But one’s first surprise at the enormous number of gallows subsides when we consider the conditions of life in early times. The country was thickly wooded: immense forests gave shelter to robbers, thieves, to all under the ban of the law. One of the laws of Ina runs, “If a far-coming man, or a stranger, journey through a wood, out of the highway, and neither shout nor blow his horn, he is to be held for a thief, either to be slain, or redeemed.” To come to later times—there is a tradition that the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds was instituted for the purpose of putting down thieves. Tradition it may be called, for the conjecture is not supported by evidence. Thus, in a Parliamentary paper issued in 1894, there are some notes on the history of the stewardship. As to its origin, these notes do not go behind Wharton’s Law Dictionary, and Chambers’s Encyclopædia. Here is the story of the origin of the stewardship, or as it would be more properly called, the wardenship. Leofstan, the abbat here named, was a friend of Edward the Confessor; it is known from an old record that he was abbat in 1047. In reading the narrative we must remember that the “Ciltria” of the story was a wider district than that to which we now give the name of Chiltern. “THE STORY OF THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS. “This same abbat Leofstan, also called Plumstan, being a simple and pious man, full of compassion for all persons in peril, in order to make the roads safer for travellers, merchants and pilgrims faring to the church of the Blessed Alban, whether for the expiation of their sins, or for their worldly profit, caused to be cut down, chiefly along the royal road called Watling Street, the dense forests stretching from the border of Ciltria almost as far as to the north side of London: he also cleared the rough places, made bridges and levelled the way. For there were at that time all over Ciltria vast, dense forests, giving shelter to many different kinds of wild beasts, namely, wolves, wild boars, wild bulls, and stags, and, more dangerous still, to robbers, thieves by day and thieves by night, men banished from the realm, fugitives from justice. Wherefore abbat Leofstan—not to the loss, but to the good of this church—made over to a certain most stout and valiant knight, Turnot by name, and to two of his companions, Waldef and Thurman, the manor of Flamstude [Flamstead lies a little to the west of Watling Street], for which Turnot gave privately to the abbat five ounces of gold, a most beautiful palfrey, and a desirable greyhound. Which was done on these conditions—that the said Turnot, with his fellow-knights before named, and their followers, should protect the western parts, most haunted by robbers, and effectually guard the same, with the stipulation that they should make good any loss arising from their negligence.