11 150
Northampton 10 326
Buckingham 11 196
Oxford 10 216
Southampton 18 248
Dorset 19 279
Norfolk 26 625
Suffolk 25 575
Essex 18 415