Among the ancient customs of Dalton, is the practice of hiring reapers on Sundays in time of harvest. Endeavours have been made to abolish it; but by the statute of 27 Henry VI. cap. 5, for suppressing Sabbath-breaking, four Sundays in harvest time are excepted from the prohibition against holding markets and fairs on holydays, and the people of Dalton have construed it to the hiring of such servants. Till of late years there was at Dalton an annual festival called "The Dalton Hunt," in which the gentlemen of the district partook of the sports of the field by day, and joined the ladies in the ball-room at night. A suite of rooms was erected in the town, and handsomely fitted-up for this annual jubilee, which existed as early as the year 1703, as appears from the columns of the _London Gazette_, in which it is styled "the Dalton Route," and the pen of an elegant contributor to the _Tatler_ has imparted to it additional celebrity. To the regret of the beaux and belles of the neighbourhood the "route" was discontinued in 1789, and has never since been revived.[221] LETTING SHEEP FARMS IN BOWLAND. One custom, in letting the great sheep-farms in the higher parts of Bowland, deserves to be mentioned, as I do not know that it prevails anywhere else. It is this: That the flock, often consisting of 2000 sheep, or more, is the property of the lord, and delivered to the tenant by a schedule, subject to the condition of delivering up an equal number of the same quality at the expiration of the term. Thus the tenant is merely usufructuary of his own stock. The practice was familiar to the Roman law, and seems to have arisen from the difficulty of procuring tenants who were able to stock farms of such extent.[222] MEDIÆVAL LATIN LAW TERMS. The old charters and deeds of Manchester, Warrington, and other Lancashire towns, contain various words now obsolete, and amongst others the words _namare_ and _namium_, which it is not easy to render accurately. The first may be translated to seize in pledge, to arrest, to distrain; the second is a pledge, or a distress, what is seized by distraint. In connexion with the substantive _namium_, the following anecdote of the great Sir Thomas More may be told, as illustrative of the obscurity of some of these ancient law terms. It is said that Sir Thomas, when travelling, arrived at Padua just as a boasting Professor had placarded the walls of that University with a challenge to all the world to dispute with him on any subject or in any art, and that Sir Thomas accepted the challenge, and proposed for his subject this question:-- "AN AVERIA CARUCÆ CAPTA IN VETITO NAMIO SINT IRREPLEGIBILIA?" which, it is almost needless to add, proved such a stumbling-block to the challenger, who did not know even the very terms of the question, that he surrendered at discretion, and acknowledged himself vanquished.[223]