But in the swift and terrible progresses of a king who visited the shires to north and south and west in the intervals of foreign war, a long series of experiments as to the best forms of internal government was ceaselessly carried out, and the new administration securely established.

The estate which his ancestors had immemorially possessed was much augmented by captain Bluster, who served under Drake in the reign of Elizabeth; and the Blusters, who were before only petty gentlemen, have from that time frequently represented the shire in parliament, been chosen to present addresses, and given laws at hunting-matches and races.

If he be an ealdorman, let him forfeit his shire, unless the king is willing to be merciful to him.

Cromwell passed the Tweed[d] at the head of sixteen thousand men, most of them veterans, all habituated to military discipline, before the raw levies of the Scots had quitted their respective shires.

let us raise the shire.

Oppression and extortion had doubtless been well known before, when the sheriff carried on the administration of the law side by side with the lucrative business of "farming the shires;" but it was at least an irregular and uncertain oppression.

Moreover, by his decree of the year before he had set over every shire a sheriff who was wholly under his own control, trained in his court, pledged to his obedience, and who had firm hold of the courts, the local forces, and the finances.

His family have supplied the shire of Devon, time out of mind, with good thieves and bad serving-men.

The shires were not made by dividing the nation, but the nation was made by uniting the shires.

It may safely be said that a man who can command hounds in the Braydon and Swindon district will find the "shires" comparatively plain sailing.