the support of the man of arms, and of other burdens.  These divisions were not properly distinguished; the land remained mixed; each tenant had a share through all the arable and meadow-land, and common of pasture over all the wastes.  These sub-tenements were judged sufficient for the support of so many families; and no further division was permitted.  These divisions and sub-divisions were convenient at the time for which they were calculated:  the land, so parcelled out, was of necessity more attended to, and the industry greater, when more persons were to be supported by the produce of it.  The frontier of the kingdom, within which Furness was considered, was in a constant state of attack and defence; more hands, therefore, were necessary to guard the coast, to repel an invasion from Scotland, or make reprisals on the hostile neighbour.  The dividing the lands in such manner as has been shown, increased the number of inhabitants, and kept them at home till called for:  and, the land being mixed, and the several tenants united in equipping the plough, the absence of the fourth man was no prejudice to the cultivation of his land, which was committed to the care of three.

’While the villains of Low Furness were thus distributed over the land, and employed in agriculture; those of High Furness were charged with the care of flocks and herds, to protect them from the wolves which lurked in the thickets, and in winter to browze them with the tender sprouts of hollies and ash.  This custom was not till lately discontinued in High Furness; and holly-trees were carefully preserved for that purpose when all other wood was cleared off; large tracts of common being so covered with these trees, as to have the appearance of a forest of hollies.  At the Shepherd’s call, the flocks surrounded the holly-bush, and received the croppings at his hand, which they greedily nibbled up, bleating for more.  The Abbots of Furness enfranchised these pastoral vassals, and permitted them to enclose quillets to their houses, for which they paid encroachment rent.’—­West’s Antiquities of Furness.

However desirable, for the purposes of defence, a numerous population might be, it was not possible to make at once the same numerous allotments among the untilled vallies, and upon the sides of the mountains, as had been made in the cultivated plains.  The enfranchised shepherd or woodlander, having chosen there his place of residence, builds it of sods, or of the mountain-stone, and, with the permission of his lord, encloses, like Robinson Crusoe, a small croft or two immediately at his door for such animals as he wishes to protect.  Others are happy to imitate his example, and avail themselves of the same privileges:  and thus a population, mainly of Danish or Norse origin, as the dialect indicates, crept on towards the more secluded parts of the vallies.  Chapels, daughters of some distant mother church, are first erected in the more open and fertile vales, as those of Bowness