ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERN-
MENT: THE STORY OF THE
CING'S HIGHWAY. BY SID-
s[EY AND BEATRICE WEBB.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 39
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, CALCUTTA AND BOMBAY.
JS
P3
v.
PEEFACE
AT the beginning of the year 1913 the Story of the King's Highway
an account of how, in England and Wales, the roads have
actually been made and managed, from the earliest times down
to the present day may claim a certain topical interest. The
advent on the roads of the automobile and the motor omnibus
is producing effects, both on public opinion and on adminis-
tration, which are curiously parallel to those produced, three
centuries ago, by the coming in of the carriage and the waggon.
The " New Users " of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, whose aggressions on the pedestrians and on the road
surface were made the subject of persistent complaint in their
day, are now themselves resenting the quite analogous aggres-
sions of the " New Users " of the roads in the twentieth century.
A hundred years ago, as our eighth chapter relates, the country
was saved by " Pontifex Maximus Telford " and " Macadam the
Magician." We do not find ourselves able to foretell the name
of our twentieth-century deliverer, nor even the message that
he will bring, or the office that he will hold ! We limit our
suggestions or predictions to the last two pages.
The Story of the King's Highway seems to us worth telling
as a study in administration. And, if we mistake not, it has
an interest even for the general reader, unconcerned with
" problems." The strange devices by which our ancestors
vi THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY
thought that they could keep the roads in repair ; the " King's
Loiterers " who asked for " largess " ; the curious idea of
mending the roads by criminal indictment of the parish ; the
yet untold history of the rise and fall of the Turnpike Trusts ;
the frauds of the " pikemen " ; the glories of the stage-coach ;
the " calamity of railways " ; the spectacle of the nineteenth-
century statesmen being utterly baffled by the problem of the
proper unit of road administration all these things are worth
reading about to-day.
But whatever topical interest the present volume may have,
owing to the accident of its publication at this date, the book
really forms part of the study of English Local Government
which we began in 1899, and of which the first considerable
instalments were published as The Parish and the County in
1906, and The Manor and the Borough in 1908. It does not,
however, stand next to these two works in logical sequence.
They both dealt with the structure of local government, and
they need to be supplemented by a third volume, describing the
various statutory local governing bodies, and recapitulating
the whole survey of the structural development from the Revolu-
tion to the Municipal Corporations Act. This we hope one day
to complete. But the present volume comes from, another
drawer ! When we were still working out the history of the
Parish and the County, and the Manor and the Borough, we
found it desirable in order to ensure that we had correctly
understood the structure to describe, in some detail, the
evolution of each separate function of English Local Govern-
ment. Unfortunately, all these papers had to be put aside,
from 1908 to 1912, under the stress of more urgent work. When
we found time to take them out again, the volume on Road
Administration proved to be the one nearest to completion.
We have therefore chosen it for publication this year ; and in
PREFACE vii
order to round off the story, we have made it begin with the
war-chariot of Boadicea and brought it down to the motor
omnibus of to-day. The reader who likes footnotes and refer-
ences will find these in appendices immediately following the
several chapters, so that they can, according to taste, with equal
convenience, be studied or skipped.
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.
41 GROSVENOR ROAD, WESTMINSTER EMBANKMENT,
LONDON, S.W., January 1913.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE KING'S HIGHWAY BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY .
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER L : NOTES AND REFERENCES .
CHAPTER U
ROAD LEGISLATION UNDER THE TUDORS AND THE STUARTS
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IL : NOTES AND REFERENCES 24
PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION .
CHAPTER HI
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER HL : NOTES AND REFERENCES 42
CHAPTER IV
ROAD ADMINISTRATION BY PRESENTMENT AND INDICTMENT
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER W. : NOTES AND REFERENCES
CHAPTER V
THE NEW USERS OF THE ROADS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V. : XOTES AND REFERENCES . 76
ix
THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY
CHAPTER VI
i'AGE |
THE MAINTENANCE or BRIDGES ...... 85
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. : NOTES AND REFERENCES . 104
CHAPTER VII
THE TURNPIKE ROAD . 114
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII. : NOTES AND REFERENCES . 146
CHAPTER VIII
" PONTIFEX MAXIMUS TELFORD " AND " MACADAM THE
MAGICIAN" . . . . . . . . .165
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. : NOTES AND REFERENCES . 180
CHAPTER IX
THE ROAD LEGISLATION OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . . 192
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX. : NOTES AND REFERENCES . 223
CHAPTER X
THE NEW USERS OF THE ROADS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY .
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X. : NOTES AND REFERENCES
INDEX . 265
CHAPTER I
THE KING'S HIGHWAY BEFOEE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
WE propose, in this book, to tell the story of the King's Highway
in England and Wales : not, indeed, the romance and picturesque
incidents of travel on the road, but the more prosaic tale of the
maintenance and management of the thoroughfares which make
travel possible. And in this history, even more than in others,
it is out of prolonged darkness that we emerge into light. We
have to pass rapidly over the first thirteen or fourteen hundred
years of historical knowledge about England, during which, of
the actual methods and detailed facts as to the management
and maintenance of the roads, there is next to nothing known.
Of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries we can
form some imperfect vision ; whilst from the beginning of the
eighteenth the records are abundant. To those who wonder
what there can be of interest or instruction in so prosaic and
mechanical a subject as road maintenance, we venture to suggest
that they should give it a trial. In the evolution of road
administration in England, we shall see exemplified, with many
an instructive parallel, the whole story of English Local Govern-
ment, from the Court Leet to the County Council. And in the
dramatic eighteenth century struggle between the new users of
the roads and those who were liable for their maintenance
between the rival assumptions that the traffic must be suited
to the roads and that the roads must be suited to the traffic
we have a curiously exact precedent for the constant argument
that went on yesterday about the bicycle and the automobile,
and that is going on to-day between the Road Authority and the
Motor Omnibuses.
Our forefathers had a short and ready method of local self-
i B
2 THE KING'S HIGHWAY
government. In our volume on The Manor and the Borough
we have described, in connection with the Court Leet, the char-
acteristic mediaeval assumption of local administration, that the
common services needed for social life were to be performed,
not by any specialised organs of the community, but by being
shared among all the citizens, serving compulsorily without pay.
It was taken for granted that these services allotted as they
were among persons and classes according to their assumedly
permanent status in the community would themselves remain,
year in and year out, unchanged in kind and quantity. This
assumption it was that gave significance to the whole conception
of nuisances, active and passive. If no man committed any
new annoyance, or refrained from fulfilling any old obligation,
it was assumed that all would be well. In no department of
local government was this mediaeval assumption so persistent
as in the Maintenance of Roads, and in no other service was its
result so obviously disastrous. Not until well into the nineteenth
century was the old order wholly superseded by the modern
device of a specialised organ of administration, alimented by
compulsory taxation, and having, as its express object, the
satisfying of the increasing needs of a progressive society. Be-
tween these two assumptions, and the characteristic ideals of
road administration to which they gave birth, there waged, during
the whole of the eighteenth century, and indeed from the Restora-
tion to the Reformed Parliament, one prolonged struggle. What
maintained this conflict between the old principles and the new
was the fact that these rival conceptions of public administra-
tion corresponded, in the main, with the interests and needs of
antagonistic sections of the community on the one hand the
inhabitants of the rural parishes, but little concerned with
any means of locomotion on wheels, and on the other, the
new users of the roads, the citizens of the rapidly growing
ports and industrial centres, and all whose business or pleasure
compelled them to travel up and down England and Wales.
It is this conflict between rival principles and conflicting
interests that lends some philosophic interest to the story of
the King's Highway.
But before we can reach the point in our narrative at which
this conflict between rival policies becomes, as we may almost
say, dramatic in its intensity, we must run rapidly over those
BRITISH AND ROMAN ROADS 3
preceding centuries into which we have made no special research.
And we may as well begin at the beginning. The earliest high-
ways in England of which there is any sign are the ancient
trackways sometimes first marked out by passing animals
which were used by the British inhabitants. These ancient lines
of traffic, we are told, " were probably irregular and winding,
unmetalled and frequently worn below the level of the surrounding
country. . . . They ran from the higher country to points
where the rivers were fordable. . . . With some notable excep-
tions they were not durable roads but tracks from the high
ground, where the Britons largely resided, to the shipping ports."
So persistent and unyielding is popular usage, and so little thought
has there ever been of changing the course of a public thorough-
fare, that we may well imagine these ancient hollow-ways and
ridgeways, from Cornwall to Northumberland, to survive, if not
even in some lines of Roman road, at any rate in many a sunken
lane or moorland track, in many a field path or right of way.
Here and there, as in the rude stone trackways across a Devon-
shire moor, a Wiltshire down or a Yorkshire wold ; or as in the
remarkable stone bridges on Dartmoor or Exmoor, or as in the
remnants of the foundations of the wooden pile causeway across
Lambeth Marsh, we may believe that we see actual structure
of pre-Roman age. But of the management and maintenance
of these prehistoric highways nothing is known.
We are on firmer ground during the Roman occupation of
Britain, when the four great roads, together with others of lesser
note, were constructed across the island, of a straightness that
was magnificent, if not altogether economical. Of these great
through roads, and of some of the others, we can to-day trace the
exact course, and they still form, here and there, the basis of
existing thoroughfares. We need not repeat the well-known
descriptions of the structural features of these Roman roads,
nor yet indulge in speculations as to their place in the great system
of communications which extended to the very limits of the
Empire. Scholars have paid more attention to the geography
and to the mechanics of these roads than to the social organisa-
tion involved in their maintenance. What particular form of
" social tissue " was developed in Britain for these great works ;
how far the direction was centralised in Rome ; what labour
force was employed and how it was organised and subsisted ;
4 THE KING'S HIGHWA Y
and how exactly the cost was borne, does not seem, so far as the
present writers are aware, to have been made out. We must
remember that the object of these great works was military
rather than commercial ; that they were probably constructed
by the legions themselves ; and that they may well have been in
the same manner kept in repair. Moreover, though wheeled
vehicles were used by the Romans (as, indeed, they had been
by the Britons), the main use of these roads was to enable the
legions to march quickly from place to place ; and to make it
possible to supply them easily by packhorses. Although a few
officers or dignitaries might travel in chariots, and even messengers
and light articles be thus carried, we imagine that the Roman
roads were used, in fact, almost entirely by pedestrians and
horses a fact which in itself explains and justifies their being
made to take always the most direct line, irrespective of hills
and valleys. How systematically they were connected by other,
less permanent, routes with other places, we know not, although
various subsidiary lines of communication have been traced.
But we may infer that the construction of new through routes
across Britain led to the opening of many new tracks, of one
sort or another, connecting the great thoroughfares with the
various villages in the neighbourhood of which they passed.
Of the actual organisation of the service of road maintenance
in Britain under the Romans, or of the working of the administra-
tion in practice, there is, so far as we are aware, nothing known.
We have, perforce, to pass equally rapidly over the next six
or seven centuries. We may assume that neither the ancient
trackways nor the Roman roads fell, with the departure of the
Regions, quite out of use. We know that the great Roman
thoroughfares across the country soon received from the English
those names of Watling Street, the Icknield Way, Ermin Street,
and the Fossway not to mention the names of such lesser roads
as the Saltway and Akeman Street by which they are still
known ; whilst the innumerable Stratfords and Strattons and
" Streets " that persist in local place nomenclature tell us the
same tale of continued use of the Roman foundations. We
know, too, that the English kings always insisted on the mainten-
ance, by the inhabitants of each locality, of the roads and bridges
of that locality ; very largely because, without the keeping up
of thoroughfares, it would have been difficult either to have
MANORIAL ROADS 5
moved armies or to have exercised any central authority. The
maintenance of the existing roads and bridges was, indeed, one
of the three fundamental obligations the trinoda necessitas
of the holder of land. But, here again, less attention seems to
have been paid to social organisation than to some other matters.
The present writers, at any rate, find themselves unable to piece
together any authenticated description of how the roads of
England were actually managed and maintained prior to the
twelfth or thirteenth century.
So far as we are aware, indeed, anything like exact knowledge
of road administration in England begins with the manorial
records, and is largely derived from the lawyers' subsequent '
interpretation of manorial obligations. We have described in
our volume on The Manor and the Borough how, as we understand
it, the Manor was organised. The maintenance of the King's
Highway was certainly one of the duties which the law imposed
upon the Manor. We gather that the Lord of the Manor threw
this duty upon the whole body of tenants of the Manor, their .
several obligations being in some way adjusted and enforced
by the Court Leet.
We must not, however, think of the Manor constructing a
road, either as practised by the Romans or as understood in our
own day. We shall, in fact, fail to understand the position, or the
conflicts which subsequently arose, unless we dismiss from our
thoughts anything like the modern conception of a road. To
the citizen of to-day, the " King's Highway" appears as an endless
strip of land, with definite boundaries, permanently and exclu-
sively appropriated to the purpose of passage, with a surface
specially prepared for its peculiar function. To the citizen of
the twelfth, the fifteenth, or even the eighteenth century, the
King's Highway was a more abstract conception. It was not a
strip of land, or any corporeal thing, but a legal and customary /
right as the lawyers said, " a perpetual right of passage in the
sovereign, for himself and his subjects, over another's land." In
one of our oldest law-books it is definitely laid down that " the
King has nothing but the passage for himself and his people."
What existed, in fact, was not a road, but what we might almost
term an easement a right of way, enjoyed by the public at large
from village to village, along a certain customary course, which,
if much frequented, became a beaten track. But the judges
6 THE KING'S HIGHWAY
held that it was " the good passage " that constituted the high-
way, and not only " the beaten track," so that if the beaten
track became (as it invariably did in wet weather) " foundrous "
the King's subjects might diverge from it, in their right of passage,
even to the extent of " going upon the corn." Of this liberty,
it is clear, the riders and pedestrians of the time made full use.
The great majority even of the main English highways were, like
those of Australia, America, and India of the present day, now
bounded by fences. But even fences were not respected. As
late as 1610 we read, in the very first book about roads that is
extant, of " great hurt and spoil of fences and grounds, with
riding and going over the corn and such like, by shifting and
seeking the best way diversely." And we must add to this
understanding of the customary highways (as they existed in
the twelfth, and even in the fifteenth century), that they were
used almost exclusively for foot traffic of man or beast. For
this purpose the immemorial track from village to village across
the waste suificed in its primitive condition ; and if, in the
months of summer dryness, the rude sledges or carts carrying
home the crops could find a reasonably firm passage, it was all
that was desired. That the ways, in winter, must be impassable
for wheel traffic was habitually taken for granted. This primitive
conception of locomotive needs lasted, in remote corners of
England, right down to the end of the eighteenth century. In
Cumberland, we are told, " in the spring of the year the Surveyor
used to call on the people to go with him to open the tracks over
the common, from which the old tumble-wheel carts of the
country had been excluded during the winter ; for, in 1792, the
principal part of the com was conveyed to market on the backs
of horses ! "
Thus, the idea of road maintenance in the Middle Ages, and
indeed, down to much later times, did not include anything in
the nature of the construction of a special road surface. The
very word " road," which some derive from the Anglo-Saxon
" ridan," to ride, as being something that is ridden on, may
really have some connection with the verb " to rid," meaning
to free or clear, as being something that has been cleared from
obstruction. The ideal of road maintenance which the old-
fashioned Englishman set before himself was, in fact, no more
than " removing every kind of impediment that incommodes
A FREE PASSAGE ^
or molests the traveller, such as want of proper drains, over-
hanging trees and hedges, timber-logs, etc." ; in short, to quote
an eighteenth century reformer, everything " that prevents -
the roads from growing better of themselves." The first statute
to deal with roads, the Statute of Winchester in 1285, extends
this same conception of clearing a passage to a further point,
and reminds us of the existence of other kinds of obstruction,
by ordering " that highways leading from one market town
to another shall be enlarged where as bushes, woods, or dykes be,
so that there be neither dyke nor bush whereby a man may lurk
to do hurt within two hundred feet of the one side and two hundred
feet of the other side of the way." It was this limited idea of
keeping open the free passage for the King and his subjects, that
the Common Law sought to realise by holding someone responsible
for the maintenance of every public highway. In exceptional
cases this might be a burden incidental to the tenure of particular
lands, or even, by mere prescription, a special charge upon a
particular corporate body. But unless some such special obliga-
tion could be proved, the duty of maintaining all the public
highways within each Manor was cast, without remuneration
or reward, upon the inhabitants of that Manor. Exactly on
which inhabitants the duty fell, in what manner it was performed,
and how far the Court Leet or other tribunal enforced it on
defaulters, remains, prior to the Act of 1555 which we shall
presently describe, provokingly obscure. It would, however, be
a mistake to assume, merely because we do not know exactly
how the roads were managed and maintained, that this service
was not performed ; or to infer, because we know the roads to
have been horribly bad in the eighteenth century, that they were
equally bad in the fifteenth. We have reason to believe that
there was, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a considerable
amount of travelling. The more important landowners usually
held separate estates in different parts of England, so that there
was a perpetual coming and going between them. The practice
of appeals to Rome involved an astonishing amount of journeying
of ecclesiastics and legal agents of one kind and another. The
common people much like the Hindoos and the Japanese of
to-day seem always to have been on the road, on pilgrimages,
or seeking employment, or visiting the towns. The innumerable
local markets, and still more, the periodical great fairs, must
8 THE KING'S HIGHWA Y
have required huge concourses of travellers from longer or shorter
distances. We get, in fact, from Piers Plowman and Chaucer,
from the municipal and manorial records, and from the pictures of
the period, a vision of a really enormous amount of " wayfaring
life," which seems to indicate the existence all over the kingdom
of quite passable bridleways. Of wheel traffic, indeed, there was
comparatively little, and that of the most primitive kind. Every
one travelled on foot or on horseback, and nearly all goods were
carried on the backs of animals. Heavy materials were taken
by water, going by small boats far up the most insignificant
streams. But some heavy carriage by road there must have been.
The agricultural tenants of the Manor had their own rude carts,
drawn by the stout horses used for ploughing. The " common
carrier " existed in the fourteenth century, much as he does in
the country to-day ; and Thorold Rogers has shown that hired
waggon traction for grain was, in the fourteenth century, charged
for at the rate of about one penny, and that for heavy wares
at about twopence per ton per mile, or a sum not far removed
from the day's wages of a common labourer.
When exactly the decline of the roads set in does not seem
clear. What is probable is that many causes co-operated in
producing neglect. We notice, to begin with, an actual falling
off in the use of the roads. Though, of course, no statistics exist,
there seems reason to believe that between 1350 and 1550 the
amount of travelling greatly diminished. Thus, we see the fairs
declining in importance, and even the local markets to some
extent superseded by new methods of trade and the growth of
town populations. Landed estates, we are told, became con-
solidated in the extensive redistributions of property that
accompanied the dynastic wars of the fifteenth century, the
" Great Pillage " of the monasteries, and the agricultural revolu-
tion that was simultaneously going on. This consolidation of
estates must have involved less going to and fro of an influential
class. The very agricultural revolution itself, with its substitu-
tion of pasture for arable cultivation, meant that less of the
produce of the farm needed to be carted, and that an ever-
increasing proportion walked away on its own feet, actually pre-
ferring the " soft going " which the carriers thought a bad road.
With the break with Rome there stopped all the business of
appeals to the Pope, which had, in the preceding centuries, led to
DECAY OF THE ROADS g
a perpetual riding to and fro. At the same time, the pilgrimages
came to an end, and even the local shrines ceased to be visited.
High and low, the characteristic wayfaring life of the Middle
Ages gradually passed away.
Moreover, as the roads became less used, so the resources
applicable to their maintenance dwindled. Much had been done
for the roads in the previous centuries by pious founders on the
one hand, and by the various religious orders on the other,
especially in their capacity as owners of a large proportion of
the land of the kingdom. The progressive impoverishment of
the religious orders in the fifteenth century seems to have checked .
expenditure on road maintenance, and the confiscation of the
monastic property by Henry the Eighth practically brought it
to an end. The new proprietors of the monastic estates habitually
ignored the merely customary obligations which the monasteries
had discharged ; and it seems that road maintenance was no
exception. But the manorial organisation was itself in decay,
and, especially in those parts of England in which parishes were
being enclosed, the performance of manorial duties must have
become increasingly difficult to enforce. " The roads suffered,"
says Dr. Cunningham, " because the institutions which had been
accustomed to do repairs lost their resources, and no one else had
sufficient public spirit to take up the matter in earnest." With
the progress of the sixteenth century the neglected condition of
the highways gradually becomes a subject of public concern. In
the first half of the sixteenth century we come across half a dozen
statutes dealing with road improvement in particular localities.
At last, in 1555, we see provided by statute a new organisation
for road administration for the whole kingdom, for the first time
an organisation specially for this service. It is with this organisa-
tion that our Story of the King's Highway really begins.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 1. We have made no special research into the history of roads
prior to the sixteenth century ; and we can only refer the student to such
I0 THE KING'S HIGHWA Y
works as English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, by J. J. Jusserand
(English translation by Lucy Toulmin Smith, 4th edition, 1892) ; History
of Agriculture and Prices in England, by J. E. Thorold Rogers, 1866-1902,
especially vol. i. chap. viii. " Journeys and Markets," chap, xxvii. " On
the Cost of Carriage," and vol. ii. pp. 664, 693, 712; The Growth of
English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages, by
Dr. W. Cunningham, 5th edition, 1910, especially vol. i. pp. 79, 104,
280, 450, etc. ; England in the Fifteenth Century, by W. Denton, 1888,
p. 173, etc. ; and Social England in the Fifteenth Century, by Annie Abram,
1909.
Page 2. " The phrase . . . ' the King's Highway ' has passed into
common use as a kind of ornament of speech, without any clear sense of
its historical meaning " (The History of English Law, by Sir F. Pollock and
F. W. Maitland, 1895, vol. i. p. 22). The phrase is intimately connected
with " the King's Peace." " They come from the time when the King's
protection was not universal but particular, when the King's Peace was
not for all men or all places, and the King's Highway was in a special
manner protected by it " (ibid.). The extension of the King's Peace to
all travellers on the four great through roads seems to date from the eighth
or ninth century. These were the " Quatuor Chimini " of the Norman
laws (see Origins of English History, by C. I. Elton, 2nd edition, 1890,
p. 325, and the authorities there cited). Its extension to all highways
may date only from the end of the eleventh century (see Oxford Lectures,
by Sir F. PoUock, 1890).
Page 2. See The Manor and the Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1908.
Page 3. The quotation as to the British roads is from Our Roman
Highways, by U. A. Forbes and A. C. Burmester, 1904, p. 34. For all
that is known or conjectured about these pre-Roman routes and structures,
see various articles in Archceologia (notably by Dr. Phene and Dr. Alfred
Tylor in vol. xlviii., 1885) ; in Journal of the Royal Archceological Society
for June 1877 (by Dr. Phene) ; The Ancient History of North and South
Wiltshire, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 1812-19 ; The Celt, the Roman and
the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, 4th edition 1885, pp. 221-6 ; The Old Road
[from Winchester to Canterbury], by Hilaire Belloc, 1910 ; Ancient Dorset,
by Charles Warne, 1872, pp. 29, 130 ; History of Somerset, by William
Phelps, 1836-9, vol. i. p. 84 ; History of Berkshire, by Colonel Cooper
King, 1887, p. 19 ; Victoria History of Devonshire, vol. i., 1906 (article by
R. Burnard, pp. 371-2).
Dr. Alfred Tylor gives reasons (Archceologia, vol. xlviii., 1885) for
thinking that the Britons had at least some roads passable for war- chariots,
and many others passable for packhorses laden with tin. The ancient
stone trackways and bridges on Dartmoor are described in the Perambula-
tion of the Ancient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor, by Samuel Rowe, 1848 ;
An Exploration of Dartmoor, by J. L. W. Page, 1889 ; or A Book of Dart-
moor, by S. Baring-Gould, 1900 ; see Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel
Smiles, 1862, p. 157.
Page 3. For the road system of the Roman Empire, see Mommsen's
History of Rome (translation by W. P. Dickson, 1886), book viii. ch.
v. For the Roman roads of Britain, see Histoire des Grands Chemins de
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I n
V Empire Romain, by Nicholas Bergier, 1622, 1628, 1694 and 1728;
Britannia Romana, by J. Horsley, 1732, p. 391 ; Observations upon certain
Rorian Roads and Towns in the South of Britain, by Vigilo [H. L. Long],
1836 ; Cresy's Encyclopedia of Civil Engineering, 1847 ; " The Four
Roman Ways," by Dr. Guest, in Archaeological Journal, vol. xiv. p. 99,
included in his Origines Celticce, ; The Roman Roads in Britain, with the
Ancient and Modern Names attached to each Station on or near the route,
by A. H., 1852 ; Roman Britain, by H. W. Scarth, 1883, p. 121 ; The
Celt, the Roman and the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, 4th edition, 1885, pp.
222-3, 524 ; " The Roman Roads of Britain," by W. B. Paley, in Nine-
teenth Century, November 1898 ; Roman Roads in Britain, by T. Codrington,
1903 ; Our Roman Highways, by U. A. Forbes and A. C. Burmester, 1904 ;
and Haverfield's The Romanization of Roman Britain, 1912.
Page 5. It should be noted that there might also be exemption
ratiom tenurce, of a particular person or township or parish, from the
obligation to repair some road or bridge.
Page 5. As regards early history, see The Growth of English Industry
and Commerce, during the Early and Middle Ages, by Dr. W. Cunningham
(5th edition, 1910), vol. L
Page 5. The quotations are from The Law of Highways, by R. H.
Spearman, 1881, p. 1 ; and Rolle's Abridgement, under title " Chimin,"
p. 292.
Thus " the right of the public in a highway is an easement of passage
only a right of passing and repassing. In the language of pleading, a
party can only justify passing along, not being in, a highway " (Pratt and
Mackenzie's Law of Highways, by William W. Mackenzie, 16th edition,
1911, p. 2). Hence it has been expressly held that there is no right to use
a highway for racing, or for a public meeting (ibid.) ; nor may a man stand
still on the road to shoot pheasants flying over it (R. v. Pratt, 1855, 4 E.
and B. 860). He may not even walk up and down so as maliciously to
interfere with others' rights (Harrison v. Duke of Rutland, 1893, 1 Q.B.
142), see The Common Law of England, by Blake Odgers, 1911, vol. i.
pp. 7-10. It is only inferentially that it has quite recently been suggested
that a passenger along a highway may lawfully stop to rest on it for a
short time, or to take a sketch (per A. L. Smith, L. J. in Hickman v. Matsey,
1900, 1 Q.B. 756). Any other use of a highway is a trespass.
But in legal definitions, as in common parlance, the term highway is
now used to denote the land as well as the easement. " The term highway
in its widest sense comprises all portions of land over which every subject
of the Crown may lawfully pass " (Pratt and Mackenzie's Law of Highways,
by W. W. Mackenzie, 16th edition, 1911, p. 1).
Page 6. The quotation as to the right to diverge from the beaten
track, even to the extent of " going over the corn," is to be found in
A Treatise of the Pleas of tlie Crown, by W. Hawkins, edited by T. Leach,
1795, vol. i. p. 153.
See A Profitable Work to this Whole Kingdom concerning the Mending of
all the Highways, by Thomas Proctor, 1610. Modern lawyers have more
respect for fences, and fences have become more common. But it is
definitely held that " the right of passage or way (prima facie and unless
12 THE KING'S HIGHWAY
there be evidence to the contrary) extends to the whole space between the
fences ; and the public are entitled to the use of the entire of it as the
highway " (per Martin, B. and approved per Cur, R. v. United Kingdom
Telegraph Co. 31 L. J. MC. 166).
This is important in connection with the frequent attempts of adjoining
landowners to appropriate and enclose the grass margins, sometimes called
" pads," on each side of the metalled roadway.
Page 6. For the Cumberland roads of 1792, see a speech by W.
Blamire in the Cumberland Pacquet for 2nd February 1830.
Page 6. These etymologies of the word " road " are given in Skeat's
Etymological Dictionary. But the Oxford English Dictionary suggests
a connection with the Dutch or Low German " reeden," to fit out. The
word " road " (at first spelt " rode "), in its modern sense, does not appear
to be older than Shakespeare.
Page 7. The " eighteenth century reformer " is W. M. Godschall ;
see his General Plan of Parochial Police, 1787, p. 60.
Page 7. For the Statute of Winchester (13 Edward I. stat. II. cap.
5), see Constitutional History of England, by Dr. W. Stubbs ; The Growth
of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages, by
Dr. W. Cunningham, 5th edition, 1910, vol. i. p. 280.
Page 7. As to the amount of travelling prior to the sixteenth century,
see English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, by J. J. Jusserand (translated
by Lucy Toulmin Smith), 4th edition, 1892 ; History of Agriculture and
Prices in England, by J. E. Thorold Rogers, 1866, vol. i. pp. 133, 144.
Page 8. As to cost of carriage, and the common carrier, see
chap, xxvii. ("On the Cost of Carriage ") of vol. i. of History of Agriculture
and Prices in England, 1866, by J. E. Thorold Rogers. Professor Nicholson
summarizes the evidence as under : "In the first period (1260-1400) the
cost of carrying grain by cart with two horses and a man was about a
penny a ton per mile. . . . The same rate seems to have prevailed up to
1542, when the general rise in prices began. . . . Heavy goods, e.g. tiles
and lead, cost something under twopence per mile, while wine varies from
twopence to fourpence. . . . From 1583 to 1613 the cost of carriage
of a ton of firewood was about 5d. per mile ; and during the next
thirty years 8d., and by the end of the century a shilling per ton
per mile is a common rate " (Principles of Political Economy, by J. Shield
Nicholson, 1901, vol. iii. pp. 91-2). Comparing these prices with the
contemporary wages of labour, we get, approximately, the result that
from 1260 right down to 1800 the price for carrying a ton of goods
for a mile did not depart far from one day's wages of a farm labourer,
though the price in money went up twelvefold. We may put against this
approximately constant rate of one day's labour per ton mile a recent
American statement of the cost of haulage on roads at the opening of the
twentieth century. This is given as from 15 to 25 cents per ton per mile
on earth tracks, and from 8 to 15 cents per ton per mile on the best roads
(A Treatise on Roads and Pavements, by Ira Osborn Baker, 1903, p. 7).
Taking it for comparison at 20 cents, or tenpence, being equal to about
one-fifth of a day's wages of a common labourer, we may reckon that the
cost of waggon haulage on earth roads in the United States is five times as
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I 13
great in money, but (what is more important) is only one-fifth, measured
in human labour, of what it used to be in the England of 1300-1800.
Page 8. For the decline of travelling, and the decay of road mainten-
ance, see The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and
Middle Ages, by Dr. W. Cunningham, 5th edition, 1910, vol. i. pp. 450-1 ;
History of Agriculture and Prices in England, by J. E. Thorold Rogers,
1866, vol. i. pp. 134-144, 650-666 ; vol. ii. p. 693.
With regard to the diminution in the use of highways for carriage on
the decay of arable farming, it is interesting to see that, as late as 1794 it
was noticed that, in a pasture-farming district, the farmers cared little for
roads. " The small quantity of corn the farmer has to draw to market
renders [the state of the roads] of less consequence to the natives a
bullock, a sheep, or a horse will travel where it would be difficult for a cart
or a waggon " (General View of the Agriculture of Derby, by Thomas Brown,
1794).
Page 9. It may here be noted that the wayside chapel, common
enough on roads abroad, seems to have been rare in England (apart from
chapels on bridges). One such wayside chapel existed on the great Bath
road, near the entrance to the town of Newbury. It was pulled down by
the Municipal Corporation in 1791 (History of . . . Newbury, by Walter
Money, 1887, p. 364).
Page 9. In 1523 an Act (14 and 15 Henry VIII. c. 6), which author-
ised the owner of the Manor of Hempstead in Kent to enclose an old road
and make a new one, also provided " in consideration that many other
common ways in the said County of Kent be so steep and noyous by
wearing, and course of water, and other occasions, that people cannot have
their carriages or passages by horses upon or by the same, but to their
great pains, peril, and jeopardy," that any other landowners might lay out
new roads, by consent of two Justices and a Jury of twelve men. Eleven
years later (by 26 Henry VIII. c. 7, 1534) the same power was given for
the County of Sussex. Between 1532 and 1540 three successive statutes
provided for the paving of various great highways leading out of London,
which were " very noyous and foul, and in many places . . . very
jeopardous" to passengers, "as well on horseback as on foot, in winter and in
summer, by night and by day " (24 Henry VIII. c. 11 ; 25 Henry VIII.
c. 8 ; 32 Henry VIII. c. 17). There were half a dozen Road Acts in Queen
Mary's reign and nineteen in that of Queen Elizabeth (Knight's Pictorial
History of England, by G. L. Craik and C. Macfarlane, vol. ii. book vi.
chap. iv. pp. 781-2 of 1855 edition practically the only history that
deigns to mention the subject of roads in the sixteenth century).
We may note, in particular, the temporary Acts of 18 Elizabeth and 35
Elizabeth, re-enacted permanently under Charles I., requiring all occupiers
of land within five miles of Oxford, either to perform their Statute Labour
and Team Duty on the roads, or else to pay a tax to the Vice-Chancellor
of the University and the Mayor of the City, which became popularly known
as " the Mileway Tax." The Privy Council, under Charles I., had the
roads measured, and posts put up at the fifth mile (see Three Oxfordshire
Parishes, by Mrs. Stapleton, 1893, pp. 282-3 ; and in the Bodleian Library,
Symonds MSS. p. 348, and Gough MSS. No. 138).
CHAPTER II
ROAD LEGISLATION UNDER THE TUDORS AND THE STUARTS
THE famous statute of the Parliament of 1555, known as 2 and 3
Philip and Mary, c. 8, formed for nearly three hundred years the
basis of the new organisation of road maintenance. With agri-
culture in revolution, and the Manorial Courts in decay, Parlia-
ment apparently set itself to construct, not so much new law as
new social machinery for the administration, all over England
and Wales, of what was deemed an entirely local service. The
ancient common law obligation, descended from the trinoda
necessitas, was, for the first time, definitely allocated among
the several parties, and the procedure to be followed was
peremptorily laid down. We need not stay to particularise
all the minor changes made by successive amending Acts. What
we shall attempt to describe is the new legal framework which,
between 1555 and 1698, Parliament provided for the administra-
tion of the King's Highway.
Under these Acts, together with the Common Law, which
they only slightly modified, the obligation to provide for the
maintenance of all existing public highways rested on the Parish
as a whole and on every inhabitant thereof ; on the newly created
Surveyor of Highways appointed for the Parish ; on the Justices
of the Peace within the Division in which the Parish was situated ;
and, as regards certain minor services, on the owners of the
lands adjacent to the highway. All these persons could be
independently informed against or presented before a judicial
tribunal, and if they had failed to fulfil their legal obligations,
could be separately fined for their respective defaults. But
upon the Parish as a whole, and upon all the inhabitants thereof,
was cast a pre-eminent obligation. Unless it could be definitely
14
SURVEYOR OF HIGHWAYS 15
proved that some particular person was legally liable to maintain
a particular bit of road, it was the Parish which had to do it.
Moreover, even if each and every inhabitant had severally
performed his own statutory duty, if the highway was, in the
opinion of the Court, still insufficiently repaired, the Parish
might be fined over and over again until the road was made
good. This general and continuous collective liability was,
however, merely an uncomfortable background to the onerous
personal duty imposed upon each inhabitant.
The first duty cast on the Parish was to provide, from among
its own inhabitants, one or more persons to serve gratuitously
as Surveyors of Highways for the ensuing year. But except
for the individual who found himself thrust into an unpaid and
onerous office, this was the easiest part of the task. All the
manual labour, tools, and horses and carts needed for repairing
the roads, had to be furnished gratuitously by the parishioners
themselves. " Every person, for every plough-land in tillage
or pasture " that he occupied in the Parish defined subsequently
as a holding of 50 annual value and " also every person keeping
a draught (of horses) or plough in the Parish," had to provide
and send " one wain or cart furnished after the custom of the
country, with oxen, horses, or other cattle, and all other necessaries
meet to carry things convenient for that purpose, and also two
able men with the same." Finally, " every other householder,
cottager, and labourer, able to labour, and being no hired
servant by the year," was either to go himself to work or to
send " one sufficient labourer in his stead." All these teams
and labourers had annually to appear on the roads on the date
and at the hour fixed by the Surveyor, there to work under
his direction for eight hours on four, and afterwards on six,
consecutive days.
Upon the Surveyor of Highways more onerous duties were
imposed. From the day on which the Parish Constable brought
him the warrant showing that he had been nominated by his
fellow-parishioners and appointed by the Justices at their special
" Highways Sessions," he found himself entangled in multifarious ^
and perplexing obligations. First, he had to take over from
his predecessor any balance of " highway money," and to learn,
as best he could, the manner in which the highway accounts
were made up, and how he would have to enter the complicated
1 6 ROAD LEGISLATION
series of fines, compositions, and commutations in order to
satisfy at the end of his year of office the audit of the magistrates
and their clerk. What may be called the police duties of his
office were numerous and troublesome. Three times during
the year, at least, he had to " view all the roads, highways,
water-courses, bridges, and pavements within his precinct, and
make presentment upon oath in what condition he finds the same
to the next Justice." He had to see to it that the owners of
the lands adjacent to the highways cleared these ways of " any
timber, stone, hay, stubble," etc. that had been placed on them ;
cleansed and scoured the " ditches, gutters, and drains adjoin-
ing " ; laid " sufficient trunks, tunnels or bridges " where any
cartways entered the highway from their fields : cut down,
grubbed, and "carried away" any trees, bushes, or shrubs standing
or growing in the highway ; and kept " their hedges cut and
pared right up from the roots, and not spreading into or hanging
over any part of the highway," in order that, from one end of
the parish to the other, there might be " a clear passage for
travellers and carriages," and that the sun may shine into the
ways " to dry the same," and enable them, as the phrase ran,
" to grow better of themselves." And, as if this was not enough,
he was at all times to keep a look-out for and waylay waggons,
wains, carts, and carriages, that were drawn by more than the
statutory number of oxen or horses, or had these arranged in
any but the statutory way. The very next Sunday after he
had discovered any " defaults or annoyances " in breach of the
above regulations, he was expressly required to stand up in the
' parish church, " immediately after sermon ended," and proclaim
the offenders, giving notice that, if not amended within thirty
days, he would himself put the matter right and charge the
expenses to the defaulters. Possibly, after some weeks of this
unpopular activity, he might find some relaxation in his journey to
i attend the special Highway Sessions at the neighbouring town,
to listen to a solemn " charge " from the assembled Justices
as to his duties, to make his presentments, and to answer the
magistrates' questions upon them ; or in his occasional jaunt
to the Quarter Sessions at the county town, to do his best to
defeat an indictment of the parish for neglecting its roads, or,
from the end of the seventeenth century, to extract from the
Justices the order to levy the sixpenny rate, by which alone he
THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE 17
could hope to recover the outlay to which he had been driven. "
But any little interest or excitement he might get from these
contacts with the greater world would be more than balanced
by tne invidious relations into which he necessarily came with
all his fellow-parishioners. It was the Surveyor who had to fix
the six days on which the whole parish had to turn out and work
on the roads ; it was for him to order the unwilling teams and
carts to drag the stones, gravel, or quarry rubbish to the places
where he judged them to be required ; it was for him to see that
the labourers were all at work, and to direct their labours with
whatever knowledge of road-making he might possess. Finally,
it was on him that fell the disagreeable duty of reporting all .
defaulters to the nearest Justice of the Peace, in order that they
might be fined ; and of collecting, from poor cottagers and
niggardly farmers, whatever cash payments might be due from
them. If, dismayed by the prospect of so much work without
pay, he refused to accept office, he might promptly find himself .
mulcted in a penalty of five pounds. Moreover, for any neglect
of his duty, he was liable to be summarily fined forty shillings
for each default.
Compared with such onerous duties, the obligations cast upon
the Justices of the Peace with regard to highway administration
were indefinite, slight, and easily evaded. After the collapse of
the centralised administration of James the First and Charles
the First, the Justices were, as we have pointed out in our volume
on The Parish and the County, left in practice free to perform as
they chose, or altogether to ignore, their statutory duties. It is
true that the Act of 1691 talked of a penalty of 5 being incurred
by the Justices of each Division if they did not, once in every
four months, hold a Special Highway Sessions ; but no one ever
heard of the penalty being enforced. It was at one of these
sessions that the assembled Justices had to audit the accounts
of the outgoing Surveyors, and after considering the lists of
qualified persons presented by the officers of the several parishes
in the Division, to appoint, for each of them, " out of the said
lists, according to their discretion, and the largeness of the
parish . . . one, two or more as they shall think fit and approve
of to be . . . Surveyors of the Highways." And every Justice,
either by himself or in Petty, Special, or Quarter Sessions, had to
perform, when appealed to, a number of semi- judicial functions
C
1 8 ROAD LEGISLATION
relating to the parish highways, such as hearing pleas of excuse
for non-fulfilment of the Statute Labour, issuing warrants for
levying the penalties and forfeitures imposed by the Act, and,
as we shall presently see, occasionally sanctioning rates on the
inhabitants of particular parishes to cover extraordinary ex-
penses. Beyond these obligations, the action of the Justices,
though it might, if they chose, become of great importance, was
entirely optional. Any one Justice might " on his own proper
knowledge " make " presentment to Quarter Sessions of any
highway not well and sufficiently repaired," and any such pre-
sentment was " of the same force, strength, and effect in the law "
as if it had been made by the Grand Jury. But the locally
resident Justices could themselves practically take over the
highway administration. Without in any way absolving the
parish from its legal liability, or relieving the Surveyor of his
personal responsibility, the Justices could, if they saw fit, convert
him practically into a mere agent. They could order him to
repair one bit of road before another, they could command him
to put up guide-posts or direction stones at the cross- ways ; in
Quarter Sessions assembled they could decide whether the
compulsory service should be made to suffice, or whether a
sixpenny rate should be levied in addition ; they could direct
exactly how the Surveyor should expend any moneys thus placed
at his disposal ; and finally, they could direct any highway to
be widened and the necessary land to be compulsorily taken for
the purpose, at the expense of the extra rate.
From the foregoing summary of the law, the student will have
noted that the statutory enactments from 1555 to 1697 differed
from the Common Law by their inclusion, in a tentative and
somewhat cryptic form, of two typical powers of modern local
government the power to enlarge an ancient customary service
at the public cost, and the complementary power of raising a
revenue by compulsory taxation.
The note of enlargement of the ancient customary service is
given in the titles and preambles of nearly all the statutes after
the Restoration, even when their clauses amount to little more
than a specific enactment of the Common Law. The highways
are to be " enlarged," " better amended," and repaired so as to
promote trade, in a way for which, admittedly, " the ordinary
course appointed by the laws and statutes of this realm is not
THE " CASH NEXUS " ig
sufficient." It is enforced in the Act of 1691 by the emphatic
direction that " the Surveyors shall make every cartway leading
to any market town eight foot wide at least, and as near as may
be even and level," and that " no horse causey shall be less in
breadth than three foot " a sort of " National Minimum " of X
road administration to which every parish might be forced to
attain, if the Justices chose to do their duty, or if any one would
undertake the cost and trouble of an indictment. Moreover,
the Justices in Quarter Sessions were expressly empowered to
go beyond this Minimum, and " to enlarge and widen any high-
ways " by the compulsory purchase of the necessary land, so
long as they did not exceed an extension of eight yards in breadth,
and not " pull down any house " or " take away the ground of
any garden, orchard, court, or yard."
The transition from a service to be wholly rendered in kind
to a mixed system of Statute Labour and money payments, and
from this to a compulsory Highway Kate, is full of interest and
instruction. From time immemorial amercements or fines had
been imposed by the Manorial Courts on persons committing
active or passive nuisances in connection with the highways or
otherwise, but it was not until the Act of 1555 that these fines were
definitely assigned to the parish officers " to be bestowed on the
highways." When " the Statute for Mending of Highways "y
was made permanent in 1563, and the four days' Statute Labour
were enlarged to six days, the Surveyors of Highways were
expressly required " within one month next after default made
contrary to the Statute of 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, or this Act,
to present such default to the next Justice of the Peace under
pain to forfeit forty shillings, and such Justice shall certify the
same presentment at the next General Sessions, upon pain to
forfeit 5, and the Justices of the Peace shall have authority to
enquire of any such default or offence at their Quarter Sessions,
and to assess such fines for the same as they or any two of them,
whereof one to be of the Quorum, shall think meet." Presently
the fine took the form of a fixed payment in default of service ;-
settled by the Act of 1670, at Is. 6d. for the day's labour of one
man, 3s. for a man and horse, and 10s. for a cart with two men.
Thejnomentous and decisive step of instituting a compulsory
tax for road maintenance was taken by the Government of the
Commonwealth. To the historian the period between 1649 and
Jl
20 ROAD LEGISLATION
1660 has usually seemed one of constitutional experiments and
religious controversies. The student who will examine the
records of the Commonwealth from the standpoint of economic
and social development will find in these troublous years the
beginnings of many of the institutions of our own time. Among
these is the Highway Rate. It is plain that the resources at the
disposal of the Surveyors of Highways, whether in the way of
Statute Labour or in that of commutations and fines, were in-
adequate for any advance in the standard of road maintenance.
The incidence of the burden was felt to be unfair. The success
of the Rebellion had, perhaps, thrown into confusion the old
system of parish government. We find complaints that parishes
have neglected to appoint any Surveyors of Highways. In
many places, we are told, the Surveyors were quite unable to
enforce the Statute Duty from the farmers, " who beat them
if they approached their houses " with obnoxious demands, so
that parishes " could not repair the roads." We find, in fact,
in 1649 and 1650 respectively, two Derbyshire parishes begging
the Justices in Quarter Sessions, apparently with success, to
order an equal assessment on all the inhabitants, in order to
repay the Surveyor of Taxes for his outlay. In the first case
the " Supervisor of the Highways " for Newbold and Dunston
asks that, as " but few of the inhabitants have helped or paid
towards the mending of the said highways, and many do refuse
both to help with their draughts or to give money," that " draughts
might be hired according to law and custom," and as he is already
five pounds out of pocket, an order may be granted " that an
assessment may be made through the whole township of Newbold
and Dunston." In the other case, the inhabitants of Calowe
themselves petition " that all the occupiers " of lands within the
said hamlet may be equally assessed for " repair " of the high-
ways. We are aware of no statutory authority under which
Quarter Sessions could at that date lawfully impose these com-
pulsory rates. But such authority was not long delayed. In
1654 the Commonwealth Parliament enacted "An Ordinance
for Better Amending and Keeping in Repair the Common High-
waies within this Nation," which had been drawn up, so it is
alleged, by Baron Thorpe (1595-1665), one of the ablest of the
Commonwealth lawyers, who was at once member for Beverley
in the Parliament of 1654-55, and also one of the Exchequer
HIGHWAY RATES 21
Judges. This provided, not only for ensuring that Surveyors
of Highways should be appointed in every parish, but also for
a meeting of parishioners to make a rate not exceeding a shilling
in the pound for " making and repairing and cleansing roads
and pavements " in corporate towns and rural parishes alike.
If the parishioners failed to make the necessary rate, the Sur-
veyors of Highways might make it themselves and get it con-
firmed by the nearest Justice of the Peace. With the funds so
provided, labourers and teams were to be hired, and the making,
repairing, and cleansing of the roads and pavements was to be
systematically undertaken. Nuisances were to be abated and
encroachments removed ; and special assessments were to be
levied on the owners of adjoining lands from which nuisances
arose. Finally, if any parish found its rate of a shilling in the
pound inadequate to the proper fulfilment of its duties, the
Justices in Quarter Sessions were expressly empowered to levy,
on the adjoining parishes, a special rate in aid.
To what extent and in how many parishes this trenchant and
far-reaching Ordinance was actually put in force we have no
information. Subsequent critics of road administration looked
back regretfully to what was done " during the times of the
Usurpation," when " they in some places taxed the parishes by
a pound rate for repairing the highways. Particularly it was
done in Herefordshire about Leominster, where the tax was no
less than sixpence a pound. This way did not last long, but it
did so effectually do the business and it wrought such a reforma-
tion that the like was never seen before or since."
With the Restoration, all the legislation of the Commonwealth
became invalid ; and we see, in one department of social life after
another, the Parliaments of the whole of the ensuing generation
picking up and hesitatingly re-enacting imperfect scraps of the
bolder Cromwellian legislation. Thus, in the matter of road
maintenance, we have, first, a temporary statute of 1662, en-
titled " An Act for enlarging and repairing the highways," by
which every Surveyor was directed, " together with two or three
substantial householders ... to lay one or more assessment
or assessments upon every inhabitant rated to the poor ... for
the repairing, amending, and enlarging the said public and common
highways," such assessment or rate not to exceed " sixpence in
the pound in any one year," and to be allowed and signed by a
22 ROAD LEGISLATION
Justice of the Peace. This Highway Rate was to be levied in
all parishes, unless it was proved to the satisfaction of Quarter
Sessions, or of two Justices, that it was not required ; but only
for a term of three years, after which, it seems to have been
assumed, the ordinary Statute Labour would suffice. The Act
itself was also limited to the continuance of the existing Parlia-
ment. We have discovered only one parish in which any rate
was made under this temporary legislation, which remained, we
suspect, a dead letter. In 1670 Parliament once more tried to
get a rate levied for mending the roads, this time placing the
duty directly upon Quarter Sessions, but again limiting the
dreaded power of rating to a period of three years. During this
period, if the Justices in Quarter Sessions were satisfied that the
highways in any parish could and would not be sufficiently
amended otherwise, they were to order a rate to-be levied on all
the parishioners, not exceeding sixpence in the pound on lands,
or sixpence on every 20 worth of personal estate in any one year,
and to have the money expended on the roads under the Justices'
own direction. To what degree of efficiency the Justices were
stimulated by this Act we cannot say. That some action was
taken we may infer from the entries in the MS. Churchwardens'
accounts of the Parish of St. Mary's, Reading, which show that
" a tax of twenty weeks" (by which we understand the customary
weekly levy) was granted for " The Surveyors of the Highways "
on 22nd May 1670, and again on 24th April 1671 ; whilst others
of " ten weeks " were granted on 15th September 1671, and
31st March 1673.
It is, however, clear that these temporary laws failed to effect
their object ; and, to use the words of a contemporary writer,
in the opening years of William and Mary, " the drowsy heads
of the slumbering statutes made for the repairing and amend-
ment of highways " had once more to be " roused up " by a new
Act, that of 1691, in which, for the third time, Parliament tried
to set going a Highway Rate. In some parishes there was a lack
of suitable road material, and the Surveyor was therefore
authorised, if he could procure proper material in no other way,
to purchase what was necessary. To reimburse himself for this
outlay, he was authorised to call upon the Justices in Special
Sessions to make a rate on the Parish for that purpose. At the
same time Parliament re-enacted, this time in permanent form,
THE DEVICE OF PRESENTMENT 23
the provision of the temporary Act of 1670, empowering the
Justices in Quarter Sessions, if they were satisfied that the roads
within any parish could not be otherwise sufficiently repaired,
to levy a rate up to sixpence in the pound on all the parishioners, ^
to be expended as Quarter Sessions might direct. Beyond these
two rates for maintenance, the Justice in Quarter Sessions could,
under an Act of 1697, " order an assessment to be made upon all
the inhabitants, owners or occupiers of lands, houses, tenements
or hereditaments," in order to put in force the power of taking
land to widen a highway.
Still the law remained ineffective, and very few parishes had
a Highway Rate. There was discovered, however, an indirect
method of getting a compulsory levy on all the occupiers of land
in the parish, which the Justices in Quarter Sessions derived
from the Common Law, and of which, as we shall presently
describe, constant use was made. The parish, as we have
mentioned, was at all times liable to be presented or indicted for
neglect to keep in sufficient repair any part of the highway
within its limits. If found guilty, the parish was fined in an
amount left entirely to the discretion of the Court. Originally
such a fine might be levied on any inhabitant of the parish, and
it went through the Sheriff's annual accounts into the Royal
Exchequer. Presently it was provided in 1691, that the person
so mulcted on behalf of the parish might get himself reimbursed
by a rate levied on all the inhabitants, and paid to the Surveyors
to be applied to the repair of the highways. Here we discover,
in the union of the penal jurisdiction of Quarter Sessions or the
Assizes, with the administrative jurisdiction of the Special ^
Highway Sessions, a power of levying a rate of unlimited amount.
Combined with the power of any one Justice to " present " a
road on his own view and knowledge, and with that of the Clerk
of the Peace to prosecute any indictment, this ancient procedure
might be used to raise, throughout each county, the standard
of road maintenance up to any point that Quarter Sessions chose *"
to regard as sufficient. Thus, by the beginning of the eighteenth _
century, at any rate, the parish, and its amateur and compulsorily
serving Surveyors of Highways, were provided with ample legal
authority for raising the funds required for efficient road mainten-
ance. Nevertheless, so great was the reluctance to levy a rate, and ~
so wedded were the parishioners to the system of a common
24
ROAD LEGISLATION
sharing of the labour to be performed, that this so-called
" Statute Labour " continued, for more than another century,
to be the main resource of parochial road administration.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 14. We know of no study of the highway legislation of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for which the sources are the Statutes
themselves, to which reference is made below, together with the scanty
glimpses afforded by Parish and Quarter Sessions records and the rare
contemporary pamphlets hereafter mentioned.
Page 14. The "Statute of Philip and Mary" (2 & 3 Philip and
Mary, c. 8), passed as a temporary Act, in 1555, was permanently re-enacted
in 1563 (5 Elizabeth, c. 13) ; and was not repealed until the codifying Act
of 1766 (7 George III. c. 42, sec. 57), which re-enacted its provisions, whilst
the General Highways Act of 1835 carried on those relating to the Surveyor
of Highways to the close of the nineteenth century.
We are not acquainted with any account of the origin or authorship of
these statutes, or of the circumstances of their enactment. In particular,
it is not at all clear how exactly the ancient Common Law obligation of
the Manor was transferred to the Parish.
Page 14. The statutes summarised and quoted from in this chapter
are the following :
2 & 3 Philip and Mary, c. 8 (1555).
5 Elizabeth, c. 13 (1563).
18 Elizabeth, c. 10 (1576).
14 Charles II. c. 6 (1662).
22 Charles II. c. 12(1670).
3 & 4 William and Mary, c. 12 (1691).
7 & 8 William and Mary, c. 29 (1695).
8 & 9 William III. c. 16 (1697).
These statutes, in so far as they were not temporary, were all repealed
(and, in effect, re-enacted) by the codifying Act of 1766 (7 George III. c. 42).
Page 19. For the social position under the Commonwealth, see The
Interregnum, by F. C. Inderwick, 1891, p. 175, from which the quotation
on this page is taken. The Bedfordshire and Yorkshire Quarter Sessions
records contain many complaints as to the non-appointment of surveyors
(Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, by Dr. W.
Cunningham, 1903, vol. i. p. 535).
Page 20. See Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox,
1890, vol. ii. p. 227.
Page 20. The Ordinances of the Commonwealth (which deserve more
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II 25
attention than they have received from the student of economic and social
history) may now be consulted in the admirable Acts and Ordinances of the
Interregnum, 1642-1660, by C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, 1911, 3 vols. ; which
at las", makes obsolete the Collection of Acts and Ordinances, by Henry
Scobell, 1658. The valuable collection of " Thomason Tracts" in the
British Museum contains separately published copies of the main highway
law, entitled An Ordinance for Better Amending and Keeping in Repair the
Common Highwaies within this Nation (31st March 1654), and of two
unimportant amending laws, An Ordinance touching Surveyors of the High-
waies (12th April 1654), and An Ordinance of Explaining of a former
Ordinance entitled an Ordinance for Better Amending and Keeping in Repair
the Common Highwaies within this Nation (16th May 1654). This legisla-
tion is alluded to in The Interregnum by F. 0. Inderwick, 1891, p. 107 ; and
in The History of Local Rates in England, by Edwin Caiman, 2nd edition,
1912, pp. 87, 119, 120.
Bylaws in pursuance of these ordinances, relating to the use of iron
tyres, hackney coaches, the wandering of pigs, paving and sweeping by
householders, etc., were made by various London parishes and allowed by
the Justices (e.g. in St. Giles in the Fields, and in Shoreditch ; see
Middlesex County Records, by J. C. Jeaffreson, vol. iii. p. 226).
The Commonwealth Parliament did not rest satisfied with this legisla-
tion. It is interesting to learn that among the measures under discussion
hi 1657, when Cromwell peremptorily dismissed the Parliament, was " A
Bill for Repairing of the Highways and Improving the Public Roads."
Cromwell had actually appointed, by patent, an officer styled " Surveyor-
General of the Highways," with authority throughout the whole kingdom.
The bill would have given him large funds, and, it was declared by its
opponents, emoluments equal to 10,000 a year (Diary of Thomas Burton,
by J. T. Rutt, 1828, vol. i. pp. 294, 345, vol. ii. p. 464).
Page 21. The quotation is from Proposal for Maintaining and Re-
pairing the Highways, by E. Littleton, 1692, a rare pamphlet in the British
Museum. The same author tells us of a case in which a County Rate was
levied for the highways, for which we know of no legal authority. He
adduces " what hath lately been done in Kent, upon Canterbury road,
which they have made very substantially good where it was extremely bad
before, by a small tax of about a halfpenny in the pound laid upon the
County."
Page 22. The quotation is from A Guide to Surveyors of the Highways,
by G. Meriton, 1694.
Page 22. Parishes did not need statutory authority to purchase road
material (see The Parish and the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1907). In the
MS. Churchwardens' accounts of St. Mary's, Reading, we find the Vestry
on 12th April 1680 ordering money to be spent in buying " stones for the
highways out of Oxfordshire." What the statute of 1691 gave was power
to the Surveyor of the Highways himself to purchase, without the authority
of the Vestry.
Page 22. How little was effected by the Act of 1691 at the outset
may be inferred from the fact that a well-known manual for magistrates,
published two years afterwards, ignores it altogether. In The Justice of
26 ROAD LEGISLATION
Peace, his Calling and Qualification, by Edmund Bohun (1693), we read :
" There have been two or three temporary Acts made since His Majesty's
Restoration to enable the Surveyors to repair the ways by a Rate or Land
Tax, but they are all expired. Now if this course were settled for ever for
the carriages, and only the cottagers tied to do so many days work, all the
other Acts of Parliament might be spared." He also notes the ambiguity
of the Statute of Philip and Mary as to " plough tilth " ; " nobody knows
what it is." A " plough tilth " or " plough till " of land, or a " plough-
land," we learn from the Oxford Dictionary, was used in Fabyan's
Chronicle, vii-ccxxii (1516) as being equivalent to " a knight's fee," and
as being 160 acres. But it is clear that varying interpretations were put
upon the term ; and the Act 7 & 8 William III. c. 29 (1697) defined it
as a holding worth 50 a year.
The earliest Highway Rate after the Restoration the only one that
we have found under the 1662 Act was apparently at Spittal and Tweed-
mouth in Northumberland in 1663 ; where we read of " the assessment
that was gathered for repairing the highways " (MS. Records of the " Court
of View of Frankpledge with Court Baron " ; see The Manor and the
Borough, by S. and B. Webb, 1907, vol. i. p. 95).
CHAPTER III
PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
IT was, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, one thing for
Parliament to enact that parishes should keep their highways in
repair, and quite another thing to get it actually done. We have
now to describe how the various legal obligations cast upon the
Parish were fulfilled, and how far the system of compulsory and
gratuitous amateur service succeeded in producing the roads
that were required. And in this description we shall roam
over the whole country, piecing together the contemporary
testimony as to what was actually done in this parish or that,
and seeking to convey an impression of parochial road ad-
ministration as it was during the whole period between 1660
and 1835.
To begin with the Parish as a whole, and its duty of nominating
persons as Surveyors of Highways called also Overseers or
Supervisors of the Highways, or, more familiarly, Waymen,
Waywardens, Boonmasters, Stonewardens or Stonemen we
gather that, except perhaps during the dislocation of the Common-
wealth, such nominations were made with decent regularity,
though the occurrence of complaints by some persons of having
to serve continuously indicate that it was not easy to find a
sufficient rota of suitable and willing inhabitants. In a grumbling,
but on the whole good-tempered sort of way we see the farmers,
in the rural parishes, taking it in turns to serve the office, occasion-
ally pressing into the service the village innkeeper, or a little
independent craftsman or shopkeeper. We do not gather that
the duties were undertaken by the " gentry," even such as were
not Justices of the Peace, or that the office was often accepted
by clergymen or doctors, who were legally exempt, or that it
27
28 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
was ever imposed on the not inconsiderable number of women
occupiers or owners of farms.
The basis of the parochial system of road maintenance was,
however, not the Surveyor of Highways, but the unpaid and
compulsory labour force of all the parishioners, which he was
empowered, by mere notice in church, to summon for six days*
service. We have made no investigation as to how closely this
system of enforced labour resembled the well-known Spring and
Autumn corvee on the roads of France, or the compulsory road
work of Ireland, or the analogous services in other countries.
It is noteworthy that although the compulsory road work in
Ireland was abolished by statute in 1762, and although Turgot
had sought to relieve France from the corvee in 1764, " Statute
Labour " lasted in England and Wales right down to 1835. The
English system was carried to America by the seventeenth
century emigrants, and it still exists, for the maintenance of the
roads outside the cities, in all but five of the United States.
In England, at least, this Statute Labour seems in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries to have been performed with the
utmost remissness. Whether there was ever a time in which this
work was commonly done with any degree of conscientiousness
or exactitude we may well doubt. In William Harrison's well-
known Description of England, in the reign of Elizabeth, we read
that " the rich do so cancel their portions and the poor so loiter
in their labours, that of all the six, scarcely two good days' work
are performed. . . . Sometimes, also, these days' works are not
employed upon those ways that lead from market to market,
but each Surveyor amendeth such byeplots and lanes as seem
best for his own commodity and more easy passage unto his
fields and pastures." By the seventeenth century it is clear,
the highways had got into a dreadful state, as we are told in
1610, " to the daily continual great grief and heartburning of
man and beast, with charges, hindrances, wearing and tiring
of them, and sometimes to the great and imminent danger of
their lives, and often spoil and loss of goods." By the end of
the seventeenth century, notwithstanding the successive amending
statutes that we have described, the futility of the Statute Labour
had become a byword. One hired labourer, it was said in 1696,
" will do as much work at the highways in one day than is done
by six or seven others " coming in compliance with the law.
" THE KING'S LOITERERS " 29
The substitutes sent in by inhabitants who refused to labour in
person were as unsatisfactory as the conscripted workers them-
selves. " These are they," we read in the same work, " that
call themselves the King's Highwaymen, when they beg of all
travellers that come near them ; but they are commonly called
the * King's Loiterers,* who work when they list, come and go
at their pleasure, and spend most of their time in standing still
and prating, and looking after their fellows whom they send
out from their work, most shamefully, to stop passengers for a
largess."
Part of the difficulty of enforcing the six days' attendance
arose from the fact that, when the relative equality of conditions
of the mediaeval Manor had been left behind, the burden imposed
by the law was seen to be very inequitably distributed. " To
speak plain," says one of the earliest writers on the subject,
" the way and manner of charging persons by the old statutes
still in force seems to me as unequal and oppressive as it is
uncertain and obscure. ... It seems very unequal that every
poor cottager and labourer who hath not bread for himself and
family to eat but what he earns by his labour from day to day
should be charged to labour himself, or to find a labourer, to
work the six days in repairing the common highways. And
therefore I cannot blame the practice of some Surveyors in this
case, especially of those that live in corporate and market towns
where the poor abound, in admitting the children of poor cottagers
and labourers, in lieu of their parents, to labour the six days in
gathering stones for repair of the highways ; and in conniving
at the absence of other poor cottagers that have no children to
send, or in taking but a little money of them for their defect."
We gather, indeed, that, in many parts of the country, the
exaction of unpaid labour from the poor cottagers was altogether /
given up ; and even the farmers were left to do as much or as
little as they chose, to the highways round about their own
farms. Any pretence of enforcing the statute was, in fact,
abandoned. " The six days' work," writes John Shapleigh, an
able Justice of the Peace in 1749, " have hitherto in most parishes
been so much neglected, and so slightly performed, that I
believe very few parishes can truly say, from their own experience,
that the six days' work . . . are not sufficient." Nor was the
result very different where an attempt was still made to enforce
3 o PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
the law. The sort of promiscuous popular gathering on the
roads once a year to use the words of Littleton in 1692, " the
scambling way of sending in carts and labourers " could not
be made into an effective labour force, even if the service of
team and toiler had been fully and cheerfully rendered, and the
Surveyor of the Highways had possessed a genius for organisa-
tion. " What is the benefit," pertinently asks Sir John Hawkins
in 1763, " arising from the labour of twenty men and as many
horses, occupied in four or five different stations within an ex-
tensive parish, compared with that of half the number of each,
working under the immediate direction of an officer, and executing
a plan which he himself has concerted." " Let us suppose,"
says a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1763, " that as the
statutes direct, a general notice is published, requiring the
inhabitants to perform their statute work on six days properly
specified, and suppose they all attend, how are the Surveyors
to employ them ? In most places materials must be got ready
before the work can be done, gravel must be dug before it can
be spread ... a few hands only can be employed. When the
whole parish is called out together, the Surveyor cannot avail
himself of the labour which such a body might perform." As a
matter of fact the duty was always shirked, and there was, to
use a modern term, a persistent policy of " ca' canny." " In
those few parishes," writes Sir John Hawkins, in 1763, " where
the inhabitants are disposed to yield obedience to the letter of
it, the days for performing the statute duty are so far from
being considered as days of labour that, as well the farmers as
the common day-labourers, have long been used to look on them
as holidays, as a kind of recess from their accustomed labour,
and devoted to idleness and its concomitant indulgences of riot
and drunkenness." " Statute work," says a writer in the
Gentleman's Magazine for December 1767, " is a burden from
which everybody has endeavoured, and always will endeavour,
to screen themselves and one another. Teams and labourers
coming out for statute work are generally idle, careless and under
no commands. . . . They make holiday of it, lounge about,
and trifle away their time. As they are in no danger of being
1 turned out of their work, they stand in no awe of the Surveyor
... in short, statute work will never mend the roads effectu-
ally." " One hired team," wrote John Scott in 1778, " is almost
STATUTE LABOUR 31
if not quite equal to two duty teams, with regard to the quantity
of work done in a day/' " The days set aside for the performance
of the statute labour," says the reporter on the agriculture of
Herefordshire in 1794, " are, by long established custom con-
sidered as allotted to play and merriment, and the man who
can continue to do the least work with his master's cattle thinks
he does him a kindness." " When a farmer sends his cart to
perform statute duty " to quote the reporters on the agriculture
of Northumberland in the same year " it seldom carries more
than half a load, and the servants practise every manoeuvre to
put off time and do as little as possible." In the nineteenth
century, with the gradual adoption of other methods, contem-
porary criticism of " Team Duty " becomes less frequent, but
it loses nothing of its indignant contempt. " In many cases,"
we read in 1825, " the statute duty is evaded. Sometimes it is
omitted altogether ; sometimes the teams do not work the
statutable number of hours ; sometimes they are sent by the
farmer, when, from the wet state of the roads, they do more
harm than good ; and sometimes a considerable part of the
stones and other materials provided by the parish are carted
into the gateways, perhaps even the farmyard, of a man who
ostensibly is engaged in the performance of a public duty." " I
can mention a case," said a witness before a House of Commons
Committee in 1834, " of a person going out to do his statute
duty, and taking his corn to the miller as a farmer, and on his
way bringing home a load of stones, which he called doing his
day's statute duty ; his neighbour, the Waywarden, disliking,
of course, to interfere with his neighbour's proceedings, takes no
notice of it the road suffers." By 1834 it could be reported by
a Poor Law Commissioner that " the Statute Labour assigned
to farmers is a mere farce, and a farce attended with false
pretences."
It was in vain that Parliament conferred upon the Justices
large powers to compel the performance of Statute Labour on the
roads. In such records of Quarter Sessions as exist we hear of
comparatively few indictments, even of the most obstinate of
the passive resisters that abounded on every hand. In 1576,
indeed, we read of one John Johnson of London, gentleman,
occupying one hundred and twenty acres at Fulham, being
indicted at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions for " having neither
32 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
found nor sent any wain or cart " on any of the six days notified
in church as having been fixed " for mending and repairing the
highways of Fulham." In 1633-34, probably as part of that
general tightening up of governmental control over local adminis-
tration which had its effect in producing the great Rebellion,
we see a sudden rush of indictments in Worcestershire and some
other counties, to be followed by a complete cessation of indict-
ments for many years. The records of the " Hundred Court "
of Pevensey, in Sussex, from 1710 to 1718 contain a few cases in
which both farmers and labourers were presented and warned
for not working on the highways, but no actual amercements.
In 1715, one Richard Cope of Buxton was indicted at the Derby-
shire Quarter Sessions " for not sending his cart to the mending
of the highways according to notice given in church." The
Hertfordshire archives include, under date 17th October 1780,
" certificates of the conviction of R. S. and others of Tring (fined
30/), for not working with their teams on the highways in the
Hamlet of Long Marsham, in the said parish, by virtue of their
holdings in the said Hamlet, on the 5th, 6th, and 7th days of
October." But such indictments were certainly not common,
and it is repeatedly stated, as we learn from an able Justice of
the Peace in 1749, " that the Justices of the Peace are very un-
willing to proceed " judicially against the defaulters.
With how little knowledge of the principles of roadmaking
the annually chosen, unpaid, amateur Surveyors of Highways
went to work, we can dimly imagine. They had, for the most
part, no idea of constructing, or even of scientifically repairing
a road in any durable way. If they opened the tracks over the
common lands once a year, and heaped up earth on the more
frequented roads, when the ruts became exceptionally deep, they
considered their duty well discharged. Instead of a steam-
roller, we hear occasionally of the road plough. " People now
living," wrote Albert Pell in 1887, " may have seen, decaying
under the walls of a parish church, the enormous plough, girt
and stayed with iron, which, as Spring approached, was annually
furbished up and brought into the village street. For this the
owners or their tenants, acting in concert, made up joint teams
of six or eight powerful horses, and proceeded to the restoration
of their highways, by ploughing them up, casting the furrows
towards the centre, and then harrowing them down to a fairly
COMMUTATION 33
level surface for the summer traffic." Right down to the opening
of the nineteenth century, England had practically nothing but
soft " dirt " roads, at best, as Albert Pell says, " mended with
weak and rotten sand and gravel " ; or, in some districts, as his
biographer reminds us, with " flint or rotting pebbles, con-
tributed by the farmers, and picked off the arable fields by the
frozen fingers of rural infants For all this miserable outfit
statutable books had to be kept, made up, and verified; a separate
rate got out, solemnly allowed by Justices of the Peace and then
collected. The whole business ended with a wrangle at the
Vestry, for which the Surveyor fortified himself with a brimming
jorum of brandy and water.'*
To the administrator of the twentieth century, it must be a
subject for astonishment that so extravagant and wasteful a sys-
tem as Statute Labour, involving so much injustice and personal
annoyance to individuals, and resulting in such futility, can ever
have been tolerated. Yet, in spite of unanimous condemnation
by every competent observer, so attractive to Parliament and
the agricultural classes was this device of service in kind, that
it remained, down to 1835, the basis of the system of maintaining
the highways. Though more and more eaten into, as we shall
describe, by money payments, the farmers up and down the
country continued to the last to send teams and men instead of
paying rates, to the extent officially computed in 1814 of 551,241;
and even as late as 1835, to an amount estimated by Sir James
M'Adam at " about 200,000 per annum." And though statute
after statute dealt with highway maintenance, and pamphlet
after pamphlet expatiated on the need for reform, " none of the
many various propositions for amending the highways," down
to 1763 at any rate, as Sir John Hawkins tells us, ever " ventured
to assert the expediency of annihilating " the immemorial
service in kind to which the Act of 1555 had given definite
Parliamentary consecration.
What ensued was not any abrogation of the law as to Statute /
Labour, but a steady increase in the adoption of the device of
commutation. This began very early. In the " St. Columb
Green Book," being the parish accounts of a Cornish village, we
find, under date of 1586, an entry to the effect that " those whose
names follow have made default about the mending of the said
ways, viz. William Mark, Edward Beale, Martin Bysshop,
D
34 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
Edward Noye, which four have given to the parish for their
default two shillings and sixpence apiece. Also John Skoin hath
paid for like default twelvepence." But there came to be more
systematic commutation. At Reading, as we learn from the
manuscript minutes of the Vestry of St. Mary's Parish, the
parishioners, on 12th April 1680 as we imagine, quite without
legal authority made the following roughly graduated scale of
services and payments according to means : " The agreement
of the Vestry concerning the repairs of the highways within the
Parish of St. Mary's. That all persons that pay twopence a
week or upwards to the poor shall pay or work six days ; all
such as pay one penny or three halfpence a week shall pay or
work four days ; all that (pay) one halfpenny a week and all
such (as) above the degree of receiving collection (i.e. Poor Law
relief) shall pay or work two days. All such in case afore-
mentioned qualifications that do accordingly shall pass upon
account to the Vestry : that those that shall refuse shall be
indicted at the sessions."
More usually, however, the commutation money was based
on the pecuniary penalties incurred. It was, as we have pointed
out, incumbent on the Surveyor to report defaulters, and then
punishment took the form of a fine, "to be bestowed on the
highways." And, though, as we have said, Justices were loth
to enforce these penalties, we gather that it became the custom
for any one who preferred to pay in money to tender the amount,
and for the Surveyor of Highways to accept it, rather than be
at any trouble. This custom was greatly fostered by the change
in the value of money, which, by 1763 at any rate, as the Gentle-
man's Magazine observed, had made it " the interest of the
party to incur the penalty rather than perform the duty. The
farmer can earn with a cart and one man ten shillings, which
will pay the whole penalty he incurs by not employing a team
and two men on the highway ; and the labourer, if he works,
incurs a certain loss of a week's subsistence to his family, but ii
he omits to work the loss is contingent." When matters had
got thus far, it occasionally occurred to the Parish Authorities,
especially in towns where the enforcement of Statute Labour had
fallen into disuse, to take advantage of the objection to personal
service in order to raise parish revenue. Thus, at Manchester
about the middle of the century, when it was desired to improve
" GARBLING THE PARISH " 35
the Rochdale road, " the expedient was hit upon of summoning
all households to Statute duty . . . and accept of money in
commutation, which not only cleared off that arrear, but enabled
the managers to make other improvements on the avenues of the
town." " Custom," says the Gentleman's Magazine in 1763,
" has ... in many places converted the labour into a rate as
the law now stands ; for the Surveyors, as soon as they enter
into their office, assess every inhabitant in a sum proportioned
to the labour required of him, and proceed to collect it as regularly
as the proper officers do the poor's rate ; but this practice is
illegal ; and if it was not, a rate thus accruing is by no means
equal . . . and the Surveyors having, under pretence of favour-
ing those who suffer by the inequality, assumed a power of com-
muting with the inhabitants, are very frequently guilty of
partiality, exacting the full sum when there are equitable pre-
tences for commutation, and commuting where the payment
of the whole sum would be less felt." Loud became the com-
plaints of the " corruption " of the Surveyors in thus, as it was
termed by Sir John Hawkins, " garbling " the " inhabitants of
a parish, commuting with them for their duty, receiving of some
five, of others four shillings, half-a-crown, or what many of them
like better, a bowl of punch." It was doubtless to remedy this
evil that Parliament, by the General Highway Acts of 1766 and
1773, regularised the practice of commutation, by fixing elaborate
scales of money payments as alternatives to service. in person.
This legislative sanction naturally promoted commutations, and
many Surveyors of Highways habitually collected money from
those who preferred to pay rather than serve ; whilst still making
more or less effort to enforce the service in kind, at any rate as
regards " team duty," on those who would not, or could not,
pay what was demanded. In some few districts, we are told,
in 1798, " the old inefficient custom of team-work, labourers,
composition, etc. which is seldom half done, and then not in an
equitable proportion," was " with consent of the Justices and
the parishes " frankly left in complete desuetude, there being
paid to the Surveyor instead " an equal assessment of threepence
or sixpence in the pound, or more if necessary, on the fair annual
value of all lands, houses, hereditaments, etc." Sometimes an
old scale of commutation would be combined with an equal
pound rate. Thus, the account book of the Surveyors of the
36 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
Highways for the Parish of Chalfont St. Peter (Bucks) for 1825-
1835, which we have seen, contains a bewildering array of names
and figures, with each farmer in the parish debited with so much
Statute Duty, apparently in proportion to his rent and tithe,
to be performed by so many teams, attended by so many men,
for so many days ; subject to commutation, if desired, at such
and such a sum ; together with so much money to be paid in
addition, at the rate of 2|d. in the pound. There could be
no check or audit of such accounts. Indeed, what with the lack
of any definite valuation roll or fixed assessment, the complica-
tion and uncertainty of the law, and the unwillingness of both
Surveyors and Justices to be at the trouble of legal proceedings
against their neighbours, it is plain that under the commutation
system the greatest inequality and laxness prevailed.
The persistence of such uncertain and arbitrary methods of
raising funds appears to us to-day still more strange, in that,
under the law as we have described it in the preceding chapter
from 1691 onward, the Surveyor had, in the occasional Highway
Rate, a source of revenue more easily collected than compositions
and fines. Such Highway Rates, in fact, began slowly to be
levied in particular parishes and townships, though always under
the special authority of Quarter Sessions, given in each case as
an exceptional measure. That they were greatly resented, and
that the whole financial proceedings of the Surveyors of Highways
were objected to, we infer from the lively comments of Daniel
Defoe in 1697. " The rate for the highways," he asserts in his
Essay on Projects, " is the most arbitrary and unequal tax in the
kingdom ; in some places two or three rates of sixpence per
pound in the year, in others the whole parish cannot raise where-
with to defray the charge, either by the very bad condition of the
road or distance of materials ; in others the Surveyors raise
what they never expend ; and the abuses, exactions, connivances,
frauds, and embezzlements are innumerable." But Defoe's
complaint led to no reform in assessment or audit, and from the
very beginning of the eighteenth century the number of Highway
Rates steadily increases. The student of the proceedings of
Quarter Sessions is always coming across these separate orders
authorising special Highway Rates, usually on the application of
the parish Surveyor of Highways, who found himself otherwise
unable to perform the necessary repairs. Thus, at the Essex
HIGHWAY RATES 37
Quarter Sessions in 1700, we read that " Upon application made
to this Court by the Surveyors of Highways of the Parish of
Purleigh in this County, showing that the statute work for
teanib and labourers within the said Parish hath been done and
performed by the inhabitants of the said Parish, and not sufficient
to repair and amend the same for this present year, and humbly
praying a rate of sixpence per pound upon all the inhabitants
and landowners within the said parish, for the better repairing
and amending the said highways. It is ordered by this Court
that the said rate of sixpence in the pound be proportionately
rated and collected upon the inhabitants of Purleigh accordingly."
Such a rate could, at any rate after the Act George I. c. 52
(1716), be equally made in any Municipal Borough having a
Court of Quarter Sessions, and thus we find the Ipswich Quarter
Sessions ordering in 1727, apparently for the first time, or the
first time for many years, a rate of f ourpence in the pound in each
of the four wards of the borough, to be assessed by the Surveyor
of Highways and expended on the thoroughfares of the town.
It is impossible, in the absence of any statistics, to ascertain how
many parishes had recourse to these rates. Our impression is
that, during the first half of the eighteenth century, at any rate,
the number in rural districts was exceedingly small perhaps
averaging in any one year fewer than half a dozen in each county
and that more than nine-tenths of the parishes and townships
contrived to avoid the noxious impost unwillingly imposed by
the Justices, " whose authority in this branch of their jurisdic-
tion," it was said by Sir John Hawkins in 1763, " carries the
appearance of great oppression, and can seldom be exerted to
any beneficent purpose." Thus, even as late as 1794, the roads
in the Cleveland district of the North Riding of Yorkshire were
reported as being good and " still maintained in the same state
by voluntary subscriptions and the Statute Duty of the " in-
habitants." So, at Spilsby (Lincolnshire) in 1796, we learn
incidentally that " the highways are maintained by Statute
Labour without a rate." In Pembrokeshire, " the gentlemen
above the mountains declined including their roads in any of the
[various Turnpike] Acts, alleging that they could keep them in
repair by the Statute Duty " a sanguine idea which experience
proves to be futile. The Highway Rate seems, however, under
the Acts of 1716 and 1735 to have rapidly become a matter of
38 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
course in some of the boroughs, where the performance of Statute
Duty was obviously unsuitable. After the peace of 1763 the
era of many improvements in Local Government these rates
become more frequent, though they were still demanded only by
a small minority of parishes. Not until England had settled
down after the Napoleonic Wars do we gather that the annual
levying of a Highway Rate of some sort had become the normal,
and even then not the invariable, method of providing the
greater part of the Surveyor's resources.
But, even if the obsolete device of Statute Duty had been
universally exchanged for a regular money income, there could
have been in the absence of skill, continuity, and integrity of
management, little real improvement in the roads. Such superior
persons as Justices of the Peace and clerks in Holy Orders,
barristers and physicians, were exempt from the obligation to
serve in this, as in other parish offices, whilst most other well-
to-do inhabitants managed to escape their turn of service, either
by paying a fine, purchasing a " Tyburn ticket," or some less
legitimate device. The office of Surveyor of the Highways had,
in fact, as we are told by the pamphleteer of 1825, " generally
to be taken in turn by the farmers of the parish, and held for
one or two years, as the custom of the parish or of the county
may be." Leaving on one side the modern requirement of
technical science in road construction, as irrelevant to eighteenth
century standards of administrative efficiency, the plan of relying
for any kind of effective superintendence on a casually chosen
inhabitant, absorbed in his own affairs and dependent on the
goodwill of his neighbours, was, it is needless to say, foredoomed
to failure. Many and bitter are the complaints from the middle
of the eighteenth century onwards, of the inevitable inefficiency
of the Surveyor. " Those spiritless, ignorant, lazy, sauntering
people, called Surveyors of Highways," ejaculates the learned
Dr. Burn, whom the farmers in Vestry persisted in nominating,
" just such as themselves, that will let them go on in their ancient
course, and frustrate the very purpose they are intended to
serve." The great survey of English agriculture conducted in
1794 under Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young, produced almost
unanimous testimony from the skilled investigators of the various
counties as to the "farce of appointing Surveyors in the respective
parishes." " I cannot see any probability," sums up John
THE SURVEYOR'S NEGLECT 39
Clark, one of the best of the County investigators, " of making
the parochial roads in this country even .tolerably safe until . . .
the ridiculous farce of appointing one of the parishioners annually
(at no salary) to enforce from his relations, friends, and neighbours
a strict performance of a duty which probably he never performed
himself ; and from which, by showing lenity to his neighbours,
he will expect to be excused in his turn when they shall respec-
tively succeed him in the office of Surveyor." Assuming that
the Surveyor was honest and capable he quickly discovered, as
the pamphleteer of 1825 aptly observes, that " the active exercise
of his powers, ' would expose him ' to the imputation of officious-
ness, and of an unneighbourly interference with private property."
Hence, in the vast majority of cases, the Surveyor did not even
attempt to enforce the obligation of the owners of the land adjoin-
ing the highways to remedy the active and passive nuisances,
which prevented, as it was thought by so representative a writer
as John Godschall, " the roads from growing better of them-
selves." As was observed by the critic of 1825 whom we have
often quoted, "the Parish Surveyor . . . was, before his appoint-
ment, in the habit of being guilty of many of the delinquencies
pointed out by the Highway Act, and will be guilty of them again
when his term of office has expired. The consciousness of this
induces him to view the delinquencies of his other brother
farmers with a very lenient eye." Under these circumstances
the majority of Surveyors, " wishing to avoid quarrels with their
neighbours," as we are expressly told with regard to the County
of Durham in 1794, did not trouble to exact the Statute Duty,
or the fines on defaulters still less to apply to Quarter Sessions
to afflict the parish with a new rate. The ordinary Surveyor
adopted the easy policy "of not doing anything till it is necessary,
viz., till the way is nearly impassable," with the result, as was
said by the reporter on Cheshire, that " there is little chance of
roads left to the care of officers so chosen ever being properly
taken care of." Even if, by good luck, the parish got, in one
year, an enthusiast for road repair, it quickly lost him again.
" The present mode of committing the care of the roads to an
officer chosen annually and by rotation," writes the same in-
vestigator, " without any regard to abilities, etc., in each parish
or township, seems to be one chief cause of the neglect and in-
sufficiency of their repairs. Sometimes, though seldom, an active
40 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
intelligent man is in that office ; but no proper system of repairs
being laid down and pursued, an ignorant or indolent officer
succeeding the former suffers what has been properly done to go
to decay." " The annual choice of Surveyors,'* observed, in
1778, the ablest of eighteenth century writers on Local Govern-
ment, " is in itself an impropriety. There are perhaps few offices
wherein more skill and attention are required . . . yet before
this officer is half master of his business, he is discharged and a
fresh ignoramus chosen ; consequently the work is never done
as it ought to be." This testimony was repeated by subsequent
observers with almost wearisome iteration. " The reluctant
and evasive manner in which Statute Duty Labour is performed,
and the want of power in Surveyors, in most cases, to call for
even an adequate composition in lieu thereof," is emphatically
denounced by an experienced administrator to the House of
Commons Committee in 1806. " I can only hint," he adds, " at
the want of abilities, or the requisite general knowledge, too
general among Surveyors, particularly of parish roads, who . . .
serve gratis, and perform their duties exactly as such a mode
might lead us to expect." " Parochial Surveyors," reports a
witness before another Committee in 1808, " are generally the
principal farmers, or persons substituted by them, and who are
interested that the least possible expense shall be incurred."
This continuous and almost universal neglect by the bulk of
the inhabitants, and by the Surveyors of Highways themselves,
to fulfil their statutory obligations with any completeness, or
to render with any zeal their unpaid service, is, in itself, evidence
v/ that the Justices of the Peace were at least equally remiss. For,
as we have described, on this governing class had been cast the
residual obligation of seeing that the labourer, the farmer, and
the appointed Surveyor each and all performed their several parts
of the common task. For this purpose the Justices had, as we
have seen, been furnished with a fine array of legal instruments
powers of appointment and direction, instructional charges,
disciplinary fines, compulsory rates, and, in the last resort, the
presentment and indictment of the parish as a whole.
The extreme rarity of any records of the proceedings of Petty
or Special Sessions deprives posterity of the means of discovering
how regularly the Justices met, and whether they did more than
walk perfunctorily through their parts. All the indirect evidence
THE JUSTICES' NEGLECT 41
indicates that, as in the case of the prisons and the Poor Law, the
vast majority of the eighteenth century Justices never realised
that they had any administrative responsibility at all for the
management of the roads. They persisted in regarding them-
selves as a judicial tribunal, called upon only to listen to such
complaints as might be brought before them of any positive breach
of the law, and then impartially to adjudicate upon them. So
little did the Justices exercise their power of selecting the Sur-
veyors that it came habitually to be supposed that their duty
was limited to the formal ratification of the choice indicated by
the lists sent in by the Vestries. The significant fact that, in
the consolidating Highway Acts of 1766-73 the useful power
to insist on written reports being handed in by every Surveyor at
every meeting was omitted apparently by mere inadvertence
goes a long way to prove that listening to and criticising a series
of these forms had not actually formed part of the business of the
typical bench of magistrates. In one instance only have we
ever found these written reports by the Surveyor so much as
mentioned. We see no sign that the Justices took the trouble
to give the newly appointed Surveyors any useful " charge,"
or to direct them which roads to repair first, or to advise them
how to proceed. Apart from this negative evidence there is a
continuous stream of testimony, in the pamphlets and newspapers
of the eighteenth century, as to the remissness of the Justices
in enforcing the highway law. To their disinclination to enforce
Statute Duty on the ordinary citizen we have already referred ;
and for this lenity there was, in the opinion of Sir John Hawkins,
himself an active magistrate, ample excuse. Consider, says this
learned writer, the excuses urged by the poor man, " poverty,
a numerous family, a wife, and four, five, or more small children,
sickness, lameness, and an income of nine shillings a week . . .
and think whether that authority is to be envied which the
magistrates are sworn to exert in enforcing obedience to perhaps
one of the most oppressive statutes that ever yet received the
sanction of public assent." And if the labourer could appeal
to the compassion of the Justice, the unpaid Surveyor of Highways
possibly a tenant of his own could play upon the English
dislike to be hard on neighbours. Other writers, such as John
Shapleigh, in 1749, attribute the negligence of the Justices to
" the making so many vague and seemingly inconsistent laws on
ft
42 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
this head " of highway administration, which " hath tended much
to the weakening instead of the strengthening the power of the
Justices of the Peace, and hath so perplexed their thoughts
that they care not to act under them." In short, whatever may
have been the cause of this inaction, all the available evidence
confirms the statement, made by the same authority, " both
from observation and experience," that the Justices of the Peace
are " very unwilling to proceed according to the methods pre-
scribed " by the Highway Acts.
There are, however, two directions in which the Justices of the
Peace seem to have exercised their functions in road administra-
tion with complacency, and occasionally with zeal the sanction-
ing of the supplementary Highway Rate and the presentment
or indictment of the parish as a whole, for the non-repair of its
highways. We have not discovered a single recorded instance
of Quarter Sessions refusing the application of a Surveyor of
Highways for the statutory rate to cover the excess of his expenses
over receipts, or of the rate so demanded being cut down in
amount. But we are inclined to think that this easy acquiescence
in the Surveyors' applications indicates only that Quarter
Sessions chose to regard its function in the matter of Highway
Rates as merely ministerial. There is no sign of the Justices
initiating these rates, and ordering the Surveyors to expend them.
This is perhaps due to the fact that the few Justices who were
keen on bettering the roads seem to have found a more convenient
channel for their reforming energy in the roundabout and anti-
quated procedure of presentment or indictment of the parish as
a whole. To this peculiar device we devote the next chapter.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III
NOTES AND REFEBENOES
Page 27. There is less literature by or about Surveyors of Highways
than by or about such other parish officers as Churchwardens or Overseers
of the Poor, or even Parish Clerks. Many particulars as to the office and
its duties will be found in our book The Parish and the County (see Index
of Subjects). It was often included with other parish offices in popular
legal manuals, of which we may mention the following : The Duties of
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 43
Constables, Borsholders, Tithinymen, and such other low Ministers of the
Peace ; whereunto be also adjoined the several Offices of Churchwarden, etc.,
by William Lambard, 1582. Other editions, 1583, 1599, 1610, etc. Also
The Office and Duty of Constables . . . with the Office of Surveyors of the
Highways, by John Layer, 1641 ; and The Offices, and Duties of Constables,
Borsholders and other lay Ministers; whereunto are adjoined the several
Offices of Church Ministers and Churchwardens, by William Sheppard, 1641.
Other editions, 1652, 1657, etc. Also The Exact Constable . . . as also the
Office of. . . Surveyors of the Highways, by E. W., 1682.
The statutory title is Surveyor of the Highways. But " overseer of
(or for) the highways " was frequently used at an early date ; see, for
instance, the Churchwarden's Accounts (Surtees Society) for entries under
1662, etc., " chosen overseers for the Highways for this present year."
" Boonmasters " is, of course, derived from " boon," or work given
gratuitously, whether to a landlord, an employer, or a friend ; whence we
get in Lincolnshire dialect, " to boon the roads," meaning " to repair the
roads."
We note frequent complaints in the middle of the seventeenth century,
amid the dislocations of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, that
Bedfordshire and Yorkshire parishes were not appointing Surveyors of
Highways (see Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times,
by Dr. W. Cunningham, vol. L, 1903, p. 535).
Page 28. For the old French corvee, see the interesting works by A.
Babeau, describing village life under the Ancien rigime, and the various
lives of Turgot. What Turgot did was to substitute a tax on land for the
personal services on the roads. His reform was undone on his dismissal
from office, and the corvee reimposed. The present system is described in
the bluebook, Report on the Construction and Maintenance of Public
Roads in European States, 1882 ; and specifically in " Local Government
and County Councils in France," by S. Waddington in Nineteenth Century
for June 1888. Each head of a household may be required to render three
days' personal service, and to supply three days' work of all the horses,
asses, and carts that he possessed, and of all the male persons between 18
and 60 resident with him as servants or otherwise ; but he may avoid
these "prestations" by payment in money at a defined rate. Apparently,
most of the peasants, and altogether more than half the persons liable, still
prefer to give the service in kind (see also the accounts given in the special
Consular Reports on Streets and Highways in Foreign Countries (United
States Bureau of Foreign Commerce, 1887) ; A Treatise on Roads and Pave-
ments, by Ira Osborn Baker, 1903, p. 43 ; and the section on " Highways "
in Local and Central Government, by Percy Ashley, 1906, pp. 120-4). A
proposal for the abolition of the " prestations " in 1898 found support
only in nine out of eighty-six departments (ibid. p. 124).
The Irish " roadwork " was practically brought to an end by 3
George III. c. 8 of 1762, which placed all roads under the Grand Jury of
the County. That statute was re-enacted in 1765 by a great consolidating
measure (5 George III. c. 14), which repealed all previous Acts on the
highways, from 11 James I. (1614) to 3 George III. c. 8 (1762), and definitely
swept away all obligation of service in kind.
44 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
For the " Labour Tax" existing in all but five of the United States a
poll tax, outside the cities, payable in labour at the option of the citizen,
and by the farmers usually so paid ; see Road Legislation for the American
State, by Jeremiah W. Jenks (American Economic Association, May 1889,
vol. iv. No. 3) ; A Manual of Roadmaking, by W. M. Gillespie, 1853,
pp. 341-7 ; and A Treatise on Roads and Pavements, by Ira Osborn Baker
1903, pp. 41-2. In six of the Southern States there was, in 1889, still no
money tax or rate for road maintenance. Yet the " Labour Tax " is
apparently as remissly rendered as it was in the England of the eighteenth
century. " Under cover of this tax," we read, " many men simply waste
a day in telling stories and pretending to work " (Road Legislation for tlie
American State, by J. W. Jenks, 1889, p. 34).
On American road construction and maintenance a fund of information
is now available in the valuable reports of the United States Department of
Agriculture (Office of Public Roads), and in those of the Massachusetts
State Highway Commission (from 1893) ; of the New York, Virginia, and
Maryland State Highway Commissions, and the Rhode Island and Washing-
ton Highway Boards ; and of the individual Highway Commissioners for
Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
These are to be found in the British Library of Political Science at the
London School of Economics.
Page 28. The quotation is from a short book entitled A Profitable
Work to this whole Kingdom concerning the Mending of all Highways, as
also for Waters and Ironworks, by Thomas Procter, 1607 and 1610. This is
the earliest work on highway maintenance with which we are acquainted,
and its publication at the beginning of the seventeenth century is probably
significant.
Page 28. " An Historical Description of the Islande of Britayne,"
by W. Harrison, written between 1557 and 1587 ; first printed in Holin-
shed's Chronicle, now republished as Elizabethan England, edited by L.
Withington, 1889 ; and more elaborately edited by F. J. Furnivall, in
three volumes, by the New Shakespeare Society (1877-1908).
Page 29. For this description of " the King's Highwaymen " and of
the hardship of Statute Labour to the cottagers, we are indebted to an
interesting little treatise, entitled Of Mending and Repairing the Highways,
by E. Mather, 1696.
Page 29. Highways, by John Shapleigh, 1749, pp. 56-7 ; A Proposal
for the Highways, by E. Littleton, 1692 ; Observations on the State of the
Highways, by [Sir] John Hawkins, 1763, p. 28.
Page 30. Gentleman's Magazine, May 1763, p. 236 ; Observations on
the State of the Highways, by [Sir] John Hawkins, 1763, pp. 27-8 ; Gentle-
man's Magazine, December 1767, p. 573.
Page 30. Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John
Scott, 1778, p. 307. This old law book, compiled by " the Quaker Poet "
of Amwell (died 1784), who was an able and zealous Justice of the Peace for
Hertfordshire, contains many shrewd and humorous observations, and
throws considerable light on contemporary local administration. With its
appendix on the construction and preservation of public roads, it forms a
work of no little merit which was at that time, as his biographer observes,
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 45
" probably the only scientific treatise on the subject." See Hoole's
" Account of the Life and Writings of John Scott," prefixed to his Critical
Essays, 1785, p. 60 ; the life of Scott in Dr. R. Anderson's Poets of Great
Britain, vol. xi., and that in The British Poets, vol. Ixx.
Page 31. General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, by John Clark,
1794, p. 55 ; General Vieiv of the Agriculture of Northumberland, by J.
Bailey and G. Culley, 1794, p. 56.
Page 31. The quotation of 1825 is from an anonymous work entitled
Highways Improved, 1825, p. 8. The others are from the evidence of the
Hon. E. B. Portman, in Report of House of Commons Committee on
County Rates, 1834 ; and from the First Report of the Poor Law Inquiry
Commissioners, Appendix A (Wilson's Report), p. 130, 1834.
Page 31. For the Fulham case, see Middlesex County Records, by
J. C. Jeaffreson, 1886, vol. i. pp. 100-1.
For the great stir up as to the roads in Worcestershire in 1633-4,
and the many presentments and indictments of parishes and individuals
just in those years, see Worcester County Records, by J. C. Willis Bund,
vol. i., 1900, pp. xxxix, xl, Ixxvi, Ixxviii, etc. The same records give us
a case of a man prosecuted and fined for not working, who defended
himself by the plea that he did some work, and that the real reason of his
being proceeded against was " that he would not let his team draw a load
of wood for the Surveyor gratis " (ibid. p. 176).
We owe the references to the MS. records of the Pevensey Hundred
Court to the Rev. W. Hudson, from whose valuable works on Norwich we
have learnt much.
For the Buxton case, see Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C.
Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 61.
For the Tring case, see Hertfordshire County Records, 1905.
Page 31. The full title of the work of this able Justice of the Peace is
Highways : a Treatise showing the Hardships and Inconveniences of Present-
ing or Indicting Parishes, Townships, etc., for not repairing the Highways,
by John Shapleigh, 1749. The unwillingness to enforce the fines he attri-
butes in some measure to the uncertainty of the law, as the procedure
specified in the various statutes of 1563, 1670, 1691, and 1715 varied
slightly, so as to make it dubious whether the power to fine was in Quarter
Sessions, Special Sessions, or Petty Sessions (ibid. p. 30). We see this
doubt as to the law in Marylebone in 1730, where the Justices were willing
to go as far as a summons, but uncertain as to any further proceedings.
It was resolved in Petty Sessions : " That all such persons in arrear to the
highways that have not been already summoned to attend a Special
Sessions next Tuesday to show cause why they should not pay their several
proportions " ; but also " that Mr. Deschamp, Surveyor of Highways, do
disburse a proper fee to counsel for his opinion concerning the validity and
form of a warrant of distress and manner to levy the penalties of persons
refusing to pay the charge set upon them for the repairing of the Highways,
etc., and that he be allowed the same in his accounts" (MS. Minutes,
Petty Sessions, Marylebone, Middlesex, 15th December 1730).
Parliament was, during the eighteenth century, always passing amend-
ing Acts, so that the exact state of the law was perpetually changing. The
46 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
alterations made by the Highway Acts of 1714, 1718, 1733, 1736, 1741,
1742, 1743, 1745, 1751, 1753, 1755, 1757, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1773 and 1794
are bewildering in their detail, their repetitions and their confusion, but, so
far as the system of Statute Labour is concerned, they did not effect any
alteration in principle. The Act of 1766 (7 George III. c. 42) attempted
a codification of the law, but this left so many questions unsettled that a
renewed attempt at codification was made in 1773 (13 George III. c. 78),
only to be overlain by the successive statutes to which " the vicissitudin-
ous disposition of the Legislature," as John Scott remarks, soon gave rise.
We owe these attempts at simplification of the law to such men as Thomas
Gilbert and Sir John Hawkins (Memoirs of Sir John Hawkins, by Letitia
Hawkins, vol. ii. p. 3), aided by such zealous local Justices as John Scott
(see his Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, 1778). We may
note some of the detailed changes. The special " Highway Sessions " of
the Justices, at which the Surveyors were appointed, was transferred from
January to October (7 George III. c. 42). At this or any other Special
Sessions the Justices were expressly empowered to direct which roads
should first be dealt with, and when and how (1 George I. st. 2, c. 52);
except that it was not to be in the seed month, the hay harvest month, or
the corn harvest month (13 George III. c. 78). Four days' notice at every
house was substituted for the public notification in church (7 George III.
c. 42). The vague classification of the sixteenth century statutes into
persons occupying ploughlands, persons keeping teams, forty shilling
occupiers, and mere cottagers, was expanded so as to include, as contri-
butories, all " occupiers of lands, tenements, woods, tithes, and heredita-
ments " (7 George III. c. 42 and 13 George III. c. 78) ; all persons keeping
teams, draughts or ploughs in the parish, though occupying lands elsewhere ;
and all persons, however small their occupation, keeping a horse and cart,
a coach, a post-chaise, or other wheel carriage, or even a sedan chair (34
George III. c. 74) ; from all of whom either Team Duty or definite money
contributions were required. On the other hand, the class of persons who
could fulfil their obligation by mere personal service for the six days (or
by sending a substitute) to whom, in practice, this actual manual labour
came to be confined was precisely defined as inhabitants (from 1766 to
1773 it was male inhabitants), between 18 and 65 years of age, not being
apprentices or menial servants, and occupying premises worth less than
4 a year (13 George III. c. 78). Moreover, persons actually serving as
privates in the militia (30 George II. c. 25), or later on, noncommissioned
officers or privates from the time of their enrolment in the militia down
to their discharge (42 George III. c. 90), were entirely exempted ; and in
1794 any two Justices were empowered to exempt any poor person whom
they thought " deserving such relief " (34 George III. c. 74). For all
occupiers, team owners, and carriage-keepers there came to be elaborately
graduated scales of contribution, varying, in Scott's table, from 6d. a year
for a non-resident occupier of 1 annual value, who kept no team, carriage,
etc., up to 10 : 16s. a year for an occupier of 400 annual value (Digests of
the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, pp. 63-71).
Page 32. Naturally the critics of the roads put all the blame on the
Surveyors of Highways. " It is a shameful thing," said a peer at the end
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 47
of the seventeenth century, " to see how very much the highways are
generally neglected and out of repair ; the fault of which does mostly lie
at the door of the Overseers [i.e. Surveyors], whose chiefest care in them
nowadays is how to shuffle off the matter for their time, being very little
concerned for what comes after them ; and by this means they bring at
last a great burden upon their townships, which would have been prevented
by a small charge, if but taken in time ; and so the township suffers through
their neglect " (A Collection of Speeches of the late Earl of Warrington, 1694,
p. 25).
For their proceedings in the early part of the nineteenth century, see
the interesting article on " The Making of the Land in England," by Albert
Pell, M.P., in Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society (2nd series, vol.
xxiii. part 2, 1887) ; and Reminiscences of Albert Pell, by T. Mackay, 1908,
p. 330.
Page 33. The official estimate of the value of the service in kind in
1814 is quoted in History of the English Constitution, by Rudolph von
Gueist, translated by P. Ashworth, 1891, p. 637.
Page 33. For Sir James M'Adam's estimate of the value of Statute
Labour, see Report of House of Commons Committee on Turnpike Trusts,
1839, p. 3 ; Road Reform, by William Pagan, 1845, p. 215. The quotation
from Sir John Hawkins is from his Observations on the State of the Highways
and on the Laws for amending and keeping them in Repair, 1763, p. 35.
Page 33. " The St. Columb Green Book," containing the accounts of
the Parish of St. Columb, Cornwall, from 1585 to 1900, is described (and
the entries from 1585 to 1604 are transcribed) by Mr. Thurston Peter, in
the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (vol. xix. of its Reprints,
1912), to whom we are indebted for this and other information.
Page 34. For the Reading case, see MS. Accounts of the Church-
wardens of St. Mary's, Reading, 12th April 1680.
Page 34. Gentleman's Magazine, May 1763, pp. 236-7.
For the case of Rochdale Road, Manchester, see A Description of
Manchester, by James Ogden, 1783 ; see the new edition, by W. E. A. Axon,
under the title of Manchester a Hundred Tears Ago, 1883, pp. 16-17.
Page 35. Observations on the State of the Highways, by (Sir) John
Hawkins, 1763, p. 38.
Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxxi. p. 423, 1798.
Page 36. The account book of the Surveyors of Highways of Chalfont,
St. Peter's, lies among the parish archives there.
Page 36. An Essay upon Projects, by Daniel Defoe, 1697, p. 69.
Page 37. For the Purleigh Highway Rate, see MS. Minutes, Quarter
Sessions, Essex, 16th July 1700 ; for that of Ipswich, see MS. Minutes,
Borough Quarter Sessions, Ipswich, Suffolk, 27th March 1727.
Observations on the State of the Highways, by (Sir) John Hawkins, 1763,
p. 2.
General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding, by Tuke, 1794, p. 85.
" Cleveland," said its historian in 1808, " had long to boast of what no
other district, perhaps, in England of equal extent could do, viz. ; excellent
roads extending in different directions for nearly sixty miles in length,
without any tolls, being maintained by voluntary subscriptions and the
48 PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
Statute Duty of the inhabitants. This circumstance so creditable to the
district can no longer be boasted of, as two toll-gates have been lately
erected upon a piece of the road, made by Act of Parliament in 1803 between
Yarm and Thirsk " (History and Antiquities of Cleveland, by Rev. John
Graves, 1808, p. 39).
Page 37. For the Spilsby roads, see The State of the Poor, by Sir
F. M. Eden, 1796, vol. ii. p. 398 ; for those of Pembrokeshire, see General
View of the Agriculture of Pembroke, by Charles Hassal, 1794, p. 30. The
borough rate for highways will be found in the MS. Minutes Borough
Quarter Sessions, Ipswich, Suffolk, 1727-1760.
Page 38. We have tried in vain to ascertain, from the MS. archives
of Counties and Boroughs, in what proportion of cases Highway Rates
were made at different dates. Of the making of rates in reimbursement of
outlay on road material, we have, in the absence of records of the pro-
ceedings of Special Sessions, absolutely no statistics. Our impression is
that, in the first half of the eighteenth century very few rural parishes, if
any, dreamt of such an extravagance as purchasing road material. The
second rate, for general repair, had, down to 1773, to be made at Quarter
Sessions, and was recorded in the Minutes. We have gone through these
Minutes for more than a dozen counties, without finding more than a small
proportion of the parishes applying for, or ordered to make, this Highway
Rate. Thus in the Minutes of the Essex Quarter Sessions between 1700
and 1711, we noticed only two or three cases a year ; and in 1711, 2 parishes
(6d. each); in 1712, 3 parishes (1 @ 3d., 2 @ 6d.); in 1713, 8 parishes
(1 @ 2d., ? @ 6d.) ; in 1714, 5 parishes (1 @ 3d., 4 @ 6d.) ; in 1715, 2
parishes (6d. each). In 1736, a sixpenny rate was ordered in 4 parishes ;
in 1756 hi 6 parishes ; in 1766 in 14 parishes ; and in 1771 in 21 parishes.
The total number of parishes in the county was over 400. In Suffolk,
which had about 575 parishes, in 1760-1761 the Quarter Sessions authorised
Highway Rates in 10 parishes only. In the careful analysis of the Quarter
Sessions records of Derbyshire only one such case is mentioned (Three
Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 230, where it
is assumed, we think wrongfully, that the normal course was for the parish
to make its own rate under the Act of 1662 ; which, as described in the
preceding chapter, was only a temporary statute, not much employed even
during its brief validity). Hackney had a sixpenny rate as early as 1699-
1700, but we do not feel sure whether any other parish in Middlesex had
one so early (House of Commons Journals, 4th May 1713). In Berkshire,
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a Highway Rate was plainly
regarded as an exceptional event. In 1707 there is entered on the Quarter
Sessions Minutes an elaborate petition from the Surveyors of Highways of
Pusey, showing that they had spent 3:1: 8, which had been allowed
by two Justices, and asking that a rate might be sanctioned (MS. Minutes,
Quarter Sessions, Berkshire, Midsummer 1707). Maidenhead gets a rate
allowed in 1708 on the plea that it has had to pave its street (ibid. Epiphany,
1708). Speen gets one in 1709, subject to verification by the local Justices
(ibid. Midsummer 1709). During the following thirty years there are only
about a dozen cases (ibid. 1710-1740). In Hampshire we noted one case
in 1699, two in 1704, and not half a dozen down to 1720. In 1723 we learn
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 49
from the wording of the order that, in two cases at any rate, application
had been made by counsel, and witnesses were heard for and against a rate
being made, the Court deciding in favour of it (MS. Minutes, Quarter
Sessions, Hampshire, 23rd April 1723). As late as 1768-70, only five
such rates were made in three years, and these were confined to three
market-towns (ibid., 1768-70). In Kent, which had over 1100 parishes,
the power to rate seems to have been rather more early used than elsewhere,
there being, between 1692 and 1695, as many as 8 cases recorded; then there
are none till 169798, in each of which years one was made. Early in
the eighteenth century they continued to be made at the rate of about one
a year. In 1727 no fewer than 13 parishes were rated, and in 1729 as
many as 24. Between 1730 and 1736 only 12 rates were made for 9
different parishes, and down to 1746 they average less than one a year.
In 1747, however, 6 parishes were rated. Between 1747 and 1751 there
were only 7 cases. In 1766-69 the number goes up to between 10 and
20 annually (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Kent, 1692-1769).
The Highway Rate, unlike the Poor Rate, and unlike nearly all other
rates in England, was, from first to last, limited in amount to sixpence or
a shilling in the pound. Under 3 & 4 William and Mary, c. 12, there was no
limit to the frequency with which a Highway Rate could be levied ; and
we read, in 1738, that " there are numberless instances where the roads
are so bad that Justices are obliged to allow that in two rates which they
are prohibited doing in one " (An Enquiry into the Causes of the Increase
and Miseries of the Poor of England, 1738, p. 8).
Page 38. For the " Tyburn Ticket "the certificate of exemption
from parish offices given as a reward for the successful prosecution of a
felon see our book, The Parish and the County, 1906, p. 19 ; Highways
Improved, 1825, p. 9 ; History of the Poor Laws, by Rev. Dr. R. Burn, 1763,
p. 239.
Page 39. The quotations from the Agricultural Survey are from
General View of the Agriculture of Brecknock, by John Clark, 1794, p. 44 ;
and General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, by John Clark, 1794, p. 55 ;
Highways Improved, 1825, p. 4 ; A General Plan of Parochial Police, by
Godschall, 1787, p. 60.
Page 39. Highways Improved, 1825, p. 9. General View of the Agri-
culture of the County Palatine of Chester, by Thomas Wedge, 1794, p. 63.
Page 40. The " ablest of eighteenth-century writers on Local Govern-
ment " was, in our opinion, John Scott, whose Digests of the General High-
way and Turnpike Laws, 1778, we have already referred to (p. 44).
Page 41. The supineness of the ratepayers, no less than of the
Justices, with regard to the inefficiency of the Parish Surveyors, is all the
more remarkable in that, in 1766, it was provided by the General Highway
Act (7 George III. c. 42. sec. 2, re-enacted by 13 George III. c. 78, sec. 5)
that, if two- thirds of the ratepayers in Vestry agreed, they might nominate
a person to be appointed as a paid Surveyor, and suggest the salary to be
paid to him out of the penalties, forfeitures, and composition money of the
parish ; whereupon the Justices might, if they thought fit, appoint such
salaried Surveyor. In 1773 it was added that, if the Vestry neglected to
furnish a list of persons to serve as unpaid Surveyors, or if the persons so
E
5 o PAROCHIAL ROAD ADMINISTRATION
nominated refused to serve, the Justices might appoint some other person,
and assign to him a salary, payable by the parish, not exceeding one-eighth
of a sixpenny rate (13 George" III. c. 78, sec. 1), at the same time appointing
also some inhabitant to act, gratuitously and compulsorily, as Assistant to
such paid Surveyor ! (ibid., sec. 2 and 4) an extraordinary provision,
" likely," says Scott, " to produce private animosity instead of public
benefit " (Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott,
1778, p. 107). We know of no case in which, during the eighteenth century,
a salaried Surveyor was appointed ; and we believe that, at any rate in
rural parishes, this provision remained a dead letter, its very existence
being forgotten by parishioners and critics alike.
Page 41. The following entry in the Essex Quarter Sessions Minutes
is, so far as we know, unique. " Whereas John Chewby Esq., has presented
to this Court that great part of the highways within the half -hundreds of
Waltham and Harlow and the Hundred of Ongar are very much out of
repair and that the Surveyors of the Highways have been very negligent
in performing their duty enjoined them by the several Acts of Parliament
. . . this Court doth recommend to His Majesty's Justices of the Peace
of that Division the putting the said laws in execution, and to cause the
several Surveyors ... to make due returns of the state and condition of
their highways, and of all such persons as shall make default of doing their
work on the said highways " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 18th
April 1721). The instructional charge contemplated by the Act of 1691
dwindled, we are told, into the perfunctory delivery, by some minor
official, of a printed extract containing " the most material portions " of
the General Highways Act, contained " in a broad sheet, ill-printed on
bad paper, with a very small type, the matter very much crowded, the
several articles difficult to be distinguished, and the whole but badly
calculated to engage the attention or satisfy the enquiries of the Surveyor
respecting his duty " (Gentleman's Magazine, November 1798, p. 971).
Page 41. Observations on the State of the Highways, by (Sir) John
Hawkins, 1763, p. 36 ; Highways, by John Shapleigh, 1749, p. 30, and
p. 28.
Occasionally we notice a spurt of zeal on the part of the Justices. We
may, perhaps, ascribe to the stimulating effect of the Royal Proclamation
of 1787, which Wilberforce and Zouch got sent to all Quarter Sessions
(see our History of Liquor Licensing in England, 1903, pp. 50, 143, 144), the
exceptional activity of the Essex Justices in that year. They strictly
enjoin the several Surveyors within the said Division to take special care
that the ruts are stubbed, the water let off, the ditches properly scoured,
the fences kept low, and the pollard trees taken down or primed up, so that
the roads may have the full benefit of the sun and air ; for the due per-
formance of which " essential parts of their duty they will be called upon to
make a return upon oath, and in default of such duty being done, prefer-
ments will be made against the parishes so neglected at the next or any
subsequent general quarter sessions" (Petty Sessions, Deny Division,
Essex, October 1787 ; see Chelmsford Chronicle, 9th November 1787).
CHAPTER IV
ROAD ADMINISTRATION BY PRESENTMENT AND INDICTMENT
IN the device of the legal presentment or indictment of a parish
as a whole, for neglect to maintain its highways, we find ourselves
back again in the domain of the Suppression of Nuisances.
Under the Common Law it was open to any one to indict, at
Quarter Sessions or the Assizes, the parishioners or others
responsible, whenever " a common and ancient King's highway "
became, to use the form given in Burn's Justice, " ruinous, miry,
deep, broken and in great decay," so as to be " to the great
damage and common nuisance of all the liege subjects of our
said Lord the King." This criminal procedure had been, as we
have already described, sharpened and strengthened by the
successive highway statutes, one of the earliest of which (5 Eliz.
c. 13 of 1563) had given to every Justice of the Peace the power
" to make presentment ... on his own proper knowledge . . .
of any highway not well and sufficiently repaired." Originally,
we gather, this presentment by a single Justice may have been
made in person at the Quarter Sessions with little formality, the
assembled magistrates then and there proceeding to fine the
parish in default. Presently, however, this presentment was
dealt with more formally, and was treated merely as equivalent
to the finding by the Grand Jury of a true bill on an indictment
of the parish. The Grand Jury could itself originate proceedings,
and its formal presentment was dealt with similarly to that of
a single Justice. And the Grand Jury might be moved to make
such a presentment by a report laid before it by the County
Surveyor, or even by one of its own members. Finally, any
person, proceeding by way of indictment, would have his com-
plaint submitted to the Grand Jury in ordinary course, whose
51
5 2 ROAD ADMINISTRATION
finding of a " true bill " was equivalent to their presentment.
The Grand Jury presentment, or the indictment on which a
" true bill " had been found, being then formally " traversed "
on behalf of the defendant parish, was put down for trial at the
following Quarter Sessions. At the trial, if the parish could not
show that the obligation to repair rested by tenure or immemorial
custom on some particular landowner, Quarter Sessions imposed
a substantial fine upon the inhabitants generally, but usually
deferred the levying of the fine for three months, in order to give
the parish time to put the road into proper repair. If in the
meantime they did the work, and one or two Justices gave a
certificate that it had been done to their satisfaction, the fine
would be excused. If not, the Sheriff would be directed to levy
it by distress upon any of the occupiers of the parish, and to pay
it, either to the Parish Surveyor of Highways or to some other
person named by Quarter Sessions, to be by him applied to the
mending of the highway.
The archives of Quarter Sessions contain abundant references
to this criminal procedure by presentment and indictment, and
seldom distinguish between proceedings initiated in one or other
of the ways described. Thus, in the published extracts from
the Derbyshire archives, we find printed side by side contempor-
aneous presentments by a single Justice, and presentments by
the County Surveyor. We may instance " the presentment of
John Spateman, Esq., one of ye Justices of peace of this County
of Derby . . . upon his own view " in 1656. " I present,"
wrote he, " the inhabitants of ye parish of Chesterfield for not
repairing of ye highways leading betwixt Wingerworth and ye
town of Chesterfield, and being within ye said parish." At
Midsummer 1658, the County Surveyor made various present-
ments, which the Grand Jury adopted by endorsing, " We find
this a true presentment." We give one of these as a sample of
many. " We present the inhabitants of the parish of Duffield
... for not repairing Cowhouse Lane being in the said parish, and
in great decay, and ought by them to be repaired being used
for all carts and carriages."
Already in 1749, as we learn from John Shapleigh, it could be
said that there were " some parishes which have presentments
or indictments almost perpetually hanging over their heads."
We can best give an accurate idea of the working of this procedure
PRESENTMENTS 53
by transcribing a few specimen entries from Quarter Sessions
minutes and other documents. We give first a sample of the
grant of time. At the Essex Quarter Sessions in 1745, it is
" ordered . . . that Mr. Zechariah Button, Chief Constable of
Barnstaple Hundred, do not levy the fine of 20 set on the in-
habitants of ... South Benfleet ... for not repairing their
highways, till after the next General Quarter Sessions." But
the fine was actually levied if the work was not done. Thus, at
the Suffolk Quarter Sessions in 1765, we read, " This Court doth
order and direct the Sheriff of this County to levy the fine of
fifty pounds, set upon the inhabitants of the parish of Brent Ely,
in this County, for not repairing a certain road . . . which is
and stands presented by the Rev. T. T. &c. for being out of
repair, no Certificate being produced to this Court of the said
road being amended and repaired pursuant to an Order of ...
Quarter Sessions ... on the 8th of October last." In other
cases the repairs are found to have been executed within the
period of grace. Thus, in the Derbyshire archives are numerous
certificates by Justices, testifying to their personal inspection
of roads for which parishes were under indictment. One William
Richardson about 1727 seems to have been particularly active
in this business of road supervision. We may reproduce one of
the many certificates by him which have been preserved : " This
is to certify that the highway within Horseley Woodhouse in the
said County of Derby leading from that vill to Smally Common
in the said County is amended and put into very good repair.
Viewed by me this 14th day of September 1727. WILLIAM
RICHARDSON." So in 1766, we see the Suffolk Quarter Sessions
resolving that, " It appearing to this Court that the road in the
parish of Westerfield, presented by Mileson Edgar, Esq., for
being out of repair, is duly and sufficiently repaired and amended,
this Court doth therefore remit the fine of 40 set upon them for
that offence." At varying dates in the different counties, but
eventually, we gather, nearly all over England, it became the
regular thing for a parish periodically to find itself indicted at the
Sessions for neglecting to keep its highways in repair ; for the
Vestry to instruct the Surveyor of Highways to make any defence
that might seem plausible to the Court, and at any rate to plead
for time ; for Quarter Sessions to find the parish guilty and
inflict a substantial fine, which might be anything from 10
5 4 ROAD ADMINISTRATION
up to 2000, but to respite its levy to give the parish an oppor-
tunity to mend its ways ; and for the fine eventually to be levied
by the Sheriff usually acting through the High Constable of
the Hundred in the form of an additional rate on all the
occupiers in the parish, the proceeds being paid over to some
person designated by Quarter Sessions it might be the Parish
Surveyor of Highways, it might be the County Surveyor, it might
even be two or more Justices selected for the purpose to be
expended on the particular highway in question. So habitual
became the appointment of " expenditors," or persons to see to
the laying out of the fine upon the road, that the Somerset
Quarter Sessions formally ordered in, 1802, "that henceforward in
all prosecutions for public nuisances respecting highways and
bridges, that, after judgment upon verdict found, or upon plea
of guilty, no proof shall be received in this Court by Certificate
or otherwise that such highway or bridge is in repair, unless the
defendants prove to the Court that notice in writing has been
given to each of the expenditors appointed to lay out the fine
imposed for the repair of such highway or bridge, of their appoint-
ment for that purpose."
This cumbrous and antiquated procedure had become, at the
opening of the nineteenth century, almost the normal course of
road repair. The Quarter Sessions Minutes of Lancashire and
Northumberland, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, in particular,
abound in orders of this sort sometimes a score of parishes at
every sessions. A parish would occasionally be under indictment
for years together. Thus, Tynemouth in Northumberland was
indicted in 1796, and it was ordered that 50 be levied, which
was laid out leisurely by the Surveyor of Highways. By 1802
he had more than exhausted that sum, and Quarter Sessions
ordered a second 50 to be levied ; in 1804, a further 50, together
with 100 more to be dispensed by the Clerk of the Peace ; in
1805 yet another 30 to settle up their respective accounts, the
case not being finally disposed of until 1807. The process of
indictment was, in fact, frankly made use of by all the parties
concerned, as a means of levying rates. In 1784, for instance,
the great Parish of Manchester found itself indicted and fined
by Quarter Sessions for not repairing the thoroughfare called
State Lane. In the following year the same thing happened,
and two unfortunate inhabitants were actually apprehended
INDICTMENTS 55
under Bench warrant to answer to the indictment thus proving
very practically that the obligation could be brought home to
each and every parishioner. A " Parish Meeting " was accord-
ingly " held at the Parish Table in the Collegiate Church," when
a rai/e was made, on the assessment to the Land Tax, to yield an
amount sufficient to cover the fine, the expenses of the two
unfortunate defendants, and the cost of repair. In a few years
we see the procedure reduced to common form. Thus, in 1817,
the important thoroughfare of Oxford Road, Manchester, was
made the subject of an indictment, evidently with the assent
and collusion of the parish officers and principal inhabitants.
The whole of the great parish of Manchester (not merely the
township) was fined 1600, of which the Surveyors of Highways
for the township of Chorlton Row (in which much of the road
lies), were ordered to pay 200, whilst the prosecutors themselves
by agreement contributed 100. The balance was levied on the
various townships of Manchester, whose officers and representa-
tives held repeated meetings to arrange for its collection and
payment. The whole sum was directed to be paid to a person
appointed to be by him spent on the road. It came to be taken
for granted that no other course was open to those who sought
an improvement in the roads than to indict the parish. When,
at the opening of the nineteenth century, it became absolutely
necessary to get some better means of communication with Ireland,
" the first idea of the Government towards improving the road
was to indict 21 townships between Shrewsbury & Holy-
head." In other counties the office of public prosecutor,
with respect to faulty highways, was assumed by zealous magis-
trates who rode all over the country, noting the condition of the
roads, threatening the parish officers, and, in some cases, giving
(as we learn from Cumberland in 1829) " peremptory orders "
to the local Surveyors, the Cumberland gentleman even adding
a warning of his intention " to follow up his injunctions upon the
Surveyors by a personal survey or inspection of the line of road
in question previously to the commencement of the ensuing
sessions to enable him to present such parts of it at Sessions as
he may find out of repair, or slightly and insufficiently repaired."
From the standpoint of the local magistrate, anxious to level
up the standard of road maintenance within his own district
or throughout his county, the device of presentment had many
5 6 ROAD ADMINISTRATION
advantages. Even as regards the highways of his own immediate
neighbourhood, it enabled him to avoid the troublesome alter-
native of enforcing Statute Labour, imposing fines and super-
intending the behaviour of the Parish Surveyor. " I have often
been surprised," writes a correspondent to the Gentleman's
Magazine in 1794, at " observing Justices presenting roads lying in
their own districts. What could be their motive ? Have they
not all the power necessary for doing everything that can be
done by a presentment ? Some, I have heard, say they do it
because they do not like to impose fines on their neighbours,
and to be teased with applications for remitting them ; others,
that they get rid of the trouble of making orders and attending
to their execution." Moreover, it enabled the Justice, as we have
seen, to extend his reforming activity beyond the limits of his
own Petty Sessional Division, and to raise the standard of road
maintenance throughout the whole county. No less important
was the fact that the power to levy an unlimited fine enabled
Quarter Sessions and Parishes to escape from the new statutory
shackles of a strictly limited rate. " It is the avarice and obstinacy
of a few individuals," observed Thomas Butterworth Bayley,
of Manchester, one of the most efficient of eighteenth-century
Justices, " who, . . . sheltering themselves behind the words
of an Act of Parliament . . . refuse to contribute a farthing
beyond the sixpenny assessment " ; and this it was that
necessitated " the very tedious and expensive mode of levying
a fine under indictment or presentment by which a considerable
part of the money raised is lost in law charges, Court fees, and
poundage." The fact, moreover, that the Justices could direct
the fine to be paid to whomsoever they chose enabled them, in
some cases, to get spasmodically applied to the worst stretches
of road more skilled management than could be afforded by the
Parish Surveyors. But against these advantages there were
grave drawbacks. The continuous use, for the function of road
maintenance, of a procedure devised for the Suppression of
Nuisances went a long way to undermine the normal course pre-
scribed by Statute. In a parish under indictment, no one
willingly did his Statute Labour or Team Duty, lest he should be
afterwards called upon to pay the share of the fine, and thus be
mulcted both in cash and in kind. " The law does not dis-
tinguish," remarks Sir John Hawkins, " those who have done
METHODS OF ROAD REPAIR 57
from those who have refused to do their Statute work, but pro-
nounces its judgment indiscriminately against the whole parish,"
the necessary rate being levied on all alike. The Surveyor of
Highways, too, lost whatever motive for performing his duty
properly that would have been supplied by fear of being fined
for his neglect. " This," urged the Gentleman's Magazine in
1794, " is a matter of some importance, because many Surveyors,
who contribute a very small proportion to the parish rates, are
so little affected by the cost of a presentment that the dread of
it is not efficacy enough to stimulate them to proper exertions :
some of them would even like the frolic of attending at the
Assizes at the expense of the parish." And the action of the
reforming Justice might easily be indefinitely obstructed, or
even defeated, by other Justices who preferred a policy of economy
and laissez-faire. " Justices may sometimes have their own
reasons," it was said in 1794, " for not wishing roads in their
neighbourhood repaired. . . . Two Justices have been found to
endeavour to stop the repair of a road, by certifying it to be in
good repair, when on the trial of the indictment it has been
proved, to the satisfaction of a Jury and a Judge, that the road
was not in good repair. It is by defending such indictments on
frivolous pretences, instead of at once amending the road, that
enormous expenses are incurred. I could give ... an instance
of more than 100 being spent in this way, and the parish at
last being obliged to repair, when 30 would at first have done
all that was necessary ; but a neighbouring Justice did not choose
it should be done." The failure of the other magistrates to
support their reforming colleague was often due to mere ignorance
of what constituted proper repair. " We will suppose," says
a witness before a House of Commons Committee in 1809, " this
road to be indicted, after every method has been used to cause
it to be repaired, without success ; that, after harvest, the Parish
Surveyor contracts for it to be done by a stout labourer who takes
job work, with a special injunction ' to be sure that he throws
the road up high enough, and makes the stones of the old cause-
way or foot pavement to go as far as they can.' This diligent
operator falls to work, nor is he stopped by the equinoctial rains
in September, for it must be done, as contracted for, before the
Michaelmas Sessions. . . . The clods and rushes are thrown into
the bottom and the soft soil which nourished them, and all other
58 ROAD ADMINISTRATION
materials, hard or soft, form a convexity of considerable elevation,
according to order. The stones from the old broken footpath
duly surmount the whole, except a little gravel, which is raked
over them, just to keep them together. This finished by the
Saturday night, we will say, of October 3rd, for on Monday the
5th two magistrates on their way to Quarter Sessions are to
inspect it, to take off the indictment. How can they possibly
refuse to speak the truth, which is ' that it was perfectly smooth
when they saw it, and that a vast deal indeed had been done
since the last time they were there.' Besides wear and tear,
however, decomposition immediately takes place in this chaotic
mass." Hence, with all the appearance of vigour that was given
by the frequent indictment of parishes for neglecting their duty,
it remained true in the nineteenth century as in the eighteenth,
to use the words of John Shapleigh in 1749, that " prosecutions,
very seldom, if ever, procure the roads to be effectually mended,
or thereby put into good and sufficient repair." Finally, we
come to the fundamental vice of this procedure the inadequacy
of the old conception of a highway as being a mere right of
passage, and of the corresponding assumption that roads needed
only abstention from active nuisances and fulfilment of customary
services. It was habitually taken for granted, as is noted by
a critic of 1833, " that a parish cannot be indicted for a road
unless it can be shown that such road has been in a better state
than at the time of complaint : many of the roads in Hampshire
are mere tracks over the Downs ; and making them into good
roads would thus entail an expense on the parishes they pass
through to keep them up." A parish was not legally required
to raise the public right of way from one grade to another, a
footway to a bridleway or a bridleway to a cartway. But it was
just this transformation of narrow ways into broad, and especially
of mere beaten tracks into artificially prepared road surfaces,
that the circumstances required. What the law tacitly assumed
was the maintenance of some imaginary status quo. What
was being demanded was virtually a new service a service as
different from that of keeping open a free passage as a modern
railway is from a country lane.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV 59
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 51. We know of no systematic or intelligible account of the
procedure by presentment or indictment, as applied to administrative
purposes such as road maintenance. We have had to grope our way
through MS. Minutes of Quarter Sessions, with no further light than is
afforded by such legal manuals as Burn's Justice of the Peace, the works of
John Scott and Sir John Hawkins on the Highway Acts, such pamphlets
as those by E. Littleton (1692), George Meriton (1694), William Mather
(1696), John Shapleigh (1749), Henry Homer (1767), T. B. Bayley (1773),
and the contemporary references in newspapers and the Gentleman's
Magazine.
Page 51. The quotation is from The Justice of the Peace, by Rev.
Dr. Richard Burn, vol. ii. p. 196 of the 1758 edition. In a good little office
manual for Somersetshire Justices we read that " Magistrates intending to
present highways for being out of repair may give instruction to the clerk
of the indictments in the office of the clerk of the peace " (A Guide to the
Practice of the Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Somerset, by John
Jesse, Junior, Ilminster, 1815, p. 64). We may continue the description
of the formal procedure from the Wiltshire minutes. " It is ordered that
whenever the inhabitants of any parish or tything shall be presented by a
magistrate, or indicted for not repairing their highways, bridges or stocks,
the clerk of the peace, within one month after the Sessions at which such
presentment shall be made or indictment, found, to give notice to and
summon the inhabitants of each parish or tything that they may appear
and plead to the same at the then next Sessions." The inhabitants are
then to appear or give recognisances for their appearance. No present-
ment or indictment is to be discharged (on the ground that the necessary
repairs have been made) without formal certificate, and due notice to the
magistrate who made the presentment. " And it is further ordered that
before such indictment or presentment be discharged by certificate the
Surveyor or Surveyors of highways of the parish or tything so indicted or
presented shall appear in court and on oath set forth what sum of money
has been expended in repairing such highways " (MS. Minutes, Quarter
Sessions, Wiltshire, Hilary Sessions, 1808).
Page 52. Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890,
vol. ii. p. 228. Already in 1565 we read of a " true bill " being found by
the Grand Jury of Middlesex against the Parish of Islington, for non-repair
of its highway up Highgate Hill (Middlesex County Records, by J. C.
Jeaffreson, 1886, vol. i. p. 53).
Page 55. The Holyhead Road, by C. G. Harper (1902), vol. i. p. 19 ;
Cumberland Pacquet (newspaper), 15th December 1829.
Page 56. Gentleman's Magazine, July 1794, p. 677 ; Observations on
the General Highway and Turnpike Acts, by T. B. Bayley, 1773, p. 26. For
60 ROA D A DM IN IS TEA TION
a brief account of this indefatigable administrator, see our volume The
Parish and the County, p. 366.
Page 52. Highways, etc., by John Shapleigh, 1749, p. 15; MS. Minutes,
Quarter Sessions, Essex, 23rd April 1745 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Suffolk, 21st January 1765.
Page 53. Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox (1890),
vol. ii. p. 231 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, 10th October
1766 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Somerset, 6th October 1802.
Page 54. At one session in Wiltshire in 1810, no fewer than 20 parishes
were indicted in respect of their highways (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Wiltshire, October 1810); MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Northumber-
land, 10th October 1805, etc. ; MS. Vestry Minutes, in Churchwardens'
Account Books, Manchester, 23rd March 1784, 3rd July 1785, June 1817.
The MS. Minutes of Quarter Sessions of such Boroughs as Derby,
Lincoln, Southampton, Bristol, Winchester, and Coventry, which we have
specially consulted, show that it was a regular practice throughout the
whole of the eighteenth century, for the Borough Justices (that is to say,
the Mayor and Aldermen) to present the several parishes within the
Borough whenever any highways needed repair ; to adjourn the hearing if
the parish officials appeared and undertook to execute the repairs at once ;
to inflict a fine if this was not done ; to allow time for the execution of the
work ; and only to enforce the fine in case of default. (As to the relative
position of the Borough Authorities and the urban parishes, see our
volumes, The Manor and the Borough, and The, Parish and the County.)
Page 57. Observations on the State of the Highways, by (Sir) John
Hawkins, 1763, p. 32; Gentleman's Magazine, July 1794, p. 121, and
October 1794, p. 884.
Page 57. Appendix by Rowland Hunt, in Third Report of House of
Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809, p. 107.
The fact that parishes were obliged to defray the whole cost out of revenue,
instead of spreading considerable works over a term of years, by means of
a loan, made a policy of patching almost inevitable. This was pointed out
in 1794. " There is one great obstacle to the making of strenuous exer-
tions to put the roads in repair, which is that the landholder on whom it
falls has often but a temporary interest in the parish. If his lease be
within two or three years of expiring, and he expects another person to
bid for his lands * over his head,' and the roads in the parish are under
indictment, he will calculate whether it would not be easier for him to
pay his share of the expense of the indictment annually, and leave it as a
legacy for his successor in the farm, than to go to the expense of putting
the road in such a state of repair as would enable him to have it removed.
. . . Almost every road in this county is liable to be indicted. The money
actually paid by the landholders in consequence of indictments, I am
informed, would go a great way towards paying the interest of a sum
sufficient to put all the roads in the county in good repair " (General View
of the Agriculture of the County of Hereford, by John Clark, 1794, p. 55) ;
see also Highways, by John Shapleigh, 1749, pp. 30-31.
Page 58. The quotation is from the First Report of the Poor Law
Inquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A (Pringle's Report), p. 295.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV 61
Page 58. It would have been a good answer to an indictment to prove
that the road in question was not a highway for carriage traffic, but only a
" pack and prime way." Indictments for non-repair of these old packways
are also found (e.g. many in MS. Minutes of Quarter Sessions for Northumber-
land, October 1799, 1805, etc., and Cox cites one case in 1790, see his Three
Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, vol. ii. p. 234). But a " pack and prime
way " had only to be kept in repair as such, and the parish could not be
required to convert it into a carriage road. The need for the conversion
into a hard cart and carriage road of a highway which was only a " common
footway, horseway and way for driving cattle " an improvement for
which the parish was not legally chargeable is expressly given as the
ground for one of the early Turnpike Acts, enabling the Bedfordshire
Justices to make the road and levy tolls, viz. that of 5 Anne c. 10 (Hockley
and Woburn Turnpike Act, 1706).
CHAPTER V
THE NEW USERS OF THE ROADS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND
EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
THE new service, which those legally responsible for the mainten-
ance of the roads were called upon to perform, involved the
development of what were, in effect, bridlepaths into cartways :
the conversion of the soft and miry tracks, which had for many
centuries done duty as highways, into firm bottoms, and eventu-
ally into smooth, hard and level surfaces. These firm bottoms
and new surfaces were required, first in order to withstand, in
winter and summer alike, the perpetual trampling of an unprece-
dented succession of beasts of one sort and another, and then in
order to accommodate the new traffic on wheels. If this new
service had been wholly and expressly demanded at any one date,
we imagine that the owners and occupiers of rural land, on whom,
as we have seen, the bulk of the burden fell, would have strenu-
ously resisted the charge. But the new traffic on the roads came
about so silently, increased in volume so imperceptibly year by
year, and altered in kind so gradually, that the change in the
demand made upon the country was practically not noticed until
long afterwards, and only its burden was complained of.
The first cause of the new demand for improved ways was,
we think, the great increase in road traffic that seems to have
marked the latter part of the sixteenth and, still more, the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rapid growth of
London and of foreign trade ; the gradual uprising both of manu-
facturing and of local distributive centres ; the steady substitu-
tion of pasture for arable cultivation ; the habit of production
for exchange, and the decay of the family handicrafts ; together
with such political incidents as the union of the Crowns of
62
THE HORSEMEN 63
England and Scotland in 1603, and of the English and Scottish
Parliaments in 1707, led to an ever-progressing increase, alike
in the going to and fro of horsemen, in the driving to and fro of
beasts, and in the carrying to and fro of commodities of all sorts.
On all the main lines of communication, what may be called the
local use of the roads, by the farmers and cottagers who had to
maintain them, became a steadily diminishing fraction of the
total traffic.
But though the traffic was of a different nature, so far as its
origin and destination was concerned, the new users of the roads
were, for a long time, still, for the most part, horsemen and cattle.
We can hardly imagine to-day how rare, outside the Metropolis,
was any sort of wheeled vehicle, even during the seventeenth
century. Eight down to the middle of the eighteenth century
in remote parts of these islands we may even say down to the
middle of the nineteenth century the passage of a wheeled
vehicle of any kind remained, on all but the main roads, an
exceptional event of the day. To an extent that we find it now
difficult to realise, the seventeenth and eighteenth century
roads were trodden by animal feet.
We must note, to begin with, that throughout the whole of the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, to a great
though diminishing extent, throughout the eighteenth century,
travellers went on horseback. It was in this way that Chaucer
and his companions made their immortal pilgrimage to Canter-
bury ; it was in this way that Shakespeare's characters went on
their adventurous journeys ; it was in this way that Henry the
Eighth and Queen Elizabeth made their progresses ; it was in
this way that Hooker travelled to London to preach his first
sermon at St. Paul's ; it was in this way that John Hampden
journeyed up and down England to stir up the freeholders to
revolt ; it was in this way that Daniel Defoe, as a confidential
agent of the Government, enquired into the state of public
opinion all over Great Britain ; it was in this way that Samuel
Wesley took all England for his parish ; it was in this way that
James Watt moved from Glasgow to London to learn mathe-
matical instrument making ; it was in this way that William
Smith constructed for us the first geological way of England ;
it was in this way, as lately as our own grandfather's day, that
William Cobbett made his shrewd and caustic criticisms of
64 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
farming and local administration. Right down to the nineteenth
century, indeed, every increase of travel meant, for the most
part, an increase in the number of well-mounted horsemen, with
their saddle-bags behind them, that were a constant feature of
the roads. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century,
and in particular cases even into the nineteenth, judges and
barristers " rode " their circuits ; commercial travellers were
simply " riders," or became known as " bagmen " from the two
bags of samples they bore on their saddle-bows ; merchants and
manufacturers and their customers alike visited each other on
horseback ; legislators and officials went to and fro in the same
way. " These travellers commonly rode post-horses, changing
their mounts at well-known stages by the way. . . . Thickly
wrapped in riding cloaks, and with jackboots up to their hips,
they splashed through mud and mire, making light of occasional
falls, and so journeyed between London and Holy head in perhaps
six days, if they were both active and fortunate."
More numerous, however, than the mounted travellers were
the pack-horses, with their tinkling bells, heavily laden with a
pair of bales, or with " dungpots," " crooks," or panniers, used
for nearly every kind of commodity. In the Northern and
Midland counties, the single pony which had borne, to the Leeds
cloth-market, the weekly product of the little farmer-clothier,
gradually developed into long strings of pack-horses to and from
every industrial centre, passing, in some frequented thorough-
fares, in an almost continuous stream. " Fine, strapping,
broad-chested Lincolnshire animals," we are told, " were these
pack-horses, bearing on either side their bursting packs of
merchandise to the weight of half a ton. Twelve or fourteen in
a line, they would thus travel the North Road . . . from the
North to the Metropolis, to return with other wares of a smarter
kind from the London market for the country people." In the
middle of the eighteenth century, the miry ways of Staffordshire
and Warwickshire were constantly traversed, as we read in the
Life of Josiah Wedgwood, by " pack-horses and asses heavily
laden with coal, . . . tubs full of ground flint from the mills,
crates of ware or panniers of clay, . . . floundering knee-deep
through the muddy holes and ruts that were all but impass-
able. . . . The general rate of conveyance," we learn, " was
nine shillings per ton for ten miles," which represents about as
THE PACK-HORSES 65
great an amount of human labour as the rate for haulage found by
Thorold Rogers to prevail in the fourteenth century. The roads
of Somerset in 1695 were, we read, " full " of " carriers " of coal ;
strings of " horses passing and returning, loaden with coals dug
just thereabout." The traveller in the middle of the eighteenth
century, reports a pamphleteer named Mathews, met great
numbers of " men and women of Somersetshire and Gloucester-
shire, travelling to divers neighbouring towns with drifts of
horses, as four, ten perhaps, more or less in number . . . laden
with coals, . . . vast numbers of which were driven to Bristol,
Bath, Bradford and to many other places." Every provincial
town was a centre on which such lines of pack-horses and coal-
carriers converged. At Exeter, for instance, which had at the
end of the seventeenth century so large a trade in cloth that
10,000 changed hands weekly, a lady traveller notes in 1695
that the road was " thick " with " carriers, all entering into town
with their loaded horses." In Westmorland and Cumberland,
at the same date, the same traveller met innumerable " horses
on which they have a sort of panniers, some close, some open,
that they strew full of hay, turf, lime and dung and everything
they would use. . . . Abundance of horses I see all about Kendal
Street with their burdens." Three-quarters of a century later,
the historians of these two counties preserve for us a printed
time-table of the twelve regular pack-horse gangs, usually number-
ing twenty horses each, that went in and out of the same town
weekly, serving no fewer than twelve different lines of route.
The adoption of the pack-horse as the universal means of
conveyance of goods led to the construction, in the middle or
by the side of the broad soft tracks which served as roads, of
narrow causeways, wide enough for one horse to walk on, " covered
with flags or boulder stones." A causeway of this sort, " about
two feet broad," says Whitaker or, as Defoe testifies of another
part, " generally about a yard and a half broad " " paved with
round pebbles, was [in 1750] all that man or horse could travel
upon, particularly in the winter months, through Cheshire and
Lancashire." It was sometimes " guarded by posts at a proper
distance to keep carts off it," or else raised " several feet " above
the level of the slough of mud which did duty for a road.
" Travellers who encountered each other on these elevated
causeways sometimes tried to wear out each other's patience
F
66 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
rather than either would risk a diversion." Two persons who
rode from Glasgow to London in 1739 record that they found
no hard road " till they came to Grantham, within 110 miles
of London." Up to that point they travelled upon a narrow
causeway with an unmade soft road upon each side of it on
which " they met from time to time strings of pack-horses from
thirty to forty in a gang, the mode by which goods seemed to be
transported from one part of the country to another. The leading
horse of the gang carried a bell, to give warning to travellers
coming in the opposite direction, and . . . when they met these
trains of horses, with their packs across their backs, the causeway
not affording room to pass, they were obliged to make way for
them, and plunge into the side road, out of which they sometimes
found it difficult to get back again upon the causeway."
But it was perhaps the continual increase of the Metropolis,
and the drawing of its supplies of food by road from the very
extremities of the kingdom, that did most to transform the
character of the traffic. We first hear this commented on with
regard to the supply of fish. At the very beginning of the seven-
teenth century we read of the fish-jobbers of Lyme Regis, in
Dorsetshire, who rode off regularly to London, leading long
strings of pack-horses laden with the catch of the twenty-five
fishing-boats of that little port. " Horses with panniers called
dorsers were brought to the beach tied one to the other ready
to receive the fish. When the dorsers were filled, the driver
mounted the foremost horse of the train, and galloped off to
London." A century later we hear of the " Rippers " of Folke-
stone, who rode off daily to the Metropolis with fresh fish. In
1710 there were no fewer than 320 such fish-laden horses galloping
through Tunbridge every day. Presently, from every fishing
village within two hundred miles, " the best and largest " of the
catch of each tide were, we are told, sent " upon horses which
travel night and day to London market." The centripetal
attraction reached even more distant places. The plentiful
salmon caught at Berwick-on-Tweed, Daniel Defoe tells us, were
in his time taken on horseback to Shields, and there salted and
dried, or boiled and pickled, to be shipped to London as " New-
castle salmon." But about 1740, one Marshall of Berwick was
enterprising enough to organise a regular service of fast horsemen
all the way to London, where the salmon were henceforth sold
THE CATTLE 67
fresh, to the great advantage of the dealer. He soon found
imitators at other ports, for the salmon from Workington and
Carlisle, we are told in 1748, " they carry, fresh as they take
them, up to London upon horses, which, changing often, go night
and day without intermission, and as they say, outgo the post ;
so that the fish come very sweet and good to London."
But the cattle, sheep and pigs on the roads were as numerous
as the horses. " In the Spring," we read in The Book of the Axe,
" the Western roads were studded with large droves of calves
driven out of Dorsetshire, some for the Exeter and Plymouth
markets, but the majority for rearing in the rich Devonshire
pastures. On the other hand, Cornwall and its borders produced
large quantities of pigs, in which a lucrative traffic was carried
on by persons well known as pig- jobbers, who constantly drove
herds of them into Dorsetshire and elsewhere, having regular
halting-places, where the animals were either fed with horse-beans
in the street, or made to halt for the night, as the case might be.
At Axminster, if nowhere else, the spot where the droves were
habitually fed is marked by the not very classical name of Pig
Street." It was, however, the provisioning of the great Metro-
polis that directly set most of the droves in motion. De Quincey
has described for us how the traveller, in every county of England,
met great herds of cattle wending their way to the shambles of
Smithfield. " Often," he says, " at great distances of two and
three hundred miles or more from this colossal emporium of
men, wealth and intellectual power, have I felt the sublime ex-
pression of her enormous magnitude in one simple form of ordinary
occurrence, viz. in the vast droves of cattle, suppose upon the
Great North road, all with their heads directed to London ; and
expounding the size of the attracting body, together with the
force of its attracting power, by the never-ending succession of
these droves, and the remoteness from the capital of the lines
on which they were moving."
We may append some statistical details of this vast converg-
ence. Already in the middle of the eighteenth century it was
estimated that 40,000 Highland cattle annually tramped their
way to the meadows of Norfolk, there to be fattened and sent off
in weekly droves throughout the winter, to walk to the London
market. " Twenty thousand head of Scotch beasts, at least,"
it was said in 1750 of the Wisbech highway alone, " go this road
68 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
yearly." Thirty thousand black cattle from the summer and
autumn fairs of Wales went, every year, in huge herds through
Herefordshire, towards south-east England, choosing, like the
Scotch cattle, the bye-lanes in order to avoid the turnpike tolls.
Altogether, during the third quarter of the eighteenth century,
something like a hundred thousand head of cattle and three-
quarters of a million sheep found their way to Smithfield annually,
representing a daily arrival, rain or shine, of more than two
thousand animals, by whose feet the highways leading to the
Metropolis must have been kept constantly in a state of mud that
we find it difficult nowadays to imagine.
There was yet another kind of traffic, besides horses, cattle,
sheep and pigs, that helped to keep the roads soft and miry.
" For the further supplies of the markets of London," we read
in 1748, " they have within these years found it practicable to
make the geese travel on foot too, and prodigious numbers are
brought to London in like droves from the farthest parts of
Norfolk. . . . 'Tis very frequent now to meet a thousand or
two thousand in a drove. They begin to drive them generally in
August, when the harvest is almost over, that the geese may feed
on the stubble as they go. Thus they hold on to the end of
October, when the roads begin to be too stiff and deep for their
broad feet and short legs to march in." To quote another writer :
" Suffolk and Norfolk seem to have supplied all the rest of England
with turkeys. On the road from Ipswich to London was situated
Stratford Bridge, and along this passage over the Stour some
150,000 turkeys were driven yearly," besides others which came
over Newmarket Heath, and by Sudbury and Clare. From all
parts, indeed, as John Scott remarks in 1778, these " devoted
feathered legions, at certain seasons of the year, bespread the
surface of the roads on their way to the all-devouring Metropolis."
The great development of this foot traffic, whether of man
or beast, positively militated against anything that we should
nowadays regard as a good condition of the roads. The constant
tramping of droves of cattle, herds of sheep and pigs, and flocks of
geese and turkeys ; the incessant streams of walking pack-horses ;
the galloping relays of post-horses and fish-carriers, all tended to
keep the track in a perpetual slough of mud. Moreover, the
farmers, and the cattle-dealers driving their flocks and herds
daily to and fro, objected to anything approaching to a metalled
THE ROAD WAGGON 69
surface. The Sussex agriculturists actually petitioned Parlia-
ment in 1710, on this ground, against a proposed road improve-
ment. " The roads," one of them is reported to the House of
Commons as saying, " are already good enough for horses to go ;
. . . that he drives two or three hundred bullocks forward and
backward ; . . . that six or seven hundred sheep and lambs
come to every market ; that, in short, the roads are better for
cattle to go on as they now are, than amended, because the
stones will cripple and lame them before they come to market."
For horse and cattle traffic, too, minor irregularities of surface ;
ruts and holes ; unbridged rivulets crossing the track ; streams
to be forded ; deep hollow ways ; the narrowness of old cause-
ways ; ups and downs, and even steep hills, were no great dis-
advantages ; and it was certainly not worth while avoiding such
obstacles even by a short detour, let alone by anything like road
engineering.
But an altogether new kind of traffic began to claim the
attention of those responsible for the maintenance of the roads.
We may perhaps date from the opening of the seventeenth
century the beginning of any considerable use of the roads by
wheeled vehicles, at any rate since Roman times. We notice
these new users of the roads first in and near the Metropolis.
The Thames, as a modern author reminds us, had been " for
sixteen centuries the great highway of communication within
London walls. London streets were mere footways or bridle-
paths between house walls ; when Queen Elizabeth went abroad
she was carried in a litter by her gentlemen ; there were on
Thames side 40,000 watermen till the middle of the seventeenth
century." " Suddenly," as he observes, we have, in 1622, the
complaint of John Taylor, the waterman poet, that people are
taking to new-fangled ways of locomotion, that " this is a rattling,
rowling, rumbling age," in which " the world runs on wheels."
" Road waggons," as public vehicles, seem to have been started,
if we may believe the veracious Stow, as early as 1564, though
they were certainly not common before the very end of the
sixteenth century ; and for half a century more they remained
infrequent on all but the main thoroughfares. Year by year,
these " great hooded waggons . . . with a team of eight horses
. . . travelling at the rate of three miles an hour," often not
making more than fifteen miles in a long summer's day, and
70 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
grinding the soft track into deep ruts by their ponderous iron-
shod wheels, became more numerous. Hackney carriages were
first used in and about London from 1634 onwards ; post-chaises
from 1664 ; whilst private carriages seem to have come into
common use in the same generation. Cromwell, it is noted, set
out for Ireland in 1649, not on horseback but in a heavy coach
drawn by six Flemish mares, several other coaches accompanying
him. The development of foreign trade, the growth of the great
ports, and the improvement of the minor harbours, which
specially characterised the early part of the eighteenth century,
created new centres for the distribution of goods by carts and
waggons. Thus, to give only one out of many instances, the
works executed by Sir James Lowther, at the little harbour of
Whitehaven (Cumberland) between 1709 and 1739, presently
compelled practically a reconstruction of the roads radiating
from that town, " which," we learn from Defoe's Tour, " were
become ruinous and bad by the great use made of them since
the improvement in the harbour, for before that time they were
very narrow, and seldom made use of by carts and wheel
carriages." Elsewhere the steadily developing manufacturing
industries kept long strings of carts laboriously dragging coal
from the mines to the ironworks, glassworks and potteries. In
South Essex the traveller met equally long strings of carts con-
veying chalk or lime from the pits. " At the end of October,"
we are told, " when the highways got too heavy " for the poultry
to walk to London on their own feet, they were, at the beginning
of the eighteenth century, sent in wheeled vehicles. At first
these were huge and deeply laden waggons. The loads of ducks
sent up twice a week from Peterborough and St. Ives, Defoe tells
us, used to be " drawn by ten or twelve horses each, they were
so heavy." Then they invented " fast carts, composed of four
stories or stages," which ploughed their way through the mud
with the best speed that two powerful horses could impart to
them, " travelling as much as a hundred miles in the twenty-four
hours." By means of other specially built carts, drawn by relays
of fast -trotting horses, and going continuously night and day,
the fish-dealers of Lowestoft and Yarmouth began, in the middle
of the century, to supply the Metropolis with fresh herrings in
quantity, instead of being limited to the amount that the galloping
horsemen could carry. Latterly these fish-carts were made to do
THE CARRIAGE 71
the journey at a speed of as much as eight miles an hour. The
whole of this motley crowd of owners and users of newly intro-
duced wheeled conveyances were, from the end of the seventeenth
century onward, persistently denouncing the abominable state
of the roads. It is significant that the earliest practical manual
of road repair a little treatise by Thomas Mace dates from
1675. Pamphlets on the state of the roads then begin to appear.
It is " most certain," we read in one of them, dated 1692, " that
the highways of England are extremely bad at present. And
it is as certain that this badness of the Highways is a great and
public inconvenience, so that it much concerns us to have them
mended." In 1694, we read that " the highways . . . were
grown so foundrous (as the law terms it) and so extremely bad,
that the owners and occupiers of lands in most places have been
necessitated their fences to lie down, and to permit people to
travel over their inclosed ground ... by reason of the impass-
ableness of the highways." For the first few decades of the
eighteenth century the House of Commons Journals abound
with complaints as to the " ruinous state " into which the great
roads between London and such towns as Portsmouth, Devizes,
Bristol, Chester and Norwich had fallen ; the dangers to which
carriage passengers were exposed, and the absolute impassable-
ness, for wheeled vehicles, during nine months in the year, of
some parts even of these main routes. " This road," writes
Defoe of one great highway, " is not passable but just in the
middle of summer, after the coal carriages have beaten the way,
for as the ground is a stiff clay, so after rain the water stands as
in a dish, and horses sink into it up to their bellies." The
" nobility and gentry," it was complained in 1753, found it
impracticable " to visit even their own estates." Squire Western,
it will be remembered, had a coach and four, but, unhappily the
" badness of the . . . roads made this of little use, for none who
set much value on their necks " would have driven in it. In
1750, as the modern historian of Surrey tells us, " the people of
Horsham petitioned Parliament for a passable carriage road to
London, the road by Coldharbour and Dorking, which had
superseded the excellent Roman road, being accessible only on
horseback. If they wanted to drive to London, they gravely
declared that they had to go down to the coast and round by
Canterbury." Even as near the centre as Kensington, it was
72 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
reported by Lord Hervey in 1736, that " the road between this
place and London is grown so infamously bad that we live here
in the same solitude as we should do if cast on a rock in the
middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us that there
is between them and us a great impassable gulf of mud." The
Mile End Koad in 1756 " resembled a stagnant lake of deep mud
from Whitechapel to Stratford, with some deep and dangerous
sloughs ; in many places it was hard work for the horses to go
faster than a foot pace, on level ground, with a light four-wheel
post-chaise."
We need not weary the reader with any further particulars
about the state of the roads, familiar to us all in the oft-quoted
extracts from the travels of Daniel Defoe and Arthur Young,
and so graphically summed up in Macaulay's History of England
and Smiles' s Lives of the Engineers. It was upon highways of
this kind that the first stage-coaches, driven by a coachman on
the box, as distinguished from the carriers' hooded waggons,
led by the riding or walking conductors, began to run. It is,
indeed, usually forgotten how modern are these new users of the
roads. We are told by the learned historian of the Inland
Kevenue that " there is no trustworthy record before 1754 of
any coach with springs." In that year several were advertised
to run between London and Edinburgh, Manchester and Chelms-
ford. The traveller to and from Liverpool could get a coach at
Warrington (Cheshire) by 1757 ; but none ran to or from Liver-
pool itself unti^ 1766. Palmer's mail-coaches date only from
1784. With the advent of these "flying coaches," which
accomplished their early journeys at the then wonderful rate of
five miles an hour, and which, by 1830, expected to run (from
London to Devonport) 227 miles in 24 hours, or (from London
to Edinburgh) 400 miles in 40 hours, began the really imperative
demand for the hard, smooth and level surface for which we now
look in a road. What seems remarkable, however, is that con-
temporary pamphleteers and later historians alike complacently
take it for granted that the new users of wheeled traffic had a
grievance against the parishes which they passed through.
The passengers demanded the new kind of road without paying
for it. It was in vain that William Marshall protested in 1804
that, " when roads are worn by the public at large tenfold more,
in some instances, than by the inhabitants of the parishes they
A NEW OBLIGATION 73
happen to pass through, it is become unreasonable, if not unjust,
to impose the task of repairing them on the individuals who
happen to be possessed of a plough team, a cart, a wheel-barrow,
a shovel, or a basket (what a principle of taxation in these days !),
though they may never use the road they are doomed to repair."
To the legislators and statesmen of the latter part of the eighteenth
and the early part of the nineteenth century, it seems never to
have occurred that, to use the words of Lord Macaulay, to demand
" that a route connecting two great towns which have a large
and thriving trade with each other should be maintained at the
cost of the rural population scattered between them is obviously
unjust." So ingrained was the feeling that it was the duty of
the farmers and cottagers to maintain the highways that neither
the aristocracy nor the legislature, neither the merchants nor
the traders, neither the authors nor the journalists, ever reveal
any glimmering of the idea that in expecting roads fit for fast
carriage traffic, they were making an entirely novel demand on
the villagers whose ancient tracks they traversed. The assump-
tion made by " enlightened public opinion," in the latter part
of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century,
that a highway was not kept in proper repair unless it had at all
times, rain or shine, summer or winter, a smooth, hard, dry
surface, free from undue windings or inconveniently steep
gradients, was an entirely new ideal of road administration,
involving an unprecedented obligation of the country population,
unwarranted by law or custom, and impossible of attainment by
any ancient devices. The House of Commons, confronted by
the abominable state of the highways, and woefully perplexed
by angry petitions from the maintainers of the roads against the
users, and from the users against the maintainers, passed, in the
course of the eighteenth century, a bewildering series of highway
statutes, which the Justices of the Peace were supposed to
administer. These enactments, consolidated to date in the
two successive General Highway Acts of 1766 and 1773, which
we owe to the industry and zeal of Thomas Gilbert, made only
minor alterations in the administration of the service of road
maintenance, or in the obligations of those who rendered it.
In the main, the country gentlemen who drafted these Acts
sympathised with their tenants and labourers, on whom fell the
obligation to mend the roads. Accordingly, they were always
74 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
seeking to restrict and regulate the use of the King's Highway.
There was, to begin with, the protection of the highway against
the aggressions, by neglect or default, of the adjacent landowners
the insistence on the due scouring of the neighbouring ditches
and watercourses ; the leaving unploughed and free from hedges
the fifteen or thirty feet margins of the middle of the road ; and
the due priming, " plashing," or lopping of the hedges and trees
on both sides. There were, of course, all kinds of obstructions
to be prohibited the laying of soil or earth on the road ; the
use of it for manure heaps ; the leaving about of timber and
stones ; careless and disorderly driving ; blocking the highway
by standing vehicles or by ploughs or other instruments of
husbandry, and ever so many analogous hindrances to free
passage. This kind of regulation for the prevention of nuisances
was developed, in the course of a couple of centuries, into an
elaborate code which has now become so interwoven with our
habits that we are barely aware of its continuous enforcement.
But there was another kind of regulation, which nowadays seems
without justification injunctions and prohibitions as to the
construction of wheeled vehicles, the way they were to be drawn,
the weight they were to carry, and the number of horses or oxen
to be used. Already, in 1621, we see James the First forbidding
any four-wheeled waggon whatsoever, or the carriage of more
than a ton of goods at a time, as the vehicles bearing " excessive
burdens so galled the highways, and the very foundations of
bridges, that they were public nuisances." And though this
particular proclamation was withdrawn, a similar one was issued
in the following reign, and the same kind of regulation appears
in the statute book immediately after the Restoration. We do
not intend to take up the time of the student, or weary the reader,
by analysing or even enumerating the score or more of separate
Acts, during the eighteenth century, which regulated wheels and
weights, the number of horses and the manner in which they were
to be harnessed. By 1755, on the single issue of the number of
horses to be used, the learned Dr. Burn gave up in despair the
task of stating the law with certainty and precision. " If a
person," he wrote, " would know what number of horses or
beasts in a cart or waggon are allowed by the statutes for the
preservation of the roads, let him take what treatise at present
he pleases concerning the highways, he must read over the whole,
ATTEMPTED LIMITATION 75
before he shall be sure that he hath found all which the law hath
enacted concerning the same ; and such is often the inaccuracy
and confusion, that when he hath perused the whole, perhaps he
may be still to seek. For as to this instance before us, there
have been regulations made concerning the same by ten different
Acts of Parliament at very different times. Before he can have
any competent knowledge thereof he must lay all these ten
Acts together, and when he shall have done this, he will find
amongst them so many repeals, and revivals, and explanations,
that it will even then be no easy matter to conclude with certainty
how the law doth stand as to that article." But it was not
merely the maximum number of draught cattle that was fixed.
They were not to be allowed to straggle over the whole road, in
straining to pull the vehicle out of the deep ruts, but were to be
confined by shafts and poles, so as to compel them to follow
in each other's steps. In defiance of warning and experience,
Parliament again and again recurred to the device of limiting the
load. The climax of regulative activity was perhaps reached
in the detailed and ever-changing code as to the construction of
the vehicle itself, and more especially of its wheels. In the
interminable series of enactments, amendments, repeals, and
re-enactments of the eighteenth century, we watch successive
knots of amateur legislators laying down stringent rules as to
the breadth of the wheel ; the form of its rim ; the use of iron
tires and headed nails ; the height of the wheel ; the position of
the felly, the spokes, and the axle ; the space between each pair
of wheels, and the respective lines of draught between back
wheels and front. Throughout this tangled skein of legislation
the mass of which must be seen to be believed we discover
practically one and the same implicit assumption, that the
wheeled carriage was an intruder on the highway, a disturber
of the existing order, a cause of damage in short, an active
nuisance to the roadway to be suppressed in its most noxious
forms, and, where inevitable, to be regulated and restricted as
much as possible. Instead of the modern purpose of providing
such roads as secure the maximum mobility of men and com-
modities, our great-grandfathers aimed at preserving their
highways from anything beyond the minimum wear and tear.
Indeed, from the middle of the eighteenth century onward, they
thought that they could make the traffic positively subservient
76 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
to the maintenance of- the road by converting every wheeled
vehicle into an involuntary roller, which would consolidate and
repair the surface over which it passed, instead of wearing it down
or cutting it up ; with the result that the tires of 2| or 4 inch
breadth of surface, on which Parliament at first insisted, passed
gradually into tires of 6, 9, and even 19 inches in breadth. It is
only by realising the implicit assumption, that the existing soft
highways were to be protected against the intrusion of wheeled
traffic, that the complicated and long-continued legislation as
to wheels never more than moderately successful in attaining
its object can be seen to lack neither ingenuity nor a certain
equitable justification.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 62. We know of no adequate description of the change in the
use of the roads that began about 1600 ; and we can refer the student only
to the authorities mentioned below. S miles' s Lives of the Engineers (many
editions) is the best single volume.
Page 64. The quotation is from The Holyhead Road, by C. G. Harper,
1902, vol. i. pp. 2-3.
Page 64. As to the pack-horses, the quotations are from Fragments of
Two Centuries, by Alfred Kingston, 1893, p. 6 ; Life of Josiah Wedgwood,
by Eliza Meteyard, 1865, pp. 267, 275 ; Through England on a Side Saddle,
. . . Diary of Celia Fiennes (1695), edited by the Hon. Mrs. Griffiths,
1888, pp. 160, 199, 205, 207 ; Remarks on the Cause and Progress of the
Scarcity and Dearness, by J. Mathews, 1797, pp. 33-34 ; History of Westmor-
land and Cumberland, by J. Nicholson and R. Burn, 1777, vol. i. p. 66.
See also Remarks made in a Tour from London to the Lakes, by A. Walker,
1792, p. 25 ; Loidis and Elmete, by T. D. Whitaker, 1816, p. 81 ; Perambu-
lation of Dartmoor, by Samuel Rowe, 1848, p. 87.
Page 65. For the causeways see Loidis and Elmete, 1816, by T. D.
Whitaker, pp. 77, 81 ; A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, by
Daniel Defoe, vol. iii. p. 248 of 1748 edition ; Remarks made in a Tour from
London to the Lakes, by A. Walker, 1792, p. 25 ; The Former and Present
State of Glasgow, by James Cleland, 1840, p. 65.
In Lancashire, records the historian of Preston, " strings of pack-horses,
thirty and forty in a gang, were used for carrying coals and lime. The
leading horse of the gang carried a bell to give warning to travellers coming
in the opposite direction by any sharp turn or narrow pass. It very
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V 77
frequently happened that the Roman causeway between Wigan and
Preston scarcely afforded room to pass : they were obliged to make way
for each other by plunging into the side road (which was soft and some-
times almost impassable), out of which they found it difficult to get back
upon the causeway " (History of the Borough of Preston, by P. A. Whittle,
1837, vol. ii. p. 61).
It may be observed hereon that the Act of 1691 had expressly directed
that " no horse cawsey shall be less in breadth than three feet " (3 William
and Mary, c. 12, sec. 19). But it is improbable that any old causeway,
Roman or otherwise, was widened by the parish in which it lay, though it
might be done by private munificence. " The Surveyors of the Highways,"
we read in 1717, " began to raise the Causey at Horeshead Still. They
finished the work all at my expense " (Memoirs of the Life ofElias Ashmole,
Esquire, edited by Charles Burden, 1717, p. 69). New causeways were,
however, constructed from time to time not always, it seems, very
solidly. " Without due care," wrote a pamphleteer of 1746, " new cause-
ways will sooner become ruinous than old roads " (The Contrast, . . .
with proposals how to amend and render more effectual the laws in being for
the preservation of the public roads, by Philanglus (i.e. Joseph Newball), 1746,
p. 26). At the very end of the eighteenth century it could be said of the
Weald of Sussex and Kent that, " in winter, even carts are excluded ; and
it is extremely dangerous, and frequently impracticable, in that season to
ride on horseback along the main roads ; in consequence of which narrow
paths, called horse tracks, are paved with stones, or formed with seabeach
on one side of the roads, just wide enough to ride upon ; but even this
convenience is not general " (General View of the Agriculture of Kent, by
John Boys, 1794, p. 98). In the Isle of Axholme, where the highways had
been quite impassable in winter, even on horseback, " the causeways were
completed all the distance from one village to another," during the era of
distress from high prices, 1810-12, " a horse breadth," and paved with
Yorkshire flags (History and Topography of the Isle of Axholme, by Rev.
W. B. Stonehouse, 1839, p. 45).
Page 66. The badness of the roads seems to have made London
dependent for its heavier supplies, down to the end of the seventeenth
century, on sea and river traffic, and on what could be grown within a
short radius of the city. In The Grand Concern of England explained in
Several Proposals in Parliament (by John Gressot ?), published in 1673, we
are told that all sorts of supplies came from Henley on Thames and from
Hull, and oats from Lynn and Boston ; but that, otherwise, the hay,
straw, beans, peas, and oats were raised within a circuit of no more than
twenty miles.
Page 66. As to the fish trade from Lyme Regis, see The Diary of
Walter Yonge, by George Roberts, Camden Society, 1848, Introduction,
p. xxvii ; and Social History of the Southern Counties, by George Roberts,
1856, p. 489 ; that from Folkestone, see Three Years' Travels in England,
Scotland, and Wales, by Rev. James Brome, 1700, p. 274, and House of
Commons Journals, 10th February 1710 (vol. xvi.) ; that from Berwick on
Tweed, History of Berwick on Tweed, by John Fuller, 1799, p. 390, and
History of Berwick on Tweed, by Frederick Sheldon, 1849, pp. 277-278 ;
78 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
that from Workington and Carlisle, A Tour through the whole Island
of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. i. p. 8, vol. iii. p. 268 of 1748 edition.
" Sixteen fishermen ... go with eight horses each . . . 320 fishermen's
horses go through this road every day" (Evidence on the Sevenoaks
and Tunbridge Turnpike Trust Bill, House of Commons Journals, vol. xvi.
p. 306, 10th February 1710). The word " dorser " is the same as " dosser,"
used by Chaucer, for pannier carried on the back.
Page 67. The Book of the Axe, by G. P. R. Pulman, 4th edition, 1875,
p. 78. This excellent book contains much local information.
Autobiographic Sketches, by Thomas De Quincey, chap, vii., " The
Nation of London " (vol. xiv. of Works, edition of 1863, p. 179).
As to the number of Highland cattle, see A Tour through the whole Island
of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. i. p. 63 of 1748 edition, and Remarks
on Road Bills in general, and on the Wisbech Road Bill in particular, by
James Collier, 1750, p. 4. It was computed by Sir John Sinclair, towards
the end of the eighteenth century, that as many as 100,000 cattle left
Scotland annually for the south. See Notes and Sketches illustrative of
Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century, by B. M. Alexander, 1877,
p. 73.
For the Welsh cattle, see Historical Memoranda of Breconshire, by John
Lloyd, 1903, vol. i. pp. 53-56. The statistics of beasts entering Smithfield
are from the Annals of Agriculture, vol. vii. p. 64, 1786, where the total
number of cattle for the ten years 1776-85 is given as 992,040, and of
sheep, 6,859,990. " The greatest supply of cattle and sheep ever known
was in the four years from 1780 to 1783, in which the average per annum
was, of beasts, 101,985, and of sheep, 720,160 " (ibid. p. 55).
So much animal traffic had other results, which we are apt to forget.
" Everybody knows," we read in 1706, " that for a mile or two round
this city, the roads, and the ditches hard by, are commonly so full of
nastiness and stinking dirt that oftentimes many persons who have occasion
to come in or go out of town are forced to stop their noses to avoid the ill
smell occasioned by it ; and besides that, as the dirt is deep in some places
which are full of holes, it often occasions horses to stumble and fall, and
carts to overturn, whereby sometimes goods are spoiled and several persons
hurt, if not killed" (Proposals for establishing a Charitable Fund in the
City of London, 1706, p. 19).
Page 68. The marching poultry are described in " The Manner of
driving Turkeys and Geese out of Norfolk and Suffolk up to London,"
which finds a place in A Choice Collection of Curious Relations, 1739 : see
also A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. i.
p. 54 of 1748 edition, and p. 53 of 1779 edition ; Digests of- the General
Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 281 ; and History
of the English Landed Interest, Modern Period, by R. M. Garnier, p. 279.
Page 69. House of Commons Journals, vol. ii. p. 306, 10th February
1710 (Evidence on Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Turnpike Trust Bill).
Page 69. The quotation is from The Soul of London, by Ford Madox
Hueffer, 1905, p. 48. See the Works of John Taylor, "the Water Poet,"
part ii. p. 242 ; notably An Arrant Thief, published in 1622, and The
World runs on Wheels, or Odds between Carts and Coaches, 1623.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V 79
Page 70. The beginning of any appreciable use of the roads by
wheeled traffic (since Roman times) may be put somewhere between 1600
and 700, but it is difficult to give it a precise date. A paper by
J. H. Markland, entitled "Remarks on the Early Use of Carriages"
(Archceologica, vol. xx. p. 443, 1824), may be consulted; together with
the following varied compilations : English Pleasure Carriages, by William
Bridges Adams, 1837 ; The World on Wheels, by Ezra M. Stratton, an
excellent production by a New York coach-builder in 1878 ; Early Carriages
and Roads, by Sir W. Gilbey, 1903 ; and Carriages and Coaches, by R.
Strauss, 1912. "In the reign of Queen Elizabeth," it is repeatedly asserted,
" very few coaches, chaises, or chairs were made use of," even in London
(The Contrast, . . . with proposals how to amend and render more effectual
the laws in being for the preservation of the public roads, by Philanglus
(i.e. Joseph Newball), 1746, p. 10). It is said, however, that the carriers'
waggons began to be freely used as public vehicles for passengers at the
end of the sixteenth century (History of . . . Newbury, by Walter Money,
1889, p. 337), though Fynes Morison says that " none but women and
people of inferior condition travel in this sort " (Itinerary, or Ten Years'
Travel throughout Great Britain and other Parts of Europe, by Fynes Morison,
1617). In 1621 we find that (under the Royal Proclamation mentioned in
the text) various carriers were proceeded against at the Middlesex Sessions
for injuring the highways by driving more than the lawful number of
horses and oxen (Middlesex County Records, by J. C. Jeaffreson, 1887-92,
vol. ii. pp. 159, 173, etc.). On the other hand, Swynfen's outburst in
Parliament, in the discussion on the Highways Act of 1670, to the effect
that " waggons have been in use these thirty years," dates them only
from 1640 (Debates of the House of Commons from 1667 to 1694, by Hon.
Anchitell Grey, 1769, vol. i. p. 233). He was perhaps referring to their
use as regular passenger vehicles. Regular passenger vehicles ran in the
Commonwealth. They were certainly running regularly between London
and Devon, London and Preston, and London and Coventry, by the
accession of Charles II. In The Grand Concern of England explained in
Several Proposals to Parliament (Harleian Miscellany], issued in 1673, the
new habit of riding in coaches and caravans is referred to, and it is proposed
that they be suppressed. Coaches were then running thrice a week between
London and Exeter, Chester and York respectively, making the journey
in five days. An able pamphlet without a date, which seems to belong to
the period 1680-1700, is entitled Reasons humbly offered to the consideration
of Parliament for the Suppressing such of the Stage Coaches and Caravans
now travelling upon the roads of England as are unnecessary, and regulating
such as shall be thought fit to be continued. But no such suppression took
place ; and gradually the " caravan " became the regular method of cheap
and slow travelling on the main roads. " A picturesque object was the
old stage waggon on the road, with the bells on the harness of the leading
horses, and frequently the driver in his smock frock riding by the side on
a small pony, with his long waggoner's whip, a horn lantern hanging up in
front to be lighted when night came on " (Old Coaching Days, by Stanley
Harris, 1882, p. 113).
In remote parts of the country wheeled traffic remained almost unknown
8o NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
for at least another century. Thus in Cornwall, right down to the opening
of the nineteenth century, " there were no carriages in general use.
I remember only one kept in Falmouth and one in Flushing ; and their
passage through the streets was followed always by a crowd of children, as
if it were something wonderful " (Autobiography of John Silk Buckingham ;
see also A Guide to Penzance and its Neighbourhood, by J. S. Courtney,
1845). In 1813 the " slide-car," a kind of sledge, was still used in Wales
instead of a wheeled vehicle (An Essay on the Construction of Roads and
Carriages, by R. L. Edgeworth, 1813, p. 70). As late as 1843 a Banffshire (
parish (Scotland) had no vehicular traffic, and hence no " made roads."
"The harvest was got in on sleds, i.e. two long poles trailing behind a horse,
and connected by a cross-piece. Corn was carried to market, and lime j
fetched for farm purposes, on horseback " (Annals of the Disruption, by
Rev. Thomas Brown, 1890, p. 37); see, hi corroboration, Notes and Sketches
illustrative of Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century, by B. M.
Alexander, 1877, pp. 38-39.
It may be added that the Sedan Chair, introduced from France in 1581, j
and required (in London) to be licensed from 1634, was habitually used in !
London at the opening of the nineteenth century, and in some northern |
towns till 1840 ; whilst it lasted with old - fashioned people (e.g. old
Mrs. Pusey, who lived in Grosvenor Square) down to 1858 (see Bygone
England, by W. Andrews, 1892, pp. 102-112 ; Reminiscences of Oxford, by \
Rev. W. Tuckwell).
Page 70. See the Whitehaven Harbour Acts of 1709, 1713, and 1739; ;
A New Tour through England, by G. Beaumont and H. Disney, 1768, p. 19 ; !
History and Topography of Cumberland and Westmorland, by William |
Whellan, 1860, pp. 440-460 ; and A Tour through the whole Island of Great
Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. in. p. 266 of edition of 1748.
As to the then newly invented poultry carts, see A Tour through the
whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. i. p. 54 of 1748 edition ;
and as to the special fish waggons, The Norwich Road, by C. G. Harper,
1901, p. 39.
Page 71. We may cite, among the treatises on road repair of this
period, the curious little volume entitled Profit, Conveniency, and Pleasure
to the whole Nation, being a short rational discourse . . . concerning the
Highways of England, by Thomas Mace, 1675 ; A Proposal for the High-
ways, by E. Littleton, 1692 ; and A Guide to Surveyors of the Highways, by
G. Meriton, 1694. The quotations are from the latter two.
Page 71. The quotations as to the badness of the roads are from A\
Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. ii.;
p. 425 of 1748 edition ; Proposals at Large for the Easy and Effectual Amend-
ment of the Roads, by a Gentleman, 1753, p. 2 ; The History of Tom Jones,
by Henry Fielding, book vii. chap. iv. ; History of Surrey, by H. E.
Maiden, 1900, p. 280 ; Lord Hervey to his mother, 27th November 1736, ir
Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, by John, Lord Hervey, 1884.
vol. ii. p. 362 ; Gentleman's Magazine, March 1756, p. 102 (also in Gentle-
man's Magazine Library, by Sir G. L. Gomme, part xv., 1904, pp. 25-26)
See History of England, by Lord Macaulay, vol. i. chap. iii. ; and Lives oj
the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, vol. i. part iii. chaps. i.-v.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V 81
Page 72. For the beginning of stage coaches, see the History of
Taxation and Taxes, by Stephen Dowell, 1888, vol. iii. pp. 40-41 ; Life of
Josiah Wedgwood, by Eliza Meteyard, 1865, vol. i. p. 295 ; the chapter on
" Travelling " in Autobiographic Sketches, by Thomas De Quincey, in
vol. xiv. of his Works, 1863 edition ; Reise eines Deutschen in England im
Jahre 1782, by C. H. Moritz, Berlin, 1783.
Defoe notes the new habit, in the fast fish and poultry carts, by which
" the driver sits on the top of the coach, as in the public carriages for the
army " (A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 54 of
1748 edition). With the old waggons, " a man on a pony rode beside
the team and with a long whip touched them up. . . . The travellers
walked, putting their belongings inside" (The Exeter Eoad, by C. G.
Harper, 1899, p. 9). A pamphleteer of 1820 notices that the heavy
waggons " are gradually giving way to light carriages, drawn by four
horses, and driven, like the coaches are, by a man on the box " (An Essay on
the Construction of Wheel Carriages, by Joseph Storrs Fry, 1820, p. 23).
Page 72. On the Landed Property in England, by William Marshall,
1804, p. 293.
Page 73. History of England, by Lord Macaulay, vol. i. chap. iii.
For these Acts see Appendix to chap. iii. p. 46. The Act of 1766 (7 George
III. c. 42) repealed no fewer than twenty-five previous statutes relating to
highways, re-enacting their contents so far as applicable. It was itself
repealed by a new consolidating Act of 1773 (13 George III. c. 78), which
remained the basis of the law until 1835. Both these efforts at codifica-
tion were imperfectly executed, as is pointed out in John Scott's excellent
Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, 1778, with its interesting
notes and observations.
Page 74. For the principal " nuisance " provisions, see 1 George I.
st. 2. c. 52 (1714) ; 5 George III. c. 38 (1765) ; 6 George III. c. 43 (1765) ;
7 George II. c. 9 and c. 42 (1733) ; and 13 George III. c. 78 (1773).
Page 74. For James the First's proclamation, see Social History of
the People of the Southern Counties, by George Roberts, 1856, p. 488. It
was repeated in 1629 by Charles I., who ordered " that no carrier or other
person whatsoever shall travel with any wain, cart or carriage with more
than two wheels, not with above the weight of twenty hundred, nor shall
draw any wain, cart or carriage with more than five horses at once "
(History of Commerce, by A. Anderson, 1801, vol. xix. p. 130 ; Treatise on
Roads, by Sir H. Parnell, afterwards Lord Congleton, 1834, p. 16). The
Restoration enactments are 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 6 (1662), and 22 Car. II.
c. 12 (1670). The student wishing to pursue the subject may refer to 6
Anne, c. 29 ; 9 Anne, c. 18 ; 1 George I. c. 2 ; 1 George I. c. 52 ; 5 George I.
c. 12 ; 6 George I. c. 6 ; 7 George I. c. 9 ; 9 George II. c. 18 ; 14 George II.
c. 42 ; 15 George II. c. 2 ; 16 George II. c. 29 ; 18 George II. c. 33 ; 24
George II. c. 43 ; 26 George II. c. 28 and c. 30 ; 30 George II. c. 22 ; 7
George III. c. 42 ; 8 George III. c. 5 ; and 13 George III. c. 78.
Page 74. As to the number of horses to be allowed, see The Justice of
the Peace, by Dr. Richard Burn, preface, p. viii, of 1st edition (1755).
" However eligible," says a commentator, " this plan of limiting the number
of horses may be in point of policy, there are certainly very forcible objec-
82 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
tions against it in point of humanity. The avaricious farmer, who finds
himself restricted to a team of three or four horses, will too often load those
horses beyond their ability. . . . Three horses straining to the utmost of
their strength, and forcing their feet into the ground, will . . . damage a
road more than five drawing a greater weight with a steady regular
draught " (Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John
Scott, 1778, p. 256). The limitation of the team of horses or oxen to a;
definite number was accompanied by permission to the County Justices to
sanction additional animals for drawing up particular steep hills. Hence
the student of Quarter Sessions records, from 1700 onwards, occasionally
comes across orders in which the Justices, often on the application of a
particular " common carrier," who alleges that the roads up the hills in
question " are so very bad and ruinous and in so great decay that he
cannot go and pass with his waggon and number of horses limited only to
the Act of Parliament " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Kent, 5th October
1708), " and having made due enquiry into the state and condition of
such parts of the steep hills and roads . . . not being turnpikes, but within
the jurisdiction of the court, . . . have found it necessary and thought fit
to license, ... an increase or additional number of horses for the purpose
of drawing the carriages . . . over and above the number limited by the
said statute." They accordingly allow eight horses " for a waggon having
the sole or bottom of its wheels less than six inches," and so on (see MS.
Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Hampshire, 13th July 1708, when seven horses
are allowed for a long list of hills, apparently all that the county contains ;
ibid. 15th January 1771, when as many as ten horses are allowed for broad
wheeled waggons up Kingsclere Hill; ibid. 8th October 1776; MS.
Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Kent, 16th July 1752, when six horses are
allowed on each of seven hills; ibid, llth January 1763, when a like
privilege is granted separately to seven different persons for a particular
road; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Wilts, 3rd October 1796, in the
terms given in the text). After 1773 the Trustees of turnpike roads could
grant similar permission on their own roads, subject to confirmation by
the Justices in Quarter Sessions, whose confirmatory orders are given in
their Minutes (see MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Kent, 7th October 1794 ;
ditto, Hampshire, 16th July 1776).
Page 75. As to the position of the horses, see 7 and 8 William III. c. 29
(1695) and 6 Anne c. 29 (1707). As late as 1802 we find the Trustees of the
Epping and Ongar Turnpike Trust struggling to prevent a Chelmsford man
from drawing his waggon with two horses abreast (contrary to 13 George
III. c. 84, sec. 20), thus doing " great damage to the turnpike road by
drawing with horses abreast and thereby destroying the horsepath." At
last, after four years of warnings, they indicted him at Quarter Sessions,
and got him fined 5 (Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust,
1769-18*0, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, p. 151).
Page 75. " Meddle not with the weight they are to carry, for it will
be impracticable," said Colonel Birch, M.P., in the debate on the Highway
Act of 1670 (Debates in the House of Common* from 1667 to 1694, b y tne
Honourable A. Grey, 1769, vol. i. p. 233). In 1672 the Common Council
of the City of London ordained that " no street cart or brewer's dray
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V 83
shall ... be drawn with more than one horse . . . except where the load
cannot be divided and requires more than one horse, and also except when
drawing up any of the hills from Thames Street, and up Holborn Hill."
No waggon or cart was to be shod with iron or spignails (An Act of
Common Council together with certain Orders, Rules and Direction touching
Paving and Cleansing the Streets, etc., 1672, Rules 3 and 23). In 1720
Parliament enacted that not more than 12 sacks of meal, 12 quarters of
malt, 1\ cwt. of bricks or 1 " chalder " of coals should be carried at one
load, in a vehicle having iron tires, within ten miles of London or West-
minster, under penalty of forfeiting one of the horses, with gear, bridle, etc.,
to any person who shall distrain the same (6 George I. c. 6). For Bristol,
it was not only prohibited in 1749 to have wheels shod with iron streaks
of less breadth than six inches, and to use more than three horses (22 George
II. c. 20) ; but also, in 1765, to draw loads of more than 14 sacks of corn or
meal in four-wheeled vehicles, or 8 sacks in two-wheeled vehicles ; or to
use more horses within the city than were allowed in a team on the turnpike
roads of Gloucester and Somerset (6 George III. c. 34).
Page 75. The discussion as to the proper shape, size and arrangement
of wheels, so as to injure a soft road as little as possible, lasted for more
than half a century. See A Treatise upon Wheel Carnages, by Daniel Bourn,
1763 ; Inquiry into the Means of Preserving and Improving the Public Roads,
by J. Jacob, 1773 ; Some Brief Remarks upon Mr. Jacob's Treatise on Wheel
Carriages, by Daniel Bourn, 1773 ; Remarks on the Comparative Advantages
of Wheel Carriages of Different Structure and Draught, by Robert Anstice,
1790 ; Observations on the Effects which Carriage Wheels with rims of different
shapes have on the Roads, by Alexander Gumming, 1797 ; A Supplement to
the Observations on the contrary effects of Cylindrical and Conical Carriage
Wheels, by the same, 1809 ; A Treatise on Wheels and Springs for Carriages,
by Davies Gilbert, M.P., F.R.S. ; An Essay on the Construction of Roads and
Carriages, by R. L. Edgeworth, 1817 ; Cursory Remarks on Wheeled
Carriages, by John Cook ; and An Essay on the Construction of Wheel
Carriages as they affect both the roads and the horses, by Joseph Storrs Fry.
The subject engaged most of the attention of the House of Commons
Committee on the Preservation of Roads, etc., which published nine reports
between 1806 and 1811.
One inventor went so far as to supersede wheels altogether, replacing
them by two or four broad iron rollers, which it was supposed would level
the ruts, clear away the mud and cement the gravel. See A Treatise upon
Wheel Carriages, 1763, and Some Brief Remarks upon Mr. Jacob's Treatise
on Wheel Carriages, 1773, both by Daniel Bourn ; and Digests of the
General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, pp. 269-270.
Apart from the difficulty of getting the law enforced, the provisions as
to width of wheels were largely nullified by the exception always made in
favour of carts used in and about husbandry and manuring of land (see,
for instance, 5 George I. c. 6, 1718), and by the use of " dishing " or
" conical " wheels, with " tapering rims," by which the " tread " was
reduced. " We have lately seen," writes a practical critic in 1773, " the
broad wheels of waggons which, by Act of Parliament, should press a surface
of nine inches, in reality bear only on one of about three ; some of them by
84 NEW USERS OF THE ROADS
means of bevelling the edges and raising the middle of the periphery ; and
others by bevelling tke whole periphery and having the inner edge con-
siderably higher than the other " (Observations on the Structure and
Draught of Wheel Carriages, by J. Jacob, 1773, p. 89). It may be said,
in excuse of these regulations, that the heavy waggons were demonstrably
so destroying the soft roads of the time as to cause the cost of their repair
to become an intolerable burden. Certain Warwickshire roads in 1765 were
actually costing 84, and even 121, per mile per annum (Inquiry into the
Means of Preserving and Improving the Public Roads, by Henry Homer,
1765, p. 78) ; or more than double the average cost of the far superior
turnpike roads of 1815.
Page 76. A draft bill prepared in 1753 would have quite calmly
required, from one end of the Kingdom to the other, " that in some short
but reasonable time . . . the furrows or ridges of the deep ruts and holes
in the roads and highways shall everywhere be filled in and laid level or even
for the accommodation of the wheel carriages " (Proposals at Large for the
Easy and Effectual Amendment of the Roads, by a Gentleman, 1753, Clause
9) ; without any sort of consideration of the burden thereby to be thrown
on the farmers and cottagers.
CHAPTER VI
THE MAINTENANCE OP BRIDGES
IN a country enjoying a heavy rainfall, and intersected by in-
numerable rivers and streamlets, the bridge might easily be
assumed to be an indispensable part of the common highway.
We take it nowadays for granted that, wherever the road is
interrupted by running water, a bridge should be provided and
maintained at the expense of public funds, so as to furnish a
continuous dry passage. But so far is this from being an assump-
tion of immemorial antiquity that it can be shown to have grown
up within the last few generations. The Common Law of
England knows nothing of the making of bridges. Not until
1888 (Local Government Act, 51 and 52 Vic. c. 21) did any statute
make their construction part of the common duty of any public
authority ; and then it was entrusted, not to any ancient body,
but to the new County Councils. To our ancestors of the fifteenth
and even of the eighteenth century, accustomed to ride or
scramble through the frequent " water splashes " on the roads,
and to cross most rivers by fords, a bridge appeared as an excep-
tion to the common course of things, coming into existence as the
result of some extraordinary private benevolence or religious
zeal. To the traveller, the new bridge might be a boon calling
for a special act of devotion at the chapel or crucifixes by its
side, " which were the invariable pious accompaniment of the
mediaeval bridge." To the ordinary home-keeping citizen, it
seemed mainly a burden, which might involve new and un-
accustomed contributions, against which he sought to protect
himself in Magna Charta itself.
Notwithstanding this discouragement of public enterprise*
bridges existed here and there from the earliest times, and their
85
86 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
number was gradually increased by the pious labours of the
" Brothers of the Bridge " (if, indeed, this quasi-religious order
did any work in England), the enterprise of particular monasteries,
the benevolence of testators, and even by the interference of the
monarch himself. Of such primitive British stone bridges as
those still existing on Dartmoor and Exmoor ; of the Roman
bridges that must, here and there, have spanned unfordable
streams, and of which, indeed, the foundations have been traced
on the Tyne in the North and on the Teign in the South ; as
also of the rude wooden bridges by which the English supple-
mented them, little or nothing is known. The maintenance
and repair of such bridges was, like that of the highways, if not
undertaken by particular estates ratione tenurae, part of the
trinoda necessitas enforced by the English Kings on all holders
of land. Several of these ancient bridges were referred to in
the Domesday Survey, usually with regard to their state of
dilapidation. Mention must also be made of the wooden structure
that had spanned the Thames at London since the tenth century.
Except that (as with the highways) the common obligation to
maintain them in repair was enforceable by the Court Leet, we
know nothing as to the actual administration with regard to
these bridges. Gradually their number increased. The first
stone bridge built in England is often said to have been that
erected across the Thames at Wallingford, in Berkshire ; but the
interesting triangular bridge of worked stone near Croyland
Abbey is unquestionably older, possibly of the ninth century.
We owe to the enterprise of the Empress Matilda the two stone
bridges at Stratford-at-Bow, on the borders of Middlesex and
Essex, which were vested in the Abbess of Barking, with lands
for their support. The old London Bridge itself was burnt down
in 1136, and promptly renewed ; to be replaced between 1176
and 1209, out of funds raised from diverse sources, by the stone
structure covered with houses that excited, for over five centuries,
the admiration of the world. We hear, incidentally, in the
thirteenth century, of the rebuilding of the old wooden bridge
over the Cam at Cambridge, probably of Roman origin, which
had been carried away by a flood. This was done by the Sheriff
of the County, Roger of Estra, who levied half a crown on every
hide of land within the County for this purpose ; whereupon
the inhabitants loudly complained, urging that he had promised
EARLY BRIDGES 87
to give them a stone bridge, whereas he had built only a wooden
one, and had taken full seven weeks over the job ! The four-
teenth century saw many bridges built, or wooden bridges
replaced by stone ; sometimes by wealthy landowners or pious
testators, sometimes at the expense of a toll or " pontages,"
levied by Royal licence for three, five or eight years. Thus, the
very ancient bridge at Wisbech was granted in 1326 by the
King to the Bishop of Ely, with liberty to levy a toll for three
years, and put it in repair. But by far the most important of
these works was the old wooden bridge over the Medway at
Rochester, on the important London to Dover road, which was
replaced, in the reign of Richard II. (1391-97), by those doughty
warriors, Sir Robert Knollys and Sir John de Cobham, acting
probably with royal authority. The maintenance in repair of
the nine stone arches of this bridge, in succession to the wooden
one which had been there time out of mind, devolved, we are
told, severally upon certain dignitaries, the owners of certain
estates, and certain towns within the County. Thus, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury was responsible, in respect of the lands of
his see, for the fifth and the ninth arches and piers ; the Bishop
of Rochester had to maintain the first, the King himself the
fourth ; whilst certain manors at Gillingham and elsewhere
were severally burdened with the second, third, sixth, seventh and
eighth. In 1421 the Wardens of Rochester Bridge were specially
incorporated by Act of Parliament. The Gild of the Holy Cross
at Birmingham, which was founded in 1392 for the performance
of works of charity, subsequently undertook the maintenance
and repair of " two great stone bridges and divers foul and
dangerous highways," in what was, already in 1547, " one of
the fairest and most profitable towns ... in all the shire."
We read of the erection, in 1425, of a stone bridge, with the
customary chapel, at Catterick in Yorkshire, where the old
Ermin Street crossed the Swale ; but it is difficult to believe that
this was not merely in replacement of an older structure. After
the middle of the fifteenth century the practice of building new
bridges seems to have ceased possibly with the impoverishment
of the religious orders and the decay of faith among testators
and the very art died out in England ; to be revived, mostly
at the public expense, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
88 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
But though the erection of a bridge might be a matter of
private or corporate bounty, the law, from the first, took cogniz-
ance of its maintenance in repair. When a bridge had once
been erected, it became a matter of obvious public convenience
that it should be maintained. Though the traveller had origin-
ally managed to do without a bridge at all, its coming into
existence generally so altered the circumstance of the highway
as to make it henceforth indispensable. The road no longer led
directly to the ford ; the ford itself had perhaps disappeared
with the embanking of the river ; the ancient ferry had been
discontinued ; and thus the disappearance of the bridge might
involve, not a mere reversion to the ancient state of things,
but the complete stoppage of the highway. Hence, though
English law regarded it as no part of public duty to construct a
bridge where none had previously stood, however sore might
be the traveller's need, it strenuously enforced the obligation
to maintain all bridges forming part of the public highway, by
whomsoever they had been erected, and however moderate
might be the degree of their utility to the public.
Thus it is that the failure to maintain a public bridge in good
repair has been, from time immemorial, a public nuisance pre-
sentable at the Court Leet. But it was more than a manorial
offence. It was a misdemeanour for which an indictment would
lie, and if it was found by the Grand Jury that any such bridge
was broken or ruinous, the King's Judges at the Assizes, or his
Justices in Quarter Sessions, would insist on the guilt being
brought home to some one, on whom they could impose a sub-
stantial fine, to be devoted to making good the defect. As with
the common highway, the obligation to keep in good repair
might be, rations tenurae, a burden upon some particular property,
which had, by grant or by immemorial prescription, been charged
with this service. Or it might be that the obligation to maintain
a particular bridge attached to some Municipal Corporation or
other " body politic," either ratione tenurae, as an incident of
its tenure of certain specific lands, or merely by prescription,
as when a Municipality, a Parish, a Hundred or a Franchise had,
time out of mind, performed- this duty. But these were excep-
tions. The general rule of the Common Law was that, in default
of any special liability, the County was responsible for the
maintenance of public bridges situated within its area. And,
A COUNTY OBLIGATION Sg
seeing that in many cases it could not be " proved what Hundred,
Riding, Wapentake, City, Borough, Town or Parish, nor what
person certain or body politic ought of right to " keep bridges
in repair, it was expressly provided by the well-known " Statute
of Bridges " in 1531 (22 Henry VIII. c. 5), to the end that " such
decayed bridges " might not " lie long without any amendment,
to the great annoyance of the King's subjects," that, where no
other liability could be definitely proved, the burden of mainten-
ance should, for bridges outside corporate towns, always be held
to fall upon the County, and for those within corporate towns,
on such towns. So far, it might be said, as in the case of high-
ways, that the procedure contemplated for securing the mainten-
ance of bridges was merely that of enforcing, by the machinery
of the criminal law, definite obligations to repair. Those who
were liable for the maintenance of any public bridge, including
the inhabitants of the County or " Borough Corporate " them-
selves, were to be presented or indicted for their neglect, and
punished for it by fine, a process to be repeated again and again
until the defects were made good. But upon the Justices in^
Quarter Sessions, whether of Counties or Boroughs, the Statute
of Bridges cast a special administrative duty perhaps the
earliest branch of municipal enterprise entrusted to their care.
They, " or four of them at the least," were given power in 1531
" to enquire, hear and determine, in the General Sessions, of all
manner of annoyances of bridges broken in the highways, to
the damage of the King's liege people, and to make such process
and pains upon every presentment, against such as ought to be
charged to make or amend them, as the King's Bench usually
does, or as it shall seem by their discretions to be necessary <and
convenient for the speedy amendment of such bridges." Their
power and authority extended, not only to the bridges them-
selves, but also to the highway for 300 feet from each end thereof.
They were authorised to appoint in each County two Surveyors,
who were to " see every such decayed bridge repaired and
amended from time to time, as often as need shall require."
And to meet the expense of such works, the Justices were em-
powered, a century and a half before they were empowered
to impose a parochial rate for highway repair, to levy their own
rate directly upon all the inhabitants of the County, " to such
reasonable aid and sum of money as they shall think by their
go THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
discretion convenient and sufficient for the repairing, re-edifying
and amendment of such bridges."
The chief interest afforded by the records of County bridge
administration lies, not so much in the vast increase of the
service, or in the methods by which it has been successively
performed, as in the peculiar and unpremeditated way in which
the expenses previously borne by private individuals or by
parishes were, especially from the end of the eighteenth century,
increasingly saddled upon the County Fund. In the earliest
Quarter Sessions records that are extant, we see the Justices
looking after the few County Bridges then in existence. By
the beginning of the eighteenth century this had, indeed, become
the principal administrative service that they actually performed.
To the gaols and houses of correction, which had also fallen to
their charge, they gave the very minimum of attention ; their
supervision of the parochial authorities in such matters as poor
relief and highways was, in the reign of William the Third, at
its lowest ebb ; and the half a dozen squires and clergymen who,
in 1700, met quarterly at the County Town, would have had but
little taxation to levy on their neighbours had it not been for
the constantly recurring need for " Bridge Money." In contrast,
too, with later practice, we find them not waiting for the present-
ment of the Grand Jury, or other process of the law, but acting
on what we may call an administrative interpretation of the
Statute of Bridges ; treating the maintenance of the County
Bridges simply as a branch of the civil government of the County,
for which they could give orders and spend money at their dis-
cretion, without the County being, on an indictment, found
guilty of neglect, or even presented as in default. They were,
in fact, sufficiently concerned about keeping open the main
thoroughfare roads through their County, not only to be per-
petually ordering little repairs to the County Bridges, but also
to be willing to execute works of improvement out of the County
Fund to widen and extend the old bridges ; gradually to
replace wooden structures by brick or stone, and even to make
contributions towards the erection of the new bridges that were
felt to be required by the rapidly increasing traffic on the roads.
The bridge business of the County was, however, at the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, according to modern ideas, only
a small affair. Although the law unequivocally made the County
" HUNDRED BRIDGES " 91
liable for the maintenance of all bridges, large or small, new or
old, except those which could be definitely shown to be a legal
charge on other persons, or on Municipalities, the County
Justices were very far from assuming or admitting so large a
responsibility. The bridges maintained at the cost of the County,
and administered by the Justices in Quarter Sessions, were
insignificant, alike in size and in number. The largest and most
important of the bridges then in existence like London Bridge
and Rochester Bridge were maintained out of lands given or
left for the purpose ; or else fell naturally, by immemorial
custom, to the charge of the Municipal Boroughs which had
grown up at such centres of traffic. Other bridges were, by
immemorial custom, " Hundred Bridges," repaired out of a rate
levied, not on the County as a whole, but on the particular
Hundred, or other analogous district, and administered, in
practice, by the Justices acting for that Hundred. The thousands
of little streamlets that crossed the parish highways were, for the
most part, unbridged ; " nor was it imagined," we read, " that
the County could reasonably be called upon to maintain bridges
in the cross roads which were seldom used except by the in-
habitants to pass from one village to another. Such bridges
were generally deemed to be Parish Bridges, and were accord-
ingly supported by the respective parishes in which they were
situated, unless any other parties were known to be specially
liable. . . . Only bridges in the great public roads leading
through the County were maintained at the County expense."
Thus, right down to 1786, the Middlesex Justices maintained
only three County Bridges, at Brentford, Hanwell and Chertsey
respectively. Larger Counties, and especially those traversed
by the main thoroughfare roads, had more bridges to look after,
but not many more ; and these being (south of the Trent), as
Defoe informs us, for the most part built of wood, over shallow
streams, the repairs required, though frequent, were, on each
occasion, neither costly nor difficult of execution.
The procedure adopted by Quarter Sessions for dealing with
County Bridges was of the simplest. It was at the beginning of
the century exceptional for them to appoint a " Bridge-master,"
or other officer to look after these works. In spite of the express
authority to appoint Surveyors, given by the Act of 1531, " this
business of surveying the bridges," writes Dr. Burn in 1754,
92 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
" is usually annexed by the Justices to the office of the High
Constables." What happened was that it would be reported
to Quarter Sessions, sometimes by a High Constable, sometimes
by a Vestry or Court Leet, sometimes merely by letter from some
of the local residents more generally, we imagine, by one or
more of the Justices themselves, or by presentment of the Grand
Jury that a particular bridge was " in great decay," or " so
much out of repair as to be in danger of immediate falling." If
the bridge was one which had previously been repaired at the
County expense, or was on a highway of any importance, and
was not notoriously chargeable to some particular person or
Corporation, the Justices would usually not demur to the execu-
tion of the necessary repairs, even if there had been no indictment
of the County. Quarter Sessions would direct one or two of the
magistrates living near to inspect the bridge in question, to give
the necessary orders to some local workmen, and to supervise
their work. Thus we read in the minutes of the Suffolk Quarter
Sessions for 1695 that " this Court doth desire Sir Adam Felton,
Bart., and Sir John Barker, Bart., to view Shelley Bridge and
Bourne Bridge, both within this Division, and to give such
necessary directions for the present repair of the said bridges
as to them shall seem meet, and also to give such further direc-
tions for rebuilding Shelley Bridge with brick or stone as they
shall think most fitting." In 1718 the Essex Quarter Sessions
orders the County Treasurer to pay 60 to four of the Justices,
" to be by them immediately applied for the repairing of Ilford
Bridge and Causeway as they shall think most meet and con-
venient." A century later exactly the same procedure was
being resorted to in Wiltshire, where, in 1809, Quarter Sessions
resolved " that the County Bridge at Compton Chamberlain
called Horse Shoe Bridge, presented by J. H. Penruddocke, Esq.,
as being out of repair, be forthwith repaired under the direction
and supervision of the said J. H. Penruddocke, Esq., and such
Surveyor as he shall think fit to employ ; and that the expenses
of such repairs be defrayed out of the County Stock." In other
cases the Chief Constable of the Hundred would be directed
himself to get the repairs done, with some such order as the
following, taken from the Suffolk Quarter Sessions records :
" This Court doth order Mr. Robert Clarke of Ipswich, Treasurer
of the Bridge Money of this County, to pay the sum of eight
" BRIDGE MONEY " 93
pounds into the hands of Mr. William Wincup, one of the Chief
Constables of the Hundred of Blything, in this County, to be
by him laid out in and about the repair of Blithborough Bridge
and Causey ; and the said Mr. Wincup to give an account of
his disbursements at next sessions."
It was, however, not merely the lack of professional skill,
and the absence of any adequate supervision of the work, that
caused the steady increase in the levies of " Bridge Money."
The number of bridges maintained by the County was continually
growing. At first, as we have said, the existence of a bridge,
and especially of a bridge repairable by the County at large,
was looked upon as an exception. We see the Essex Justices
in 1720 making a stand against a tendency, already recognisable,
to make the County widen its responsibilities. Local and
particular obligations to maintain bridges were easily forgotten,
and for want of knowledge thereof " many private bridges and
causeways," they declare, " have come upon the County to be
repaired, and many others are out of repair, and some altogether
down and demolished, the reparation of which in time may
become a charge to this County." To remedy this state of
things the Essex Justices made an attempt to resuscitate the
old machinery of the Inquest Jury. " It is therefore ordered,"
they resolve, " that a precept be sent to the Sheriff ... for
returning the twelve men out of every Hundred to serve on such
Petty Juries or Juries of Inquiry as have been out of mind used."
These Juries were to inquire, among other matters, into the state
of the bridges and causeways and to state who is legally liable
for their maintenance. How far this revival of the Inquest
Jury was effectual in enforcing the obligations of the owners
of ancient private bridges in Essex cannot now be ascertained.
But as the century wore on, the growth of wheeled traffic and
the rising standard of road administration led everywhere to a
demand for new bridges. Many roads could be made suitable
for wheeled traffic only on condition that the narrow packhorse
bridges were replaced by others wide enough to admit at any
rate a single vehicle. Others were impassable in winter, when
the water was deep at the fords, until bridges were provided.
In others, again, the slight and flimsy wooden structures, which
private donors or parishes had provided at their own expense,
required to be replaced by larger and more solid buildings.
94 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
Strictly speaking, neither Common Law nor general statute
warranted either Parish or County to erect new bridges, or to
contribute towards their cost. But the need for new bridges
was so obvious that, in one County after another, applications
poured in upon Quarter Sessions. Thus in 1708, it was reported
to be absolutely necessary to bridge the Derwent at Hazelford,
the ancient ford by which the packhorses bearing the woollen
goods of Bradford entered Derbyshire. In 1713, " the gentlemen
of Chipping Ongar and neighbourhood " represent to the Essex
Quarter Sessions that their way to Ingatestone is impassable
for lack of a bridge over what is now a rushing river. In 1718
the Derbyshire Justices had seriously before them the state of
the ford by which the road between Manchester and London
passed over the Lathkil river. " Great gangs of London carriers'
horses, as well as great drifts of malt horses, and other daily
carriers and passengers," came and went by this ancient way,
which lay in a hollow, frequently overflowed by the swollen
stream. Heavy rains had now so scoured out the channel
as to render the ford impassable for eight or ten days together,
whilst at all times " carriers with loaden horses and passengers
cannot pass the said road without great danger of being cast
away." The Suffolk Quarter Sessions, in 1726, had to face the
fact that the bridges and causeways in various parishes which
had hitherto been charged with their maintenance were so
ruinous as to be quite beyond the means of these parishes to
repair. So, in 1731, the bridge at Halesworth, over the main
road, but not a County Bridge, was in such a state that much
more had to be spent upon it than the parish would consent to
afford.
The Justices in most Counties seem to have yielded to such
requests, and to have made grants somewhat freely in aid of
the erection or improvement of bridges that were not strictly
County Bridges, but were nevertheless of distinct public utility.
The applications recounted above were all met by the grant,
out of the Bridge Funds of the County, of sums varying from
10 to 60, in aid of the subscriptions raised by the local inhabit-
ants, or of the rates levied by the parish officers ; in each case
(as in Essex in 1742-43) on condition of the subscribers or the
parishioners " undertaking to repair it for the future, it being
no County Bridge " ; or else (as in Derbyshire in 1714) with
" GRA TUITY BRIDGES " 95
the express stipulation that for the future " there never be any
more money given by the County " ; or to quote the more
elaborate words of the Suffolk Justices in 1737, making the
grant " in such manner as may not incline posterity to
accept or refute the same in the nature of a County Bridge, but
to esteem this as a voluntary gift only." But, useful as were
these bridges, and carefully as the Justices guarded themselves
against incurring any future liabilities in connection with them,
the inevitable rise in the periodical levies of " Bridge Money "
led to objections to their action. The objectors, whose case is
fervently put in a contribution to the Gentleman's Magazine
in 1759, admitted that the " bridges called County, Riding or
Wapentake Bridges are commanded to be, and ought to be,
repaired, by several statutes." But the action of Quarter
Sessions had, they complained, created a new category of bridges
other than County Bridges. " Besides these," continues the
writer, " we have had bridges of another denomination for
many years, and of such kind as are not to be found in our
common or statute law. These bridges are erected by the
legislature of the Court of Quarter Sessions ; they are the bounty
of that court, not only without power delegated by the statute,
but in express violation of the Great Charter of our liberties
which says, ' No town or freeman shall be distrained to make
bridges but such as in old time were made.' . . . The inhabitants
of many parishes withheld for several years the money demanded
of them for the erection of Gratuity Bridges, which were granted
with warrants of distress, which neither the Chief nor the
Petty Constables, nor even the legislature of the Quarter Sessions
thought proper to put into execution. Bridges of this order
are numerous, and have been in fashion above eighty years,
occasioned by thunder showers and sudden rains, the brooks
overflowing for a few hours, through the idleness of the people
to restrain them in their proper channels. These bridges are
not in the least necessary for public commerce ; they are chiefly
for private convenience and communication of neighbouring
houses ; and if any gentleman is disposed to oblige himself or
his friends with a bridge, he must be of little interest or address
if his petition is refused. In the eighth year of the reign of
Queen Anne (1710), I remember a gentleman went to the Quarter
Sessions, holden at Easter in a Northern County, to oppose
96 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
the erection of one of those bridges, in no shape useful to the
public, for which 130, as an introductory sum, had been paid
by the Petty Constable to the Chief. The lawyer he retained,
addressing himself to the Court, said : * Gentlemen, you must
maintain the ancient bridges, but have no authority to build
new ones where there never were any, without an Act of Parlia-
ment.' Then moved for a discharge of the order granted before,
and for repayment of the money, which were agreed to without
objection, every Petty Constable soon after receiving his
respective share. At the next Quarter Sessions, a petition being
preferred for another of these bridges, the same gentleman
opposed it, and obtained an order as follows : ' Whereas Gratuity
Bridges have been complained of to this Court as a burden and
oppression to the people, it is ordered by this Court that for
the future no sum of money shall be granted as a gratuity to
any place or person whatsoever for the building of such
bridges/ . . . Notwithstanding all this, how many of these
bridges have been erected since ? What great sums of money
granted, levied and misapplied ? . . . When by distress, or
menaces of distress, money is wrested out of the hands of the
people, not only against common law, but a strong denunciation
of the statute, the case of many individuals may be made truly
deplorable. . . . The repair of these bridges may in time be
entailed on one estate, but though we have been so ductile and
slavish as to build them, we are not yet obliged to maintain
and uphold them, . . . but may be, in a generation or two,
if these impositions are not opposed before they become
immemorial." It was, we assume, with the object of checking
this liberality and enterprise of Quarter Sessions in the matter
of bridges that Parliament inserted in the County Rate Act
of 1739, a clause expressly prohibiting any money being " applied
to the repair of bridges until presentment be made by the Grand
Jury, at the Assizes or Sessions, of their insufficiency, incon-
veniency, or want of reparation."
From this time forth, though mere administrative orders do
not cease, nor even the grants of money towards " Gratuity
Bridges," we infer that the Justices in Quarter Sessions made
more use of the cumbrous machinery of indictment or present-
ment, by which alone, so Parliament had declared, they could
lawfully spend the county funds on the maintenance of bridges.
THE DEVICE OF PRESENTMENT 97
The High Constable, or sometimes one or more of the jurymen
themselves, would bring before the Grand Jury, at the Sessions
or the Assizes, the ruinous or decayed state of such and such a
bridge, whereupon the Grand Jury would make a formal present-
ment of the fact, stating also who in their opinion was liable
to maintain such bridge. Some Counties found a simpler form
of obeying the letter of the law. Any one Justice of the Peace
might, as we have mentioned, make presentment of a highway
not properly kept in repair, which presentment had been, long
before, by statute of 1563, expressly made equivalent to one
by the Grand Jury. By the General Highway Act of 1773
this power of a single Justice to make a presentment was extended
to bridges. Though we cannot help doubting whether Parliament
then intended this to apply to anything more than presentment
of the Parish for little bridges forming part of the parish highway,
it was in some Counties extended to County Bridges and utilised
as a device for complying easily and promptly with the terms
of the Act of 1739. In other Counties, however, the proceedings
took a more elaborate form. The High Constable or the Bridge-
master, if such an officer existed, or perhaps one or two Justices
themselves, would make a report (often called a presentment)
to Quarter Sessions that a particular bridge was out of repair.
Upon this, the Clerk of the Peace would prepare a formal indict-
ment of the person or " body politic " liable to maintain the
bridge, this being in most of the cases, " the inhabitants of the
County " in question. This indictment of the County itself
would be solemnly laid before the Grand Jury at the Assizes, a
true bill would be found, no defence would be made, and the
Justices on the Bench would proceed formally to give judgment
against their own County, for neglecting to maintain its bridge,
postponing the case until the following Sessions in order to allow
the necessary repairs to be executed. On a certificate being
then produced that the bridge was in good order, the indictment
would be formally discharged. In Lancashire and Northumber-
land, and doubtless in other Counties, it seems to have been the
practice, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth century, to make every case of bridge-repair the
subject of such an indictment. The voluminous and well-kept
minutes of the Lancashire Quarter Sessions record, at every
sessions, scores of cases in which " the inhabitants " of the
H
9 8 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
County or the Hundred were presented for not repairing particular
bridges, it being ordered by the Court that a fine be imposed and
estreated unless cause be shown at the next Sessions. At the
single Midsummer Sessions, 1799, " the inhabitants of the
County of Northumberland " pleaded guilty to no fewer than
twelve indictments for not repairing various County Bridges,
or ends of roads adjoining such bridges the cases thereupon
standing automatically referred to the " Bridge Surveyor for
the North " or the " Bridge Surveyor for the South " as the
case might be, who got the necessary work done, and received
payment at the subsequent Sessions " for the repair of bridges
as per his Report Book . . . they being under presentment
for want of repairs."
The clause in the Act of 1739, confining the Justices' expendi-
ture on bridges to those which had been made the subject of
legal proceedings, was doubtless intended to restrain an increasing
item of County expenditure. How far it had the desired effect
of limiting the number of so-called " Gratuity Bridges " we have
no means of determining. Nor can we ascertain in how many
cases the County in defending itself managed to fasten the legal
liability to repair a bridge on some other shoulders. What was,
however, not anticipated was that the formal transfer of the
business of bridge repair, from the domain of the Justices' civil
administration to that of a judicial determination of the legal
liability to repair, was eventually to lead to an enormous extension
of the County obligations. What had perhaps not been foreseen
was that the judicial decision, unlike the exercise of an administra-
tive discretion, might become the subject of appeal to a higher
tribunal. The indictment was not always a matter of form,
instigated by the County itself, but sometimes a genuinely hostile
Vr action, set on foot by some one who wanted to get a local bridge
repaired at the County expense. In 1780 the West Riding of
Yorkshire was indicted for not repairing a little carriage bridge
in the township of Glasburne. The Riding denied liability, as
the carriage bridge had been notoriously erected within com-
paratively recent date, by the Township in which it stood, in
substitution for an ancient footbridge sixty yards lower down
the stream, which the Township had always maintained. To
the consternation of the County authorities, the Judges unani-
mously held the Riding liable, in spite of its having neither built
THE COUNTY MADE LIABLE 99
nor sanctioned the bridge. " If a man build a bridge, and it
becomes useful to the County in general," said the Court, " the
County shall repair it." In the case of a bridge recently erected,
it could not be said that the Township or any one else was liable
by prescription ; it was not liable merely by reason of having
constructed the bridge ; and there was equally no question of
liability by tenure. Hence, under the plain words of the Statute
of Bridges, it was the County that was liable for maintenance.
This interpretation of the law, which was adopted in various
succeeding cases, clearly involved Counties in the liability for
all bridges, large or small, erected since the beginning of legal
memory, which could not be said to be maintainable by pre-
scription, if they were not maintained as an incident of the tenure
of specific lands, provided that they had come to form part of
the common highway, and were of distinct public utility. The
full effect of the doctrine was not, at first, realised. Gradually,
however, it came to be understood ; and those who had erected
and hitherto maintained small local bridges, hastened to shuffle
off their liability to the more capacious shoulders of the public.
The next half century produced, accordingly, a crop of indictments
against Counties, in which the latter were nearly always found
liable. Parishes and Townships made the County repair their
little highway bridges ; Turnpike Trusts (which we shall describe
in the next chapter) shifted shamelessly the charge of those
which they had themselves constructed to reap their tolls ;
millers who had deepened fords and substituted bridges for their
own profit, all repudiated their obligations to maintain them
even King George himself, in the case of a bridge at Datchet
built by Queen Anne for her own convenience, of which he had
appropriated the materials to his own use, refused to be at the
charge of keeping it up. " Lords of Manors," subsequently
declared the Committee of Middlesex Justices, " and other
persons deemed liable to the maintenance of bridges, and who
had actually maintained them, have, by their influence and
connection, induced Parishes and Turnpike Trusts to indict
the County ; and by withholding the necessary information
(seldom known except to the parties locally interested) have
frequently succeeded in obtaining a verdict." Literally hundreds
of small bridges were, in this way, gradually transferred to
the charge of the Counties in which they were situated. It
ioo THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
was, indeed, as the Middlesex Justices declared, " a very easy
and convenient method " of shifting a liability ; " because if
it be not proved on behalf of the County what other party is
liable, the County is fixed with the burden." Moreover, " this
facility of indicting the County " was found to operate " on the
most trifling occasions ; for in 1815 the Trustees of the [Kensing-
ton Turnpike] Koad indicted the County for the non-repair of
a culvert only two feet six inches wide, under the road between
Kensington and Hammersmith. This culvert, although dignified
with the title of Counter's Bridge, was scarcely known even to
the inhabitants. But the indictment having, through inattention,
been undefended, a verdict was obtained in the Court of King's
Bench, and the County was consequently declared liable to the
repair of the said culvert, misnamed a bridge."
It was naturally pointed out to the Judges, in connection
with these cases, that their decisions were upsetting the long
customary practice, and imposing heavy charges on the County
rate. But the law was clear, and the Judges could only declare,
as one of them said, that " if any inconvenience arises from this
decision, the Legislature must provide for it in future Acts."
Some of the Counties did, at last, bestir themselves to get the
law altered. In 1799, as we learn from the Manchester Mercury,
the Clerk of the Peace for Staffordshire incited the great County
of Lancaster to take the matter up. The Lancashire Justices
had just found themselves legally saddled with charges amounting
to 1000 for the repair of small bridges not heretofore chargeable
either to the Hundred or to the County ; and they discussed
the whole position at a special meeting, adopting a resolution
in the following terms : " The determination of the Court of
King's Bench on the Glasburne Bridge case in the year 1780,
and some subsequent determinations founded on that case, have
had the effect of making Counties subject to the charge of rebuild-
ing and supporting all new bridges of which the public have had
the use, built by subscription or otherwise, without the knowledge
or approbation of the respective Counties. The extent that has
been given to these determinations has already subjected the
County of Lancaster to great expense, and if not restrained
may lay an incalculable burden on the County Rate, by proceed-
ings which previous to these determinations were unknown.
The Court is willing that the inhabitants of the County should
LORD ELLEN BOROUGH'S ACT 101
be accommodated with new bridges on proper conditions where
they are really wanted, but the Court conceives that it is equit-
able . . . that bridges which are afterwards to be upheld and
supported at the expense of the County should be built by the
authority of the County. The Court therefore recommends
that in the bill intended to be presented to Parliament for the
amendment of the law respecting County Bridges it should be
provided that when any new bridge should be intended to be
built for public use, application should be made in the first
instance to the General Annual Session for the County, first
giving public notice of such application, and if the magistrates
then assembled should be of opinion that it was expedient that
the bridge should be built, they should settle with the petitioners
the money that they were to pay towards defraying the expense
of erecting the said bridge, which money should be paid into the
hands of the Treasurer of the County, the deficiency being supplied
from the County Rates, and the County building the bridge,
which should afterwards be deemed and taken to be a County
Bridge ; and no bridge built otherwise than under the above
regulations should be deemed or taken to be a County Bridge."
A Bill was accordingly prepared, and Thomas Butterworth
Bayley the able and zealous magistrate whom we have already
mentioned as a road reformer was sent with it to enlist the
support of the West Riding of Yorkshire. But Parliament was,
at that date, not disposed to interfere with the freedom of land-
owners and townships to improve the means of communication
by local bridges. All that it would do (by Lord Ellenborough's
Act, 43 Geo. III. c. 59, sec. 59, 1803) was, whilst making
some minor amendments in the Justices' powers of repair,
to enable Quarter Sessions to require that new bridges, thereafter
erected otherwise than by the County itself, should, as a condition
of their becoming repairable by the County, be constructed in
such manner as the Justices might approve, and under the
inspection of the County Surveyor. With this meagre protection
the Counties had to content themselves ; and the number of
small bridges thrown upon the County Rate continued, by
frequent indictments, annually to increase. The Justices
seem in each County to have made the best terms they could.
In Lancashire, the Deputy Clerk of the Peace was instructed,
in June 1806, " in future in all cases where indictments shall
102 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
be preferred for not repairing" bridges built by private sub-
scriptions, to " consult with the magistrates assembled at the
General Quarter Sessions within the district wherein such
indicted bridges shall lie, and shall take their direction as to
the propriety of defending or submitting to such indictments."
Quarter Sessions accepted, with little demur, the charge of all
substantial bridges, which were distinctly of public utility, but
they continued to resist attempts to make them take over mere
culverts or tiny arches in local highways. They had, moreover,
as in Northumberland in 1827, frankly to accept the unsatis-
factory position that new bridges would be built, whether the
County paid for them or not, and to make the best of the statutory
requirement that they should be constructed to the satisfaction
of the County Surveyor. But, as the Middlesex Justices found
in 1820-26, even this protection availed the County little.
If the builder of a new bridge did not trouble to inform the
County Surveyor, or persisted in disregarding his instructions,
the bridge, once built, would have to be maintained somehow ;
and in the absence of any special liability, could, if of any public
utility at all, hardly fail to fall to the charge of the County, in
spite of the fact that it had been built without its approval.
The Judges seem to have suggested in 1821 that the remedy of
the County was to indict the too zealous bridge-builder for
committing a common nuisance in erecting a bridge which,
though serving possibly an urgent public need, was likely at
some future time to throw upon the County the burden of
repairing it. It is needless to say that no such indictment took
place. It would, say the Middlesex Magistrates, " be considered
very invidious to prosecute a man for building a bridge on
his own land for the use of the public, and therefore they
conclude, "it is not likely that any bridge which ought to be
the subject of an indictment would be brought to the notice of
the magistrates."
In this unsatisfactory and illogical condition the law as to
the erection of new public bridges by other than the public
authority has ever since remained. But even before the exact
efiect of the law had, in the various cases between 1780 and 1821,
been thoroughly explored, the need for more bridges and better
ones had led many Counties voluntarily to assume the duties
of general bridge authorities. For more than a century hardly
AN ERA OF BRIDGE-BUILDING 103
any bridge had been built in England, when, in 1611-37, the
remarkable long stone bridge at Berwick-on-Tweed was erected
in substitution for the ancient wooden bridge which had fallen
down ; and in 1634 Inigo Jones was commissioned to design
the charming little bridge over the Conway River at Llanrwst,
in North Wales. A persistent agitation for additional bridges
over the Thames, carried on from 1660 to 1769, led, at last,
to the erection of Westminster Bridge (1738-50) out of moneys
granted by Parliament, and of Blackfriars Bridge (1760-69),
built by the Corporation of the City of London out of its trust
funds. From the middle of the eighteenth century, with the
steady increase of carriage traffic, which could not conveniently
ford streams, nor yet use the old packhorse bridges, we see a
general movement for bridge construction setting in. Between
1746-55, when the marvellous stone bow bridge over the
Tafi at Pontyprydd was finished, and 1789, when he died, the
" bridge-building mason," William Edwards, constructed more
than a dozen stone bridges in South Wales. In 1779 the first
iron bridge was constructed, over the Severn at Coalbrookdale.
But the most remarkable development was in Shropshire, where
the County Justices seem to have been inspired with the most
praiseworthy zeal for bridging all the streams in the County.
Appointing in 1786, as Samuel Smiles graphically relates, another
promoted stone-mason, Thomas Telford, to the post of County
Surveyor, they allowed him, within the next fifty years, to put
up no fewer than forty-two new County Bridges, five of which
were of iron and the others of stone. Even in so apathetic a
county as Buckinghamshire we find Quarter Sessions, in the
early part of the nineteenth century, busying itself constantly
about getting new and additional bridges. Up and down the
country we see such bodies as Municipal Corporations, Turnpike
Trustees, or Improvement Commissioners obtaining Special
Acts of Parliament authorising them to construct new bridges,
or to rebuild old ones. This desire for better means of com-
munication within the County may well have prevented the
Justices from offering any very strenuous opposition to the
ever-increasing transference of bridge maintenance from parishes
and private landowners to the County Funds. Even where
some sort of bridge was in existence, it was frequently necessary
to build a new one, in order to replace a foot-bridge, or a pack-
io 4 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
horse bridge, or a narrow carriage-bridge with inconvenient
gradients, by the broad and level roadway called for by the new
coach traffic. In the absence of any general statutory authority
to build a new bridge, the most convenient course may well
have been for the County to allow itself to be made legally
chargeable with the maintenance of the old one, and then to
execute the improvement in the guise of the ordinary work of
repair or " re-edifying," contemplated by the Act of 1531. Be
this as it may, we infer that, by 1835, outside the Municipal
Corporations, the great majority of bridges other than those
owned and maintained by statutory bridge companies, to which
we shall allude in the next chapter, those belonging to the Turn-
pike Trusts, which we are about to describe, and those specifically
charged on particular bodies by their respective private Acts,
had come to be maintained out of County Funds.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 85. By far the most useful single volume on the maintenance
of Bridges is the extensive quarto Report of the Committee of Magistrates
appointed to make enquiry respecting the Public Bridges in the County of
Middlesex, 1826. The first volume of Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel
Smiles (1861) contains (pp. 237-275) three admirable chapters on the early
bridges, of which also J. J. Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life in the
Middle Ages, 1892, gives interesting glimpses; whilst Smiles's second
volume gives, in the Memoirs of Telford and Rennie, much information as
to the later bridge -building. The modern technicalities of bridge -building
may be seen in such works as The Theory and Practice of Bridge Construc-
tion, by M. W. Davies, 1908, or A Practical Treatise on Bridge Construction,
by T. C. Fidler, 4th edition, 1909. The law as to bridges is to be found,
characteristically enough, partly with that of nuisances, partly 'with that of
highways; see, for instance, The Law of Highways, Main Roads and Bridges,
by J. Tidd Pratt, edited by W. W. Mackenzie and J. Weir, 1897 ; The Law
of Nuisances, by Edmund W. Garrett, 1897 ; Pratt and Mackenzie's Law of
Highways, 16th edition, 1911 ; The Law relating to Highways, by W. C.
and A. Glen, 1897 ; or The Law relating to Waters, by H. J. W. Coulson and
Urquhart Forbes, 3rd edition, 1910. But we have had, for the most part,
to seek our material on the administration of bridges in the MS. Minutes of
Quarter Sessions.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI 105
Page 85. As to the " pious accompaniments of the mediaeval bridge,"
see Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 225.
Picturesque chapels "on the bridge" still exist at Wakefield (Old Yorkshire,
by William Smith, 1884) and Derby (Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire,
by J. C. Cox, 1875-79).
Page 85. As to the burden, compare " No town nor freeman shall be
distrained to make bridges . . . but such as of old time, and of right, have
been accustomed to make them " (9 Henry III. c. 15, 1224 ; 15 Edward I.
c. 12, 1287). " None can be compelled to make new bridges where never
any were before, but by Act of Parliament" (Lord Coke's Institutes,
vol. ii. p. 701). See Caiman's History of Local Bates, 1912, pp. 30-33.
Page 86. For the " Brothers of the Bridge," fratres pontifices, to whom
the French traveller was indebted for the bridges at Avignon and Lyons
and many others, see the extracts quoted in Herbert Spencer's Descriptive
Sociology (No. viii., France, by James Collier), and Recherches historiques sur
les Congregations hospitalises des Freres Pontifes, by M. Gregoire, Bishop
of Blois (Paris, 1818). Although their work extended to Italy, Spain and
Germany, and continued throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
it seems doubtful whether they built any bridges in England (English
Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages, by J. J. Jusserand, translated by Lucy
Toulmin Smith, 2nd edition, 1892, p. 41) ; though individual bridge con-
structors in the England of that time may have belonged to the Order.
Page 86. For early instances of bridges see Lives of the Engineers, by
S. Smiles, 1892, vol. i. ; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford,
1887, vol. ii. pp. 23-35. For the Roman bridges over the Tyne, the Teign,
and the Cam, see The Celt, the Roman, and the Teuton, by Thomas Wright,
2nd edition, 1861, p. 225. For Queen Matilda's bridge at Wallingford, see
History of Wallingford, by J. K. Hedges, 1881. For the two bridges at
Stratford at Bow, see Archceologia, vols. xxvii. p. 77 and xxix. p. 380.
For London Bridge, see especially (among the endless literature) Chronicles
of London Bridge, by Richard Thomson, 1827 ; History of London, by
W. J. Loftie, 2 vols., 1884; A Survey of the Cities of London and West-
minster and the Borough of Southwark, by John Stow, 1598 (latest edition).
For the extortions of the Sheriff over the bridge at Cambridge, see Rotuli
Hundredorum, edited by W. Illingworth, 1812-18, vol. i. p. 54; The
Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle
Ages, by Dr. W. Cunningham, 1890, p. 202. For the bridge at Wisbech,
see History of Wisbech, by N. Walker and T. Cradock, 1849, p. 417. For
Rochester Bridge, " finer than that of London," see Monsieur Missorfs
Memoirs and Observations on his Travels over England, translated by Ozell,
1719, p. 278 ; Rotuli Parliamentum, vol. iii. pp. 289, 354, vol. iv. p. 149 ;
History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1887, vol. ii. pp. 22-23 ;
The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle
Ages, by Dr. W. Cunningham, 5th edition, 1910, vol. i. p. 450. For the
Gild of the Holy Cross at Birmingham (and Lenche's Trust), see English
Gilds, by Joshua Toulmin Smith, 1870, pp. 238-261 ; and " The Gild of
Holy Cross, Birmingham," by Lucy Toulmin Smith, in Byegone Warwick-
shire, by W. Andrews, 1893. For Catterick Bridge, see History of the
County of York, by Allen, voL iii. p. 496 ; A Picturesque History of Yorkshire,
io6 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
by J. S. Fletcher, vol. iv. p. 175 ; Growth of Industry and Commerce in the
Early and Middle Ages, by Dr. W. Cunningham, 5th edition, 1910, vol. i.
p. 450.
Page 87. The cessation of bequests for bridges and highways is made
much of in A Compendious or Briefe Examination of Certayne Ordinary
Complaints, by W. S. [William Stafford], 1581, pp. 15, 17, etc.
The mere fact that the bridge was erected at a comparatively recent
date by some private person would not suffice to impose upon him or his
heirs the obligation to maintain it. " If a man make a bridge," says Lord
Coke, " for the common good of all the subjects, he is not bound to repair
it" (Institutes, vol. ii. p. 701). Nor would it suffice to show that he had
voluntarily once or twice repaired it. The same was true even if it were
proved that he erected it wholly or mainly for his own convenience, if it
had since actually been used by the public, and had been of distinct public
utility (R. v. the Inhabitants of Glamorganshire, 1788, East's King's Bench
Reports, vol. ii. p. 356). To make an individual liable to repair a bridge
actually used by the public as part of the common highway, the obligation
had to be shown to be an incident of his tenure of specific lands (Pleas of
the Crown, by Sir Matthew Hale, vol. ii. p. 181 ; R. v. Sir John Bucknall,
1702, Lord Raymond's Reports, voL ii. p. 804). It is, then, enforceable
primarily against the occupier of the land in question, who can obtain
reimbursement from the owner (Baker v. Greenhill, 1842, 3 Q.B. 148).
As to obligation to repair ratione tenurae, see Lord Coke's Institutes,
vol. ii. p. 700 ; Wood's Institutes (1763), Book I. chap. vii. The obligation
of a Municipal Corporation, or other body politic, ratione tenurae, is merely
that to which a private owner would be subject in like case. It therefore
differs from an obligation to repair by prescription, in that the remedy is
by indictment against the Corporation, as owner, not against the inhabitants
of the locality, and in that it is not necessarily confined to a bridge situated
within the limits of the borough, etc. The ancient bridge over the Thames
at Kingston, mentioned as existing in the time of King John, was, in 1813,
held by the Court of King's Bench to be maintainable by the Municipal
Corporation of Kingston, which had vainly tried to throw the burden on
the counties of Middlesex and Surrey. The Corporation had had an estate
settled upon it in 1565 by one of its Bailiffs, upon trust to support the
bridge, and had frequently repaired it (History of Surrey, by Owen
Manning and William Bray, 1804-1814, vol. iii., Appendix, p. 146 ; Report
of Committee of Middlesex Magistrates on Public Bridges, 1826, p. 284).
Cities or Boroughs which are " counties in themselves " or " counties
corporate " (as to which see our book, The Manor and the Borough, 1908,
vol. i. p. 328, etc.), have always been held liable to maintain any public
bridges within their limits (not repairable by private persons) as if they
had been ordinary counties. See the cases fought out by Norwich and
Southampton, R. v. Norwich, I. Str. 177 ; R. v. Southampton, 17 Q.B.D.
424 ; 55 L. J.M.C. 158 ; 55 L.T. 322 ; 35 W.R. 10 ; 50 J.P. 773 ; 16 Cox
C.C. 117. And "towns corporate" generally were made so liable by
22 Hen. VIII. c. 5 (1531).
Page 89. " Towns corporate," or municipalities, even when not
" Counties in themselves," were exempted from contributing to the County
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI 107
" Bridge Money," where, as was usually the case, they maintained the
town bridges. Under the Statute of Bridges, the duty of administration of
such town bridges fell, in the absence of any special liability, upon the
Borough Justices in Quarter Sessions, and the burden on the inhabitants
at large. But the Municipal Corporation itself was usually liable by
prescription. Thus, at Ipswich (Suffolk) we see the Corporation, in 1708,
acting on this assumption as a matter of course : " Whereas we are credibly
informed by the complaint of divers persons and otherwise that the several
town bridges are greatly decayed and out of repair, to the endangering
those persons that pass and repass over them with horses, carts and
carriages, for the timely remedying whereof it is ordered and agreed by
this Court that (10 names) shall be a Committee to inspect and view the
breaches and decays in and about the said several bridges, and report
thereof to the next General Court to be held for this town with their opinion
what necessary repairs must forthwith be done for preserving the same "
(MS. Minutes, Town Council, Ipswich, 12th November 1708 ; see other
entries, 12th August 1761). Norwich had six large bridges within its walls,
which the Corporation maintained, obtaining an Act in 1726 to authorise
the levy of tolls for the purpose (Tour through the whole Island of Great
Britain, by D. Defoe, vol. i. p. 61 of 1748 edition). The ancient Corpora-
tion of Sudbury shared, by prescription, with the County of Essex, the cost
of maintaining its bridge over the Stour ; and was, in 1803, so bankrupt as
to be utterly unable to pay. How it was settled we do not know ; but
Counsel advised the Suffolk Quarter Sessions that distraint could be levied
on everything the Corporation owned, even to the mace ! (MS. Case Book,
in Suffolk County archives).
Page 91. The practice with regard to " Hundred Bridges " differed
from County to County, and is wrapped in obscurity. Traces of separate
chargeability by Hundreds, Wapentakes, Rapes, Lathes, Liberties or
Franchises occur in many Counties, in respect of various other services
besides bridges. A separate rate would often be levied on the Hundred or
other district, without any distinct separation in administrative juris-
diction between the Justices of the County, meeting in General or Quarter
Sessions, and the Justices acting for the particular Hundred, meeting to
administer the funds of the Hundred. Probably we may say that the
financial separateness survived long after such administrative separateness
as may once have existed (see R. v. Inhabitants of Charl. 39 L.J.M.C. 107 ;
R. v. Inhabitants of Oswestry, 1817, 6 M. & S. 361). " Hundred Bridges "
existed in the eighteenth century, principally in Lancashire, Shropshire,
Suffolk, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire (as regards Isle of Wight), where
they were administered by the County Justices in General or Quarter
Sessions, though the business was usually transacted at a meeting held by
adjournment in the Hundred in question, and attended only by the Justices
acting for the Division. But with the growing systematisation of County
rating, the separate Hundred Rate was found inconvenient ; and the
growth of County establishment charges made the calculation difficult.
Hence most Counties seem silently to have merged their Hundred Rates
in the general County Rate. Kent did so as late as 1875, by a clause
inserted in a Turnpike Continuance Act (38 & 39 Viet. c. cxciv. sec. 10),
io8 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
formally converting its Hundred Bridges into County Bridges. The Isle
of Wight long paid for its own bridges (as well as for its House of Correc-
tion) ; see the order of the Hampshire Quarter Sessions of 1774, fixing the
quotas payable by each parish to the County Rate, and leaving the cost of
the island bridges and bridewell to be levied as an extra local rate. The
island bridges were formally made County Bridges in 1812 (53 Geo. III.
c. xcii. sec. 67), but the Hampshire Justices continued the separate island
rating until 1886, when it was upset by an important legal decision, in which
the whole position of these bridges was reviewed (E. v. Inhabitants of
the County of Southampton). Sussex, by ancient custom, levied separate
rates for bridges, as for some other services in its various Hundreds or
" Rapes " until 1865, when the County was divided into East and West
Divisions as regards bridges, by 28 Viet. c. 37 ; twenty-three years before
this was done for all purposes, except the Lord Lieutenancy, by 51 & 52
Viet. c. 41 (1888). In Suffolk, the Liberty of Bury St. Edmunds insisted
on maintaining its own bridges in 1697, and the other three Divisions did
the same about 1739. The Bridge Rate seems to have been made separately
for the four Divisions until 1888, when the County was divided into two for
all purposes but the Lord Lieutenancy (51 & 52 Viet. c. 41). The Cinque
Ports had been treated, as regards bridges, as a distinct County in 1531
(22 Hen. VIII. c. 5, sec. 5) ; and so continued until 1888, when their
bridges were made County Bridges of Kent, East Sussex, and the County
Borough of Hastings respectively (51 & 52 Viet. c. 41). Hundred Bridges
now survive chiefly, if not exclusively, in Lancashire, where their continu-
ance was expressly secured by 41 & 42 Viet. c. 77, sec. 20, of 1878 (see Local
Government Board Circular of 18th September 1878 ; The Law relating to
Highways, by W. C. and A. Glen, 1897, pp. 873-874, 1152).
Page 91. Report of the Committee of Magistrates appointed to make
enquiry respecting the Public Bridges in the County of Middlesex (1826), p. 3.
Page 91. Defoe notes as a remarkable fact that the bridges of York-
shire and Durham were of stone, so that he does not " remember to have
seen one of timber from the Trent to the Tweed " (A Tour through the
whole Island of Great Britain, vol. iii. p. 124 of 1748 edition).
Page 91. The Justice of the Peace, by Dr. R. Burn, vol. i. p. 190 of
edition of 1758.
Page 92. MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, held at Ipswich,
19th July 1695 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 14th January
1718 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Wilts, Easter, 1809 ; MS. Minutes,
Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, at Beccles, 15th July 1695.
Page 93. MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 12th January 1720.
Page 93. In 1670, as an exceptional measure, in order to get replaced
the bridges " demolished in the late wars," and provide others over the
" many and sundry great and deep rivers which run cross and through the
common and public highways and roads" of Cheshire and Lancashire,
" which many times cannot be passed over without hazard of the lives and
goods of the inhabitants, for want of convenient good and sufficient bridges
in the said highways and roads, to build and erect which there is no law
in force," Parliament authorised Quarter Sessions, on presentment of the
Grand Jury, to build such bridges at the expense either of the County or
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI 109
Hundred. So the Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions was specially author-
ised to spend up to 40 a year on the Usk and Basalegg Bridges " which are
situated upon great rivers, and lie on very great public roads of that
county." But in both cases this power was limited in duration to ten
years (22 Car. II. c. 12, sec. 13 and 14).
Page 94. Quarter Sessions, Derbyshire, 1708-10; Three Centuries
of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. pp. 221-222.
Page 94. MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 14th July 1713 ;
Quarter Sessions, Derbyshire, July 1718 ; Three Centuries of Derbyshire
Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 223 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Suffolk, 13th July and 5th October 1726 ; ibid. (Halesworth Bridge), 12th
July 1731 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 13th July 1742, 12th
July 1743 ; Quarter Sessions, Derbyshire, Michaelmas, 1714 ; Three
Centuries of Derbyshire Annals, by J. C. Cox, 1890, vol. ii. p. 222 ; MS.
Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Suffolk, 18th April 1737 (condition of grant
towards amending Potters Bridge in Raydon parish).
Page 95. Gentleman's Magazine, November 1759, p. 518.
Page 96. 12 Geo. II. c. 29, sec. 13, 1739 (The County Rate Act).
As a result of this Act, it followed that, if no one troubled to make a pre-
sentment or an indictment, no money was spent on the County Bridges.
In fact, the Staffordshire Justices seem, in 1792, to have spent only 298
on all the bridges of the County.
Page 97. 5 Elizabeth, c. 13 (1563) ; 13 Geo. III. c. 78, sec. 24 (1773).
In 1803 it was expressly declared to apply to County Bridges by 43 Geo. III.
c. 59, sec. 1, and this has not been abrogated by the Highways Act of 1835
(R. v. Brecon, 15 Q.B. 813). We find in the Minutes of the Gloucestershire
Quarter Sessions many orders like the following : " The Court taking into
consideration the Presentment made and filed at this Sessions by the
Rev. Wm. Hicks, one of the Justices of the Peace for this County, against
the inhabitants of the County, for not repairing a certain common public
stone bridge situate over the river Colne, in the several parishes of Shipton,
Sellers and Withrington, near to a certain turnpike gate there, called
Frogmill Gate, in the King's highway, leading from the market town of
Northleach toward and into the town of Cheltenham ; and having received
a report from Mr. Collingwood, the County Surveyor, that the probable
expense of rebuilding and repairing the said bridge will not exceed the
sum of 30 Ordered that the said work be executed immediately at the
said expense " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Gloucestershire, 16th
October 1821). So, in Shropshire in 1809, one Justice made presentment
upon his own view against the county for not repairing Pilson Bridge
(R. v. Salop, East's King's Bench Reports, vol. xiii. p. 95).
Page 97. See, for instance, MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Lancashire,
at Preston, 17th July 1810 ; MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Northumber-
land, 18th July 1797. The " Bridge Cess " levied to cover these expenses
was twenty shillings in the pound.
Page 98. An old order of the East Riding Quarter Sessions shows
how the " Gratuity Bridge " could be combined with adequate legal
protection to the County against future liability. " No allowance from
the Riding towards building or repairing any bridge, which the East Riding
no THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
is not liable to support, shall be granted until the person or township who
ought to repair the same hath been indicted and submitted to such indict-
ment" (The names of the Acting Magistrates and Public Officers of the
East Riding of the County of York, with several matters relating to the Practice
and Proceedings of Quarter Sessions, Beverley, 1824).
Page 98. This momentous case, which imposed an incalculable
burden upon the County ratepayers, was R. v. West Riding of Yorkshire
(the case of Glasburne Bridge), 1780 ; Burrow's Reports, vol. v. p. 2594 ;
Sir Willima Blackstone's Reports, vol. ii. p. 685. What was novel in the
case was the ignoring of the fact that the bridge in question had been only
recently erected by a Township, in substitution for an old bridge which the
Township had heretofore maintained as by prescription. Already, in 1705,
it had been held in the case of Laycock Bridge in Wiltshire, that the
County could not cast the burden on the Parish (A Digest of Adjudged
Cases, 1775, p. 515).
Page 99. We give one case from Wiltshire, in 1797 "It having
been represented to the Court that the County of Wilts stands indicted in
the Court of Assizes for not repairing a certain bridge in the Parish of
Oldstock," the Clerk of the Peace is directed to enquire, and either to defend
the indictment, or to get it discharged by repairing the bridge (MS.
Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Wilts, llth July 1797).
Page 99. R. v. West Riding of Yorkshire (the case of Pace Gate
Bridge, 1802), East's King's Bench Reports, vol. ii. p. 342 ; Petersdorff's
Abridgment of Cases, vol. iv. p. 693. See also the action of the Kensington
Turnpike Trust, Report of the Committee of Magistrates appointed to
make enquiry respecting the Public Bridges in the County of Middlesex,
1826, p. 5.
Page 99. R. v. Kent (the case of Foots Cray Bridge, 1814), Maule and
Selwyn's Reports, vol. ii. p. 513.
Page 99. R. v. Bucks (the case of Datchet Bridge, 1799), East's King's
Bench Reports, vol. xii. p. 192.
Page 99. Report of the Committee appointed to make enquiry respecting
the public bridges of the County of Middlesex, 1826, p. 5.
Page 100. Le Blanc, in R. v. West Riding of Yorkshire (the Pace Gate
Bridge case, 1802), East's King's Bench Reports,vol ii. p. 342 ; Petersdorff s
Abridgment of Cases, vol. iv. p. 693.
Page 100. Manchester Mercury, 4th February and llth March 1800 ;
MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Lancashire, 20th February 1800; and
ditto, West Riding, December 1801 ; Leeds Intelligencer, 30th November
and 21st December 1801.
Page 101. MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Lancashire, 26th June 1806.
We find the Suffolk Justices, in 1813, standing out against the demand of
parishes that these " small arches " should be deemed County Bridges.
The Justices protested that " the expenses to Counties for repairing and
rebuilding County Bridges are become a very serious and heavy charge
upon the Counties where they are situate, and in consequence of the
decision whereby the liability of the inhabitants of Counties to repair the
same is so fully recognized, parishes now appear in many cases to endeavour
to extend the principle of those decisions beyond what should seem could
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI in
ever have been in the contemplation of the legislature. In most public
roads there are small arches thrown over certain parts for the current of
water for the adjoining lands." Now parishes were claiming that even
these were bridges, and so repairable by the County. Counsel, on being
consulted, advised that they were not bridges, but only part of the King's
Highway, and repairable by the parish (MS. Case Book, Quarter Sessions,
Suffolk, 31st July 1813).
Page 102. In Northumberland, in 1827, " It is ordered by this Court
that in future when any person shall be desirous to erect or build any bridge
within this County at their own expense, and shall in pursuance of the
statute of 43 Geo. III. c. 59, apply for one of the Bridge Surveyors of this
county to inspect the same, such Bridge Surveyor shall report to the next
Quarter Sessions in writing, whether he approves of the site, foundation
and detail of the same, and that when such bridge shall be completed to his
satisfaction he shall deliver in a report in writing to the then next Quarter
Sessions which shall be entered in the records of this County" (MS.
Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Northumberland, llth January 1827).
Page 102. R. v. St. Benedict, Cambridge, 1821, 4 Barn and Aid. 447.
Page 102. Report of the Committee of Magistrates appointed to make
Enquiry respecting the Public Bridges of the County of Middlesex, 1826, p. 46.
Page 103. Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. p.
361. We shall refer to toll bridges in the ensuing chapter.
Page 104. The narrow pack-horse bridges stiU survived, in many
places, well into the nineteenth century, as the only means of crossing
streams. De Quincey remarks that " even in the nineteenth century, I
have known a case in the sequestered district of Egremont in Cumberland,
where a post-chaise of the common narrow dimensions was obliged to
retrace its route of fourteen miles on coming to a bridge built in some
remote age when as yet post-chaises were neither known nor anticipated,
and unfortunately too narrow by three or four inches " (" Travelling,"
being chap. ix. of " Autobiographic Sketches " by Thomas De Quincey,
1790-1803, in vol. xiv. of 1863 edition of Works).
The absence of bridges, and the frequency with which deep pools or
streams of water had to be regularly forded by travellers, even on turnpike
roads as late as 1773, is shown by the fact that in that year Turnpike
Trustees were required by statute, "at all approaches to, or entrances
on such parts of any highways as are subject to deep or dangerous floods,
to fix graduated posts denoting the depth of water at the deepest part of
the same, and likewise such direction posts or stones as they shall judge to
be necessary for guiding travellers in the safest track or passage through
such floods or waters" (13 Geo. III. c. 84, sec. 41 (General Turnpike Act,
1773)). " These graduated posts," observed Scott, to whom they were
evidently quite familiar objects on the roads, " are a miserable substitute
for bridges. In the dark they can be of no service ; and in the light they
may sometimes induce strangers, depending on the depth specified by the
graduations, to ford waters with the strength of whose current they are
unacquainted, at the hazard of their lives." So near London as Stamford
Hill, he mentions, there had long been " a very dangerous water " on the
turnpike road. " I passed it myself," he says, " about ten years ago with no
ii2 THE MAINTENANCE OF BRIDGES
small risk " (Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John
Scott, 1778, pp. 298-300).
Page 104. In Middlesex, the Justices in Quarter Sessions were main-
taining, down to 1786, only three bridges. Indeed, at an earlier date they
do not seem to have maintained any ; for, in 1624, when there was a batch
of indictments for non-repair, three were against individual landowners, three
against particular parishes, and none against the County (Middlesex County
Records, by J. C. Jeaffreson, vol. ii. pp. 237-238). Yet the Justices in
182125, found existing no fewer than 175 public bridges, " exclusive of
such culverts, tunnels, etc., as from their small dimensions are ' considered
to be drains only.' " Of these, about 30 had admittedly become chargeable
to the County, whilst about half as many more had no known persons or
authority to whom their repairs could be charged, and hence would in all
probability become a County burden. About 40 were chargeable to parishes,
usually under Inclosure Awards, whilst the majority were maintained
by canal, dock and water companies under their respective private Acts.
A small and diminishing number were still maintained by lords of manors
and other landowners, ratione tenurae (Report of the Committee of Magistrates
appointed to make enquiry respecting the Public Bridges in the County of
Middlesex, 1826). The tendency to cast the burden on the County con-
tinued. For instance, the " list of County Bridges " in Wiltshire in 1859
comprised no fewer than 88, nearly all tiny structures (Rules and Standing
Orders of the Wilts Sessions, 1859, Appendix IX. pp. 118-120). Subsequent
legislation, whilst not professedly relieving private persons or parishes of
their burdens for bridges, has tended in the same direction. By an Act of
1870 (33 & 34 Viet. sec. 12) all the bridges heretofore maintained by Turn-
pike Trustees gradually, on the roads being " disturnpiked," became
County Bridges ; and by Acts of 1878 (41 & 42 Viet. c. 77, sec. 21), 1888
(51 & 52 Viet. c. 41. sec. 6), and 1891 (54 & 55 Viet. c. 63) Counties were
enabled by agreement, to take over Non-County Bridges, by whomsoever
erected, even if in disregard of the Act of 1803. The result has been that
the County Bridges of Nottinghamshire rose, within the decade ended
1881, from about 50 to about 150 ; those of Norfolk from about 130 to
about 170 (Report of House of Commons Committee on Highway Acts,
1881, pp. 125, 201). It should be added that, in 1887, after practically
all bridges had become chargeable to the County, as the result of over
a century of law as laid down in the Glasburne Bridge case, the Judges
seem slightly to have varied their statement of the law. In R. v.
Southampton (1887) it was held that utility to the public at large and
public user as part of the highway do not ipso facto make the County
liable, assuming that there is no one else on whom the liability can be
cast, and that all the conditions of the Act of 43 Geo. III. c. 59, sec. 5
have been complied with. These facts are only evidence on which the
Jury may find that the bridge has been expressly or implicitly adopted by
the County (19 Q.B.D. 590). This seems to be the first time, at any rate
for a century, in which an express or implied adoption by the County is
stated to be required to make the County liable (Pratt and Mackenzie's Law
of Highways, 16th edition, 1911, p. 103 ; The Law relating to Waters, by
H, J. W. Coulson and W. A. Forbes, 3rd edition, 1910, pp. 590-591 ). Mean-
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI 113
while, so diligently has the former construction of the law been acted upon,
that but few cases are left on which any question can be raised !
Page 104. For the bridge-building exploits of William Edwards and
Thomas Telford, see the well-known chapter in Lives of the Engineers, by
Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. i. For the bridge at Berwick, see History of
Berwick on Tweed, by John Scott, 1888, p. 417. Charles II. granted the
Municipal Corporation in 1667 an annuity of 100 a year towards its
maintenance, which is still paid by the Treasury.
We deal with toll bridges in Chap. VII., The Turnpike Road.
CHAPTER VII-
THE TURNPIKE ROAD
MEANWHILE a new principle of road maintenance was being
adopted. The device of levying from the passengers a toll for
" pavage " or " pontage," where some special works of repair
or improvement had been made to the highway, was, of course,
an old one. Littleton, in 1692, proposed that in order to meet
the heavy charges involved in the new traffic on the roads, such
a toll should be authorised wherever a piece of road was made
good, and wherever a ferry was replaced by a bridge. The
landowners and farmers were not backward in pressing for
power to exact from the new users of the King's Highway a
novel contribution towards the heavy expense of the repairs
that they rendered necessary, and of the new standard of road
maintenance that they were setting up. " Every person," it
was urged, " ought to contribute to the repair of roads in pro-
portion to the use they make of, or the convenience which they
derive from them." This assumption naturally commended itself
to the country gentlemen who sat in Parliament, and led, as we
shall describe, to the creation of Turnpike Trusts, and to a pro-
digious multiplication of these new authorities in the second half
of the eighteenth century. But before these new ad hoc bodies
were created, Parliament had already endowed the Justices of
the Peace of certain Counties or Divisions with power to levy
tolls, to be spent on the repair of some unusually frequented
highways. In 1656, the Vestry of the little parish of Radwell,
in Hertfordshire, petitioned Quarter Sessions for help with its
roads. In vain had the inhabitants tried to keep them in order ;
these highways still " stand in much need of repair, which they
are no ways able to perform (though the whole revenue of the
114
THE JUSTICES' TOLLS 115
parish should be employed), the Great North Road lying for two
miles together in the said parish, and the nature of the soil
being such as the winter devours whatsoever they are able to lay
on in the summer, and the parish is so small that it hath in it all
but two teams." In 1663, perhaps as a tardy outcome of this
petition, it was represented to Parliament by the Justices of the
Counties of Hertford, Cambridge and Huntingdon that " the
ancient highway and post road leading from London to York,
and so into Scotland .- . . by reason of the great and many loads
which are weekly drawn in waggons " to Ware (whence there was
water carriage to London), and " the great trade of barley and
malt ... is become so ruinous and almost impassable that the
ordinary course appointed by all former laws and statutes of this
realm is not sufficient for the effectual repairing of the same."
On this petition Parliament fell back on certain mediaeval pre-
cedents, and authorised, by a special statute, each of these three
Quarter Sessions to erect gates and levy tolls at Wadesmill
(Herts), Caxton (Cambridgeshire), and Stilton (Huntingdonshire)
respectively, for the next eleven years, and to devote this revenue
to specially repairing the parts of the Great North Road within
their respective jurisdictions. Only one of these three gates
was successful. That at Stilton excited so much local opposition
that it was never erected. That at Caxton was put up, but was
so easily evaded that practically nothing was collected. The
third, at Wadesmill, was thus the first effective toll-gate in
England. A generation later, when, as we have seen in a pre-
ceding chapter, the state of the roads was exciting much atten-
tion, Parliament gave similar powers by special statutes, in
respect of other pieces of road, to the Justices of Essex, Norfolk,
Surrey, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Cheshire, Bedfordshire, Wilts,
Hampshire and Kent ; sometimes to the Justices of a particular
Division of the County in special Highway Sessions, sometimes
to a certain number of Justices representing different Counties,
but more usually to the Justices of the whole County in Quarter
Sessions assembled. For fifteen years it looked as if the mainten-
ance of the high roads was to become a function of the County
Justices, either in Quarter Sessions or in special Highway Sessions.
Suddenly the course of legislation changes. After 1711, so far
as we have been able to ascertain, Parliament no longer resorted
to the County Justices for its new road authorities. In 1706,
n6 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
in the case of the highway between Fornhill in Bedfordshire
and Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, in 1709, in the case of
the Sevenoaks and Woodsgate Road, and again in 1710 for
certain highways leading from Hertfordshire into Huntingdon-
shire, forming part of the Great North Road, we have the creation
of new statutory bodies, consisting of so many named persons,
not necessarily or exclusively Justices of the Peace, who were
empowered to levy tolls and to fill vacancies by co-option.
These Acts appear to have been the first of what proved to be a
long series of statutes creating special bodies of Turnpike Trustees,
which came, eventually, to number over eleven hundred, adminis-
tering twenty-three thousand miles of road, constructed at the
cost of an accumulated debt of seven millions sterling, and
raising and spending an annual revenue of more than one and a
half million pounds.
These Turnpike Trusts, established by, literally, thousands of
separate Acts of Parliament from 1706 onwards, were given almost
identical constitutions and functions. In each case a certain
number of persons of local position were named in the Act as
the first Trustees, with a few specified ex-ojficio members. These
persons were authorised to fill vacancies arising in their member-
ship by the co-option of others possessing a specified property
qualification. The Trustees were always empowered to con-
struct and maintain a specified piece of road, to which their
powers were especially confined, and to levy tolls on that piece
of road upon certain kinds of traffic. The powers were invariably
given only for a limited term of years, usually twenty-one ; but
every Trust, in due course, applied for a new Act containing its
existence for another term, so that they became virtually per-
manent Local Authorities, entirely unconnected with either
County or Parish, Manor or Borough. The powers of these
separate bodies of Turnpike Trustees, conferred upon them as
they were in the first instance by these separate local Acts,
varied indefinitely in detail, but^showed in the course of the
eighteenth century certain^ general lines of development. The
main purpose of these Acts was, as regards the particular piece
of road dealt with, to bring additional revenues and additional
powers to the re-inforcement of the general highway law. It
was not the intention of Parliament to exempt the parishes from
their duty of maintaining the roads, nor to excuse any person
THE TURNPIKE SURVEYORS 117
from the performance of Statute Labour or Team Duty. It seems
to have been assumed at the beginning that the modicum of
repair to be rendered by the Parish Surveyors of Highways and
the unpaid Statute Labour and Team Duty of the inhabitants
would have been completed before the special Surveyors appointed
to lay out the proceeds of the new revenue came on the scene.
These Surveyors were authorised to require the performance of
such additional labour as they thought necessary, " for which
the said Surveyors," declared Parliament, " shall pay unto such
labourers and to the owners of such teams, carts and wains
according to the usual rate of the country." Presently the
situation is simplified. The power to exact extra labour com-
pulsorily is dropped, and whatever additional service is required
has to be hired in the open market. On the other hand, in all
that concerned the maintenance of the special length of road
the " turnpike road " the Surveyor appointed by the new
road authority is gradually invested with nearly all the powers
of the Parish Surveyor of Highways appointed from among the
inhabitants. He is authorised summarily to suppress nuisances,
and enabled to take compulsorily without compensation from
the common or wastes, within the parish or without, or out of any
river or brook, whatever " gravel, chalk, sand or stones " are
needed for the mending of his road ; and to resort for this purpose
also to private grounds, on payment merely of the actual damage
done. More important still, from 1714 onwards, he is given
express power to require the performance under his own direction
of a specific proportion of the ordinary Statute Labour and
Team Duty of the parishioners. The proportion of the six days
Statute Labour to which the turnpike road was entitled was
sometimes specified in the Act at two, three or four days ; or
was left to be fixed by the Turnpike Trustees or their Surveyor,
with an appeal, in case of difference, to the Justices in Petty or
Special Sessions. Gradually the apportionment comes normally
to be settled by two Justices, on the application of the Parish
Surveyor of Highways. Sometimes the Justices were empowered
to allot particular parishioners, as many as they thought fit, to
labour on the turnpike road ; or otherwise to settle what pro-
portion of the whole six days due from all the inhabitants should
be so directed. From 1716 onward the Turnpike Surveyor was,
in many cases, even given power to agree with the parish for an
n8 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
annual amount to be raised by the Parish Surveyor by a rate,
and to be paid in a lump sum to the Turnpike Surveyor, in lieu
of this specific share of the Statute Labour. Hence the new
turnpike authority found itself in possession of a money income
derived, not only from its own tolls, but also from the parish
rates on occupiers. This income from rates was, however, at no
time anything but a lump sum composition of the Statute Labour
and Team Duty. In no case that we have found were the Turn-
pike Trustees entitled themselves to levy a rate, or even to share
in the various Highway Rates made by the Justices in particular
parishes. It is this incapacity to levy a rate that distinguishes
the Turnpike Trustees (together with the Court Leet) from all
other local governing bodies.
For the fulfilment of their special task of "effectually repairing
and amending . . . very ruinous " and " impassable " stretches
of the King's Highway, the new road authorities were given
exceptional powers both of raising and of expending their new
form of revenue. They were empowered to erect " toll-houses,"
" tollbars," " turnpikes," " crates " or " gates " on any part of
the road under their jurisdiction, and to exact, as a condition
of passage, a toll on all vehicles, horsemen and cattle passing
through. This novel impost differed radically from the ancient
due, custom or toll which some manorial or corporate authorities
levied under royal grant, in that it was strictly limited in duration,
minutely specified in amount, and legally applicable to a given
public service. Thus, as we have already stated, all Turnpike
Acts were temporary only, the usual period of their validity
being 21 years, after which, it was fondly assumed, the special
need for extraordinary repairs would have passed away, and
the road might be maintained free of toll by the ordinary highway
revenue. For over half a century it was even enacted, in most of
the Turnpike Acts, that if the roads were sufficiently repaired,
and all debts paid, before the end of the term, the Justices should
order the toll-gates to be removed, and bring the tolls to an end.
The number and position of the toll-gates was usually left to the
discretion of the Trustees. But every Turnpike Act specified
the maximum toll that might be levied on vehicles, horsemen
or cattle (usually doubled on Sundays), and many of the Acts
included provisions against the exaction of repeated tolls on the
same day, or in respect of passage along the same stretch of
DEFECTS OF THE TRUSTS 119
road, whilst others contained elaborate exemptions in favour
of persons who used only minute portions of the road (as, for
instance, in crossing from one field to another), or who were
engaged in particular occupations, or, in some cases, who owned,
occupied or inhabited particular premises. It was always the
intention of Parliament that the payers of the toll should get
quid pro quo in useful improvements. The tolls were, in some
cases, not to be levied until Quarter Sessions had bound some
" able and sufficient persons " in sureties to put the road in
sufficient repair within five years. In most of the early Acts it is
expressly provided that the Justices in Quarter Sessions may
appoint fit persons to " survey the highways and enquire of the
toll, and in case of misapplication . . . they are to certify the
same to the Judges of Assize."
From the standpoint of modern administration, there were,
however, glaring shortcomings in the provisions of these Acts,
which, as we shall see, went far to frustrate the good intentions
of Parliament. The equitable incidence of the toll was under-
mined by clauses enabling -the Trustees to grant preferential
rates to particular individuals or classes. There was no limit
to the amount of borrowed capital for which the Trustees could
mortgage the tolls, so that the mere interest on the mortgage
debt might easily absorb the whole revenue destined for current
repairs. Each generation of Trustees succeeded in obtaining a
greater measure of freedom from legal limitation or executive
supervision in the expenditure of their income : they could spend
what they pleased, borrow what they pleased and manage the
business as they pleased. They might, at their option, have
their own official establishment of collectors and surveyors, or
farm out both toll collection and road repair for lump sums.
And whilst the control given in the early Acts to the County
Justices over turnpike roads, and over the Trustees who managed
them, was, in the middle of the eighteenth century, gradually
removed, no new provisions were inserted requiring the Trustees
to account for their receipts and expenditure to any public
authority. Not less important were the powers gradually con-
ceded to these new authorities to alter, at their own discretion,
the means of communication between one place and another.
In the course of half a century they not only accumulated, in
their successive statutes, all the powers of the Justices under
120 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
the General Highway Acts but even added new ones. They
could buy land compulsorily in order to widen narrow ways and
improve gradients. They could erect bars against byelanes,
close up ancient highways, divert others at their pleasure and
compel every one to travel by the new road they had constructed.
In this way an ancient hamlet might find itself suddenly deprived
of a public road, in order that the journey from one town to
another might be shortened or straightened, or even so that a
particular mansion or farmhouse might be favoured with easy
access to the market town.
Across this mass of Local Acts, each applicable only to a few
miles of road, there came, between 1727 and 1766, nearly a score
of general statutes for the " more effectual preservation " of
the turnpike roads. Two of the earliest of these were directed
against the " ill-designing and disorderly persons [who] associated
themselves together both by day and night, and cut down,
pulled down, burnt and otherwise destroyed several turnpike
gates and houses " the alarming frequency of this offence
between 1727 and 1735 inducing an eighteenth-century legislature
to raise the sentence, from three months hard labour and a public
whipping, to death without benefit of clergy. But the County
Justices and Turnpike Trustees who swarmed on the benches of
the House of Commons discovered more insidious enemies of their
turnpikes than mere rioters ; and from 1741 onward we see them
passing Act after Act to protect their roads against the wear
and tear of heavy weights and narrow wheels. These Acts gave
all bodies of Turnpike Trustees power to erect weighing machines,
to exact prohibitive tolls for extraordinary weights, to seize
horses in excess of the lawful number, to charge double rates for
narrow wheels, and altogether to exempt the broadest wheels
from their tolls. To quote the words of an able commentator,
the users of wheeled vehicles were to be " in some instances
compelled to obedience, like slaves, by severe penalties ; and
in others enticed to it like children with a sugar plum." Un-
fortunately for all concerned these amateur " Act-constructors,"
as John Scott terms them, were as unskilful as they were irresolute.
" Sometimes one is at a loss to conceive the end at which they
were aiming," continues Scott ; " and sometimes when their
end is obvious one can find no reason for their choice of the
means that are designed to accomplish it." "If the Parliament
THE TURNPIKE ACTS 121
would but fix on any one reasonable plan," the farmers remarked
to Scott, " and keep to it, let it be what it might, they should be
satisfied ; but that such perpetual alterations as they had for
some time experienced, were inconvenient beyond expression,
for they never knew what they had to do for two years together."
At the conclusion of peace in 1763, after the Seven Years' War,
the chaos of statutes had become so intolerable that a public-
spirited knot of local government reformers, headed by the well-
known Thomas Gilbert, set themselves to consolidate the whole
of the general law relating to turnpikes, concurrently with their
similar effort with regard to the highway law that we have
already described an arduous and complicated enterprise
which, after an unsatisfactory essay in 1766 (7 George III. c. 40),
eventuated in the comprehensive General Turnpike Act of 1773
(13 George III. c. 84).
This Act, which was made to apply to all turnpike roads,
existing or thereafter constructed, was, like the legislation which
it superseded, framed rather in the interest of the Turnpike
Trustees and the mortgagees of their tolls than in that of the '
users of the roads or the public at large. It was, indeed, in the
main, merely a consolidating Act. In so far as it altered the
powers of Turnpike Trustees, it strengthened their control over
their own officials, and enlarged the authority of these officials
over the community. To strengthen the position of the Trusts
possibly with a view to improving their credit as borrowers
it included the old clauses requiring a high property qualification
for Trustees, and disqualifying publicans from serving as officials,
whilst incorporating new provisions formalizing their procedure,
and making it incumbent on them, whenever they leased the tolls,
to lease them to the highest bidder. But the obvious defects in the
Local Acts that we have already pointed out were not remedied.
No provision was made to prevent malversation or extravagance
by the Turnpike Trustees ; there was required no audit of their
accounts ; no check was imposed on the amount of their borrow-
ings, or the rate of interest to be paid ; and no curb was placed
on their uncontrolled power to divert, alter or close the ancient
highways at their will. The bulk of this wordy, complicated and
badly arranged statute consisted, in fact, in a mere stringing
together of the existing clauses relating to wheeled vehicles
prohibitions, exemptions, special tolls, fines and forfeitures, one
122 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
piled on top of another until, as John Scott heard " a very
respectable and intelligent gentleman now in the House [of
Commons] observe, ... the Trustees would have enough to
do if they were bound to reconcile all the contradictions of the
Act and make sense of its nonsense." It was this statute that,
with only trifling modifications, remained the basis of turnpike
administration right down to 1822, when it was superseded by
another hardly less complicated.
The optimistic assumption of Parliament that the turnpike
and its toll would be but a temporary device to meet an excep-
tionally ruinous state of a particular bit of road was, we need
hardly say, everywhere falsified. Whenever the term for which
Parliament had granted a toll drew near to expiry, the particular
turnpike authority invariably petitioned for a renewal of its
Act. The power to take toll, it was alleged, had " been of great
benefit to all carriages and persons travelling those roads ; the
said roads are not fully repaired, nor all the moneys borrowed
by virtue of the said Act paid " ; " sometimes the deep and long
commons over which the roads went were so impassable " as to
require the construction of a causeway or other new work.
After a while the application for renewal becomes so much a
matter of course that no special reason is alleged for it, and the
new bill " for enlarging and continuing " the powers of each
Turnpike Trust appears automatically as the term comes to an
end. And these renewal bills generally included new powers,
either in the form of a schedule of augmented tolls, or by extension
to additional lengths of roads, or through the concession of more
drastic means of enforcing payment. In the first half of the
century, these steadily extending powers of taxation did not fail
to arouse complaints from those who had hitherto used the roads
free from toll. As the number of turnpike bills increases, the
applications to the House of Commons are met by counter-
petitions from groups of users alleging, as in the case of the fisher-
men of Hastings, that the proposed tolls will " discourage them
from following their employment," and will " impoverish the
greatest part of the inhabitants," or, as in the case of inhabitants
of Gloucestershire, declaring that the highways remain, in spite
of the toll, " in a ruinous and almost impassable condition,"
so that they see no benefit in a renewal of the impost. The third
decade of the century, which is noted as a period of expansion
TURNPIKE RIOTS 123
and active experiment in the administration of the Poor Law,
was marked also by a rapid multiplication of Turnpike Trusts.
Between 1720 and 1730 no fewer than 71 new Trusts were
established, the total mileage under toll being thereby more than
trebled. This great extension of taxation on the users of the
roads did not fail to arouse resistance, especially in districts
where small holdings or cottage manufacturers prevailed.
Serious riots broke out in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Here-
fordshire in 1726, and continued spasmodically for a whole decade,
in the course of which turnpikes were destroyed, and the pike-
keepers ill treated. " Great numbers of riotous and rebellious
persons," we read, in 1732, " armed with firearms and other
dangerous weapons have . . . frequently assembled themselves
together in the night-time, and marched in formidable bodies
into that City [Hereford] and pulled down and destroyed the
turnpikes erected on the roads leading thereto, and the houses
of the said turnpike keepers . . . after they had plundered the
same, and fired their guns into the windows of several other
dwelling houses and in the public streets . . . threatened and
declared that they would not only destroy the turnpikes but
would murder the keepers thereof, and all such Trustees who
should presume to act under the Act of Parliament ; and at the
public market place . . . have given notice in a most audacious
manner that if the magistrates or any other persons should
interrupt or oppose them, they would set the said City on fire."
Similar riots broke out at Bristol in 1749, in which turnpikes
were tumultuously demolished. The rioters were " armed with
rusty swords, pitchforks, axes, guns, pistols, clubs, etc., and
called themselves Sack a Lents. . . . They ranged themselves
in the main street before the George Inn, by beat of drum, huzzas
and a hunting horn, three drums attending them. Here they
drank freely, with much noise, and then broke the windows of
one Mr. Durbin, Tithingman of the Hundred who had, by order
of the [Turnpike] Commissioners, carried persons concerned in
destroying the turnpikes before two Justices, by whom they were
committed to Newgate." After the disorder had lasted a fort-
night, the rioters were dispersed by the arrival of the soldiers.
A few years later there were turnpike riots at Leeds, in which
the military had to fire on the rioters, with some loss of life.
About the middle of the century, in spite of the annually
I2 4 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
increasing mileage of road subjected to toll, and the automatic
renewal and extension of the powers of the various bodies of
Turnpike Trustees, opposition, either by petition or riot, dies
away, and Turnpike Acts multiply fast. After the Peace of
1748 a perfect mania seems to set in, and the number of new
Trusts rises suddenly from about three a year to nearly twenty
a year. Between 1748 and 1770 the number of separate Trusts
in existence rose from about 160 to about 530, whilst the mileage
subject to toll was quadrupled. When we remember the
Eighteenth Century impatience of new taxation and hatred of
restraints on personal freedom, this acquiescence in the extension,
all over England, of an entirely new impost, is, we think, a matter
for surprise. We attribute it less to a conviction in the payers
of the toll that they were actually getting quid pro quo, than to
certain common features in the constitution and working of the
various Turnpike Trusts themselves. It must, in the first place,
be remembered that the tolls were never levied on foot passengers,
and were thus unfelt by the labouring poor. The projectors of
each new Turnpike Trust were so anxious to secure local support
that they included among their proposed Trustees every one of
local influence or authority noblemen, clergy, squires, farmers
and even traders a constitution of the governing body which,
at whatever cost of efficiency, at any rate went far to secure
assent. But it was not merely the principal inhabitants who
were placated. The new source of road revenue promised to
relieve the parishioners of their ancient Statute Labour. The
little farmers and cottagers looked forward to the cost of repairs
being henceforth met out of the tolls to be paid by the carriage
folk and the London carriers. " As soon as a turnpike Act is
obtained," it was said in the Gentleman's Magazine for September
1754, " all the parishes through which the road passes consider
the Act as a benefit ticket, and an exemption from their usual
expenses, and elude the payment of their just quota towards
the reparation of the road, by compounding with the Trustees
for a less sum, or by doing their Statute Labour in a fraudulent
manner; and in both these cases they are generally favoured
by the neighbouring Justices and gentlemen, for the ease of
their own estates." Hence the very defects in structure and
function of the Turnpike Trusts served to prevent resistance to
the new impost which they levied.
NO NATIONAL SYSTEM 125
From the standpoint of a national system of road communica-
tion, the Turnpike Trusts had, from first to last, many grave
defects. Foreign critics complained that, instead of the main
routes of through traffic, from one end of the kingdom to another,
being systematically dealt with, the abandonment of the subject
by the English Parliament to local initiative and local public
spirit resulted, at best, in a strange patchwork. Whether or not
a particular bit of road remained in the ruinous and impassable
condition implied by parish management depended, not on the
needs of the users, or the national importance of this particular
link, but on the degree of enlightened self-interest or public
spirit of the squires, farmers, and traders in its immediate
neighbourhood. If, during the eighteenth century, any one
had taken the trouble to make a turnpike map of England, this
would have shown, not a system of radiating arteries of com-
munication, but scattered cases of turnpike administration,
unconnected with each other ; appearing at first as mere dots on
the map, then gradually increasing in number and size so as to
form continuous lines ; and only by the end of the century
becoming, as John Holt somewhat optimistically declared in
1794, " so multiplied and extended as to form almost an universal
plan of communication through the kingdom." It took, in fact,
practically a whole century of disconnected effort before even
such national arteries of communication as the Great North
Road from London to Edinburgh, the Irish road from London to
Holyhead, or the Great Western Road from London to Exeter
came, for the whole of their lengths, under the administration
of Turnpike Trusts. The travellers from Glasgow to London
in 1739 found " no turnpike road till they came to Grantham,
within 1 10 miles of London." A foreign visitor in 1752, travelling
on the Great Western Road, declares that " after the first 47
miles from London, you never set eye on a turnpike for 220
miles. . . . What fine roads," he exclaims satirically, "from
London to Land's End, or even to Exeter, Plymouth or Fal-
mouth ; you have such roads as the lazy Italians have fruits,
namely, what God left them after the Flood." And yet, as
another traveller observes, " there may be a profusion of too
many turnpikes round a single city, half of which carried on
in a straight line would have proved a national rather than
a private good." For even in those districts in which Turnpike
126 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
Trusts had been established, there was no security, or even
likelihood, that the most frequented, the most direct and the
easiest right of way would be selected for improvement. The
Commissioners employed by the Board of Agriculture in 1794
are continually remarking on the " malignant degree of in-
genuity . . . displayed in sending them [i.e. the turnpike
roads] up hills," or " over such a dreary, dangerous and hilly
common." The motives for this inconsiderate choice of routes
were varied and diverse. The old pack-horse track which went
up hill and down dale wherever the surface was good enough,
was often converted into a carriage road without regard for the
fact that its gradients made it a quite unsuitable route for wheeled
traffic. The first waggon highways were, moreover, as a House
of Commons Committee was informed in 1806, sometimes deliber-
ately " carried up steep ascents to gain the open country and
avoid the valleys, because the roads through the latter could not
easily be made passable in the wet seasons of the year." More
sinister motives were found in the " partiality " and " selfish-
ness " of individual landowners, who sought, it was complained
in the Gentleman's Magazine in August 1754, " to make turnpikes
avenues, more or less, to this or that country seat." " If the
great man," it was said in 1794, " who generally takes the lead
in laying out the turnpike road has no immediate interest himself,
he has often a friend to oblige, or an enemy to mortify, by sending
the road up hill to save the land of one, or through the middle of
a meadow to hurt the other. A tippling house on the top of a hill,
or a favourite piece of land at the bottom, compels the husband-
man at this day, in many parts of this kingdom, to keep one-third
more cattle in his team than there would otherwise have been
occasion for." Even as late as 1828, when the efficacy of public
opinion had enormously increased, we see no less a personage
than Sir Robert Peel, the elder, not scrupling to attempt to
divert the new turnpike road between London and Liverpool
out of its way, in order that it might pass close to his own residence
and cotton-mills, to the ruin of the town of Tamworth an
attempt frustrated by counter-petitions from Tamworth and,
most potent of all, an able letter to the Times. Nor was it always
powerful individuals who perverted the action of Turnpike
Trustees. The whole of the inhabitants of particular towns
frequently asserted their separate interests to the detriment of a
TURNPIKE OBSTRUCTIVENESS 127
national service. " Local interest," said John Scott in 1778,
" often produces strange distortions. A few years ago a new
turnpike road was made from St. Alban's to Reading . . .
designed to open an easy communication between the East and
West of England, and had the straight line been preserved,
would have been many miles nearer than the way through
London. It was, however, found necessary to make a zigzag
line by Watford, Amersham, High Wycombe and Marlow,
solely to oblige the inhabitants of those towns, by which means
the difference between the two roads is rendered inconsiderable."
In other cases the reverse would happen, and a powerful corpora-
tion would try to prevent the new impost being levied on its
own inhabitants. " The town of Liverpool," it was reported,
" is a great enemy to turnpikes : there are only three toll-gates
within eight miles of it, none within four." The result was that
the road revenue was so much lessened that the Turnpike Trustees
found themselves unable to keep any part of the roads in good
repair. " Most of the great towns " of Lancashire, it was said
in 1794, " have had sufficient interest to place the toll-bars at
some miles distance from them "; and this, it was alleged, was
" almost the sole cause of the wretched condition of the turnpike
roads " in that county as late as 1808.
The narrow limits of each Trust, and the pecuniary interests
involved, not only militated against the wisest choice of a route,
but also obstructed the further increase of lines of communica-
tion. " Instead of Turnpike Acts being obtained for particular
roads," wrote an able critic of road administration, in 1765,
" they ought to have been made general throughout counties.
As things are at present conducted, the Commissioners of particu-
lar roads, in order to enhance their revenues, generally take the
liberty of blocking up the principal avenues of every other road
which falls into or leads across theirs ... so that, in fact, every
Act which passes for the repair of a road, with the usual extensive
powers to Commissioners to erect gates, is an Act also to prevent
any of the roads leading into or across it, be they ever so bad,
from receiving the same remedy." The Turnpike Trustees
went, however, further in their obstructiveness. Towards the
latter part of the eighteenth century, when the several oases
of turnpike administration were impinging on each other, the
Trustees of every existing Trust, in conjunction often with their
128 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
mortgagees or other creditors, were quick to petition Parliament
against any proposals for new turnpike roads which threatened
to compete with their line of route. Thus, in 1780, when a new
road was projected from Horsley to Dudbridge in Gloucestershire,
the Trustees of the Gloucester and Stroud Turnpike complained
loudly to the House of Commons that this new road would " open
up a communication of road from Gloucester to Dudbridge,
and through the parishes of Standish and Stonehouse, by which
means," it was said, the traveller from Gloucester to Bath would
be able to go more quickly and easily, " as by the intended road
several steep hills would be avoided." If the bill passes, they
ask that their own tolls may be increased. The Trustees of the
Cirencester and Stroud Turnpike go further, and demand the
entire rejection of the project. So, in the same year, the Trustees
of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Macclesfield Turnpike petition
vehemently against a projected extension of the territory of the
Macclesfield and Buxton Trust, as the proposed improvement
of certain branch roads " will materially interfere with the
petitioners' trust, as they will be a means of lessening the tolls."
In the very middle of the eighteenth century there seems to have
been a pitched battle in Parliament reminding us of similar
railway struggles a century later as to the direction to be taken
by the main line of road from London to the North- Western
Counties. We see Sheffield and Derby petitioning in favour of
rival projects, via Leicester and via Bedford respectively, and
enlisting, each of them, the support of wayside parishes. Out
of many similar petitions we quote the following in 1800. The
Trustees of the Maidenhead and Reading Turnpike, having
under its charge part of the Great Western Road, strongly oppose
a projected new turnpike road from New Windsor to Longford
in Middlesex, because it would make the road from London by
that way considerably shorter, which might tempt the traveller
to avoid Maidenhead altogether. "If we remember that the
Trustees, mortgagees and creditors of an existing turnpike road
would certainly include the county members, the resident
Justices of the Peace, the local landowners, and the more sub-
stantial farmers of the neighbourhood, we shall be able to estimate
how effective was the obstruction to the Parliamentary sanction,
or even to the initiation, of a shorter or easier line of communica-
tion than that to which the inhabitants were accustomed.
1
TOLL BRIDGES 129
We may here notice the somewhat analogous development of
toll bridges. The privilege of levying bridge toll, or " pontage,"
had been conceded by the King in special cases, notably during
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by way of indemnity
for erecting particular bridges ; but such a grant was, we under-
stand, always limited in duration to three, five or eight years.
Except for such cases, the bridges that existed seem to have
been free from toll. In Lancashire in 1621, and again in Essex
in 1746, we hear of attempts by neighbouring landowners to
exact tolls, which are repressed by Quarter Sessions. In the
eighteenth century, however, under the influence of the imperative
demand for better means of communication, and of the new idea
that the actual users of the highways should be made to bear the
expense of their maintenance, we see erected, from 1725 onward,
a whole series of new toll bridges, corresponding with the new
turnpike tolls. Such a levy of tolls required statutory authority,
which was granted by Local Act, sometimes (as in the cases of the
City of London, Bristol, Norwich, Windsor and other corporate
towns) to the Municipal Corporation ; sometimes (as in the
cases of Westminster and Putney Bridges, Preston Bridge,
Deritend Bridge at Birmingham and Bishopwearmouth Bridge
at Sunderland) to public bodies of Commissioners incorporated
for the purpose ; and sometimes (as in the cases of the bridges
at Walton on Thames, Hampton Court and several of those
within the Metropolis) to individual landowners or groups of
speculators. These Corporations, Commissioners or Companies
differed from the Turnpike Trusts in securing powers unlimited
in duration, and in levying tolls on pedestrians. They seem to
have resembled the Turnpike Trusts in the general inefficiency
of their administration, in the frequent farming of their tolls,
in the complications and extortions of the imposts that they
levied on vehicular and animal traffic, and in the delays to which,
in London at any rate, the congestion at their toll gates eventu-
ally gave rise.
When we consider the administration of the various Turnpike
Trusts of the eighteenth century, from the narrower standpoint
of the repair and construction of particular bits of road, we find
ourselves in the midst of the haphazard and anarchic diversities
characteristic of an age lacking alike in technological and adminis-
trative science. The County Justices in Quarter Sessions who,
K
130 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
as we have seen, controlled the earliest of the turnpike roads,
sometimes appointed an officer at a small fee to lay out the pro-
ceeds of the toll as he thought fit ; or, in other cases, contented
themselves with ordering the Treasurer of the moneys arising
from particular turnpikes to pay lump sums to the Parish Sur-
veyors of Highways " after the said Surveyors have made it
appear . . . that the inhabitants of the said parish have done
their full six days work, pursuant to the statute, of teams and
labourers, and have expended a sixpenny rate in repairing their
highways." Occasionally Quarter Sessions would request the
Justices to " view the roads in their several Divisions and to
cause the Surveyor to measure such parts of the roads as are out
of repair, and to report at the next Quarter Sessions." But we
do not gather that, for the first half of the century at any rate,
Quarter Sessions, where it was responsible for a turnpike road,
gave any directions, either to its own officer or to the parish
Surveyors of Highways, as to the way in which the work was to
be done. Some of the early bodies of Turnpike Trustees seem
to have shown rather more activity, if less discretion, than the
County Justices. The active Trustees, often, as we gather, the
farmers and tradesmen of the neighbourhood, added petty
jobbery and a foolish officiousness to their ignorance. Nor were
the proceedings made any better by the intervention of the
ordinary eighteenth-century squire. " We may blame," says
a graphic but inelegant critic in the Gentleman's Magazine for
August 1754, " the ignorance and obstinacy of John Trot, and
reflect on Tom Buttertub, the grocer, the booby Trustee of the
next parish ; of course the profile of the road is injudiciously
constructed. . . . John Trot is not so much the object of con-
tempt for being an incorrigible blockhead, as Squire Satskull and
Sir John Shallow are, for their pride, avarice, insolence, ignorance,
petulancy and meanness. . . . This meanness in our gentry
brings it about that a tenant shall be employed in repairing the
road upon his own terms, and the more he cheats the [turn]pike,
the better he will be able to pay his rent. The squire likes his
proposals, and the rest of the Commissioners acquiesce, being
either farmers or tradesmen. . . . We cannot justly wonder
that turnpike roads should be in such bad condition as they are,
when we find such meannesses amongst those who ought to be
examples of public spirit and virtue." " At the first erection
TURNPIKE ROAD-MAKING 131
of turnpikes," reports another critic in the same journal for
September 1754, " the road-makers ex professo, who perhaps
were yeomen-like farmers and gentlemen's bailiffs, made a very
poor figure in their undertaking ; witness, amongst others, that
great road from London to Bath ; it errs and blunders in all the
forms ; its strata of materials were never worth a straw ; its
surface was never made cycloidal ; it hath neither good side
ditches, nor footpaths for walkers ; no outlets were made for
water that stagnates in the body of the road ; it was never
sufficiently widened, nor were the hedges ever cleared of course
it is the worst public road in Europe, considering what vast sums
have been collected from it." Other Turnpike Trusts shifted
the whole work and responsibility to their Treasurer, a gentleman
whose custody of the turnpike moneys brought him a small
profit, and who was therefore considered as remunerated for his
trouble. " For several years past," we read about Surrey in
1794, " the turnpike roads of this county have been under the
direction of Treasurers, who are Trustees of the roads, and are
appointed by the Trust at large, at a meeting held for that pur-
pose. A knowledge of the fundamental principles of making
roads is not deemed at all necessary to the election of such
Treasurers, but they are generally some respectable gentlemen
in business (if near town) and whither perhaps they go every day.
Each appoints some inferior tradesman of the district in which
he lives to be the Surveyor, and who may be a carpenter, a brick-
layer or any other profession, as it may happen, so that without
a particle of knowledge in the maintenance and principles of
roads on either side, is the expenditure of hundreds of pounds
committed to the day labourers, who are for the most part old
and decrepid, and who, being generally left to themselves, take
every advantage ; and as the Surveyor does not know how much
should be done, he is easily imposed upon by the men ; and as
the money does not come out of his pocket, it is not very material
for him to give himself much trouble about it. Thus, from the
want of experience in the Surveyor, and the want of leisure in
the Treasurer, these roads which, from their proximity to the
gravel on all sides, might, under a proper system, be kept sound
and in a good condition all the year round, are found to be daily
diminishing, and the public will, ere a few years longer, find it
expedient to take some steps to remedy so great a defect. ' ' Under
132 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
such circumstances it was almost inevitable that many bodies of
Turnpike Trustees, especially in the latter half of the century,
should fall back on the common administrative expedient of the
period, that of " farming " which was at the time so much re-
sorted to in the administration of prisons and the Poor Law.
As applied to turnpike roads, this meant that some local farmer
or jobbing craftsman would undertake, for a lump sum, to keep
a given stretch of highway in repair. According to the ablest
contemporary road administrator, this practice proved as ruinous
to the roads as it had to the workhouse and the prison. It was
to " a desire in Trustees to be exonerated from trouble " that
John Scott ascribes " that most pernicious practice of farming
roads, which, like farming the poor, is the disgrace of our country.
The Trustees, when once a road is farmed, have nothing to do
but meet once a year to eat venison and pay the farmer his
annuity ; the farmer has nothing to do but to do as little work
and pocket as much money as he possibly can ; he has other fish
to fry, other matters to mind, than road-mending. Incroach-
ment after incroachment takes place, the hedges and the trees
grow till they meet overhead, the landholders are excused from
their Statute Duty, and the water and the narrow wheeled
waggons complete the business. At length, perhaps, the universal
complaint of travellers or menaces of indictment rouse the
Trustees for a moment, a meeting is called, the farmer sent for
and reprimanded, and a few loads of gravel buried among the
mud, serve to keep the way barely passable. . . . These practices
of farming roads and farming the poor ought to be prohibited
by law."
With such primitive views of administration, we can under-
stand how many of the earlier Turnpike Trusts hardly conduced
to the actual improvement of the roads. Thus, Robert Phillips,
in his dissertation of 1737 to the Royal Society, " concerning the
present state of the high roads of England," complains that the
" turnpike roads, instead of being mended, have been made bad
by art ... so that all the money that has been laid out in such
roads . . . has been rather of prejudice than service." The
people who have had the care of the roads, he explains, have
heaped loamy gravel on them, deep hard-baked ruts have been
formed, which are constantly rilled with water. " If the turn-
pikes were taken down," he sums up, " and the roads not touched
THE "ROAD LAID WAVY" 133
for seven years, they would be a great deal better than they are
now." These haphazard methods of road maintenance con-
tinued to prevail in the smaller and more remote Turnpike Trusts
right into the nineteenth century. From about 1750, however,
we watch the larger and more important Trusts those admin-
istered by active and intelligent Justices or by the principal
inhabitants of populous districts enlisting in their service
permanent salaried officials who proceeded to experiment in
road construction and repair, without engineering knowledge,
it is true, but at any rate according to some deliberate policy,
which was consistently followed. The result was an amazing
variety of shapes and surfaces, each for a time believed in by its
inventor. The " road laid wavy," or " trenched road," with a
" continuation of little hills and valleys " ; the " angular road
sloping like a pantile roof from one hand to the other " ; the
" concave road," or " hollow way," into which a stream was
periodically turned to clean its surface ; the built-up " horizontal
road," flanked by deep ditches, sometimes a " causeway from
20 to 30 feet wide, nearly horizontal on the top, with precipices
on each side of four or five feet perpendicular depth," could all
be seen within a day's journey of the Metropolis. Regarded in
the light of the modern art of road construction, all these fantastic
forms and surfaces were grotesquely inconvenient and wasteful.
But we may well believe that they were all of them improvements
on the deep holes and inevitable ruts which resulted from the
careless dumping of clay, dirt and rubbish by the little road-
farmer or the ignorant workman who carried out the orders of
the local Trustee. And the constant observation and comparison
of these deliberately shaped roads seems to have produced, by
the end of the century, something like a consensus of opinion,
among the more intelligent Trustees and Surveyors, in favour of
a moderately convex surface, artificially constructed of small
pebbles and gravel an immeasurable improvement on both
the " natural " surface and the heaped-up dirt, which it super-
seded.
But the richer and larger turnpike authorities did more than
merely improve the surface of the roads. Here and there we
find them widening and straightening the narrow and crooked
bits of their thoroughfares ; bridging the numerous " water-
splashes " through which generations of travellers had passed ;
i 3 4 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
improving gradients by cutting through the hilltops and raising
the valley bottoms ; and, in the latter half of the century,
constructing entirely new roads from place to place. Thus,
as early as 1708, we find an order made at the Hertford-
shire Quarter Sessions " for the widening by eight yards, of the
highway from Ware to Wadesmill ... for the length of 25 poles,
and for a jury to be empanelled to assess reasonable compensation
not exceeding 25 years purchase." In Essex, in 1725, the parish
of Chelmsford petitioned Quarter Sessions " to grant them some
supply towards the charges of purchasing and pulling down the
old houses in a row called Middle Row, and lay the ground into
the highway for enlarging thereof, it being but nine feet wide."
It was thereupon ordered by Quarter Sessions " that the sum
of 50, more and besides the sum of 100 given them last Sessions,
be given to the Churchwardens, Overseers and Surveyors of the
said Parish for the time being, after they have purchased and
pulled down all the said houses and made a highway there."
But, as might have been expected, it was the Turnpike Trusts
in the distinctly urban districts that were most energetic in this
work of road improvement. The Trustees of the main road from
London into Kent had, about the middle of the century, " widened
several places in the road to Dartford, being,"says the Gentkman's
Magazine for May 1753, " perhaps the first who began to widen
and make the roads straight." They " likewise widened and
mended some narrow and bad ways from Lewisham to Bromley
and Beckenham . . . and added a new bridge." Presently,
as we learn, the local Turnpike Trustees widened the road " going
off of Clapham Common to Mitcham." " The gentlemen of
Camberwell " did the same f or " a very bad hollow way leading
by the Fox & Goose near that town." In country districts this
most necessary work of widening and straightening the roads
was often obstructed by the selfishness of landowners. " If,"
it was said in the same journal in September 1754, " there be
necessity of a small strip of land to make a road more com-
modious sometimes it is peremptorily refused ; and if you
would obtain it legally it would cost twenty times as much as it
is worth. If to obtain a short cut, or avoid a morass, you want
to pass through a field, you are generally refused, and put to
three times as much expense as the thing is worth." But the
greatest obstacle to improvement was found in the lack of
LACK OF TECHNICAL SKILL 135
administrative ability among the Turnpike Trustees themselves.
It practically never occurred to such Trustees to get a professional
survey made of the road to be improved ; they never saw the
importance of getting competent advice as to the engineering
problems to be solved ; and when they did have some person
in their employment who was called a Surveyor, they failed to
realise that it would not do to let him at the same time act as
contractor for the execution of the work which he was required
to supervise. In the interesting published account of the
Epping and Ongar Turnpike Trust, we are able to watch the
spurt of activity made by a public-spirited body between 1769
and 1786 in widening roads, levelling steep ascents, and making
better connections from point to point, and to realise the diffi-
culties which brought them presently to a standstill. Sometimes
they would put the work out to contract ; sometimes they
would do it by direct employment, both systems proving equally
unsatisfactory. What was constant was their reliance on the
survey and report of individual members of their own body,
supplemented by the advice of their " Surveyor " a gentleman
to whom they gave the handsome stipend of 25 a year, and
at the same time allowed to undertake the execution of the work
for a lump sum. At other times they gave him thirty shillings
a week for superintending the labourers whom they themselves
engaged. When the Trustees put out the work to their Surveyor
for a lump sum, it happens more than once that it is subsequently
found to have been badly done or left altogether unfinished.
When they engage their own labourers under such superintendence
the work invariably proves to cost enormously more than the
original estimate. These administrative failures led first to
repeated changes of Surveyor, and presently to an abandonment
of the task in despair, practically no improvements being under-
taken for a whole generation. At length in 1830, when the
then Trustees nerved themselves to renewed activity, they
began by engaging the services of Macadam as Consulting
Surveyor, and at last made something like a good job of the
business.
The most defective side of turnpike administration was that
of finance. There was, to begin with, in nearly all Turnpike
Trusts, the usual eighteenth-century jobbery in the purchase
of materials, in the connivance at bad work by contractors,
136 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
and in the appointment of the officials of the Trust itself. In
these respects, however, so far as our information goes, there is
no reason to suppose that the Turnpike Trustees were either
better or worse than contemporary local authorities generally.
It was in the method of raising their resources that the Trusts
were most open to criticism. Their relation with the com-
pulsory Statute Labour, to be rendered by the parishes through
which the road passed, was, with the uncertainty as to the amount
that they could exact and the method of obtaining it, in the
highest degree unsatisfactory. But the special source of revenue
of Turnpike Trustees was, of course, the toll, the collection of
which led to endless evasions, inequalities and favouritisms of
all kinds, arbitrary exactions, and systematic petty embezzle-
ments. We need not here dwell on the various devices by which
the legislature and the Trustees tried to protect themselves
against the ingenuities of those seeking to avoid the tolls the
vigilant closing up of bye-lanes or side roads, and the perpetual
shifting or multiplication of the gates in order to counteract
the inveterate desire to go round ; together with the long array
of penalties on such dodges as taking off the supernumerary
horses, or lightening the load where going through the turnpike
gate, dashing through without payment, or fraudulently pre-
tending to come under one or other of the categories of exemption.
What made the incidence of the tolls specially inequitable, and
created a permanent sense of injustice, was the multiplicity
of exemptions and abatements that were allowed to favoured
trades or individuals. There were, to begin with, any number
of exemptions in favour of agriculture ; ploughs and implements
of husbandry of every kind, carts carrying manure, cattle going
to pasture, waggons bringing home the harvest were all privileged
to pass and repass free of toll, however much they wore out the
road. Sometimes other local industries would be specially
favoured ; round Evesham, in Warwickshire, the flour-millers
were secured freedom of access for their customers and for the
materials needed for the repairs of their mills ; in Berkshire, in
a vain attempt to resuscitate a decaying local manufacture, it
was stipulated that " any cart or horse carrying or bringing
back any cloth, drugget, serge or other woollen manufacture,
to or from any fulling mill," should be free from toll. The
conveyance of coal was specially favoured in some districts,
TOLL EXEMPTIONS 137
and that of " peat, peat ashes, or turf " in others. A particular
town would insist on the exemption of " carriages carrying hay
or straw to be used within the said borough." More general
was the exemption specially useful because most tolls were
doubled on Sundays of local residents riding or driving to and
from church, or attending a funeral. Most Acts forbade the
taking of toll on the days of Parliamentary elections in the
district, the borough and county elections being sometimes
both particularly specified. Post-horses carrying mails, waggons
transporting the baggage of soldiers on the march, and carts
used for the passing of vagrants were almost universally
exempted. What was, however, more invidious was the special
privilege of exemption which influential inhabitants were some-
times able to secure, for themselves, their families, their work-
men, their servants, and their agents, and for those of all successive
owners and occupiers of their premises, as the price of abstaining
from Parliamentary opposition. These specific Parliamentary
exemptions by no means exhausted the list of favours. The
Trustees were authorised, both by general statutes and by their
own Local Act, to compound for the tolls ; and this power was
very generally exercised, not only in the case of regular and
frequent users of the road, but also in favour of the inhabitants
of particular parishes, and even of individual Trustees them-
selves. In the records of the Epping and Ongar Trust, for
instance, we find, between 1769 and 1789, from a score to fifty
compounders, paying from 5s. 3d. to 21s. each a year, for
exemption from all tolls on themselves, their horses, their
carriages, their families and their servants. In 1789 the Trustees
seem to have realised how seriously their revenue was being
curtailed by these nominal compositions, for they resolve " that
it will be very beneficial to the Trust not to permit any person
to compound for their tolls in future." The list of compounders
thereupon disappears from the Minutes. But this self-denying
ordinance was vehemently objected to by some of the Trustees,
and one leading landowner and, it so happens, the Treasurer
of the Trust, insisted on the resolution being rescinded. Within
a year he carries his point, subject only to the composition rates
being doubled, and the list of compounders reappears. But
the exemptions and compositions accounted only for a small
part of the Trustees' loss of revenue. The men whom they
L- 3 8 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
appointed as toll collectors turnpike gate-keepers, or " pike-
men," as they were called were mere labourers, paid a wage
of ten or twelve shillings a week, often unable to read or write,
and usually incapable of keeping accounts. It was found
necessary in 1763 elaborately to forbid them to absent themselves
from their posts during their periods of duty, and to require
them to remain until they were actually relieved. The varying
rates of charge, the exemptions and compositions, the validity
of tickets for return journeys or other gates, and many other
complications of the toll made it impossible to devise any
effective check on their receipts. It was notorious that they
habitually kept back part of each day's collection for themselves.
Hence, from the very first, many Trusts resorted to the plan of
" farming," leasing each gate with its power of exacting toll
for a definite sum per annum. At first the gates were let by
private contract by the personal negotiations of the Justices
of the Peace or Turnpike Trustees themselves, to any one who
would make himself responsible for a lump sum, sometimes
to a publican, a little tradesman, or even a labourer. Presently
it became customary, and Parliament made it compulsory, to
resort, for the letting of the tolls, to public auction and to accept
the highest bidder as lessee. As the mileage of turnpike roads
increased, there grew up a whole class of professional toll-farmers,
often men of large capital, farming tolls amounting to many tens
of thousands a year, and employing under them small armies
of professional " pikemen." Old prints and descriptions enable
us to visualise these men, whom Dickens loved to describe, and
who have long since disappeared from among us. " A pikeman
. . . wore a tall black glazed hat and corderoy breeches, with
white stockings. But the most distinctive part of his costume
was his white linen apron." Both masters and men quickly
becoming notorious for every kind of sharp practice, illicit
collusion and embezzlement. At the periodical auctions at
which the tolls were let, Parliament had been careful, in 1773,
to specify with minuteness that elaborate public notice was to
be given, that the highest bidder was to be accepted, and that
" to prevent fraud or undue preference in letting the said tolls,
the Trustees must provide a glass, with so much sand in it as
will run from one end to the other in one minute ; which glass,
at the time of letting the tolls, must be set upon a table and
FARMING THE TOLLS 139
immediately after every bidding the glass must be turned, and
as soon as the sand is run out, it must be turned again, and so
for three times unless some other bidding intervene." What
it probably did not contemplate, and certainly did not succeed
in preventing, was the series of elaborate combinations and
private "knock-outs" among the toll -farmers, which often
prevented the full value of the tolls being obtained. " The
tolls," it was said in 1809, " are annually farmed or let to indi-
viduals by auction, according to the last year's produce. This
the farmers keep as secret as possible, and the amount can only
be inferred from the increase of the terms he proffers for the
ensuing year. It is then his interest to make the tolls as pro-
ductive as possible ; but the gate-keepers he must employ are
more exposed to temptation, and over them exists less control,
than perhaps occurs in any other condition of men in society.
The only check their masters have upon them is by reserving,
upon detached days in the year, the tolls themselves, and
averaging by the produce the annual receipts, by changing
their stations almost daily, and by arbitrarily discharging them
if their returns do not reach the estimated amount. This be-
comes equally well known to the gatekeeper, and he withholds
all beyond that amount. Instead of preventing, by information,
the violations of the laws limiting the number of passengers,
they are paid by the coachman to connive at the abuse ; and
the nature of their office renders them ready and constant
channels for the circulation of base coin."
To the student of public administration, it is interesting
to see how the imperfection of the financial machinery destroyed
the whole efficacy of many of the Parliamentary devices for
preserving the roads. When the simple prohibition of narrow
wheels, heavy loads and excessive teams had been proved to be
ineffective, the country gentlemen who drafted the various
highway and turnpike statutes fondly thought to achieve their
end by imposing extra rates of toll for every narrow-wheeled
vehicle however loaded, and for every hundredweight of load-
ing on any vehicle, over and above a legally specified amount,
varying according to a complicated scale depending on the kind
of vehicle, the breadth of its wheels, the distance between them,
and even the season of the year. For this purpose Turnpike
Trustees were, from 1741 onwards, authorised, and might by
i 4 o THE TURNPIKE ROAD
Quarter Sessions be required, to erect " a crane, machine or
weighing engine " to weigh the loads not the convenient modern
weighbridge, which had not then been invented, but a huge and
complicated structure, rising high over the road, and actually
lifting the vehicle and its contents from the ground. One such
machine may still be seen in situ at Woodbridge, Suffolk, and a
weird and incomprehensible structure it is. Its erection was
costly, and the expense of keeping men to work it was still
greater. It was never very accurate, and was always getting
out of order. " It is a very common case," it was said in 1796,
" that a load will pass at one engine, when the same load at
another will be subject to an increased toll." It was, moreover,
hugely inconvenient to the users of the road, especially as it
was practically impossible to be always sure that a load was
under a given weight. There was thus every inducement to
evasion and neglect ; and the Trusts soon found that, apart
from the ordinary charges, the weighing machine did not yield
enough in extra tolls to pay for the necessary attendance and
upkeep. On the other hand, the toll-farmer was willing to give
a considerable additional price for the tolls if he was permitted
to rent also the weighing machine. The Trustees, in fact, were
in a dilemma. " If," it was acutely pointed out to a House
of Commons Committee in 1808, " the engine continues in the
hands of the Trust, its purpose is completely defeated by the
corrupt connivance of the keeper employed ; not only may he
allow overweight to pass for a small reward, but he may share
profits with the driver carrying extra weight unknown to his
employer, and thus both the Trust and the master carrier will
be defrauded. If the weighing machine is let by the year for
a certain sum, nearly equal to its supposed receipts, to an indi-
vidual whose own interest will keep him vigilant, that very
interest will lead him to compound with the carriers of over-
weight ; indeed composition is the only way by which he can
repay himself for the rent of the engine. Were he to be rigid in
the exaction of every penalty he would put a stop to overweights
and to his own profits together. If, in a word, the weighing
engine constituted an effectual check to overweighted carriages,
the penalties exacted would amount to a very trifling sum.
But they are let or farmed out for considerable sums, which
completely proves that, instead of operating as a prevention,
TURNPIKE BANKRUPTCIES 141
they only become an additional toll for extra load." Assuming
that, on the soft surface of the period, it was desirable to dis-
courage the conveyance of heavy weights, especially on narrow
wheels in winter, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, drawn
by an able critic, in 1808, that, as actually worked, the whole
system of extra tolls and weighing machines was " injurious to
the roads instead of tending to their preservation, because being
rented, the renters compound with the owners of waggons to
receive double tolls going and returning, on permission to carry
any weight. The immense rents given for weighing machines
could not be raised by any other means."
The most serious of all the financial defects of the Turnpike
Trusts was, however, the deficit into which many of the bodies
of Trustees fell. The new revenue of tolls seemed, at first, to
promise inexhaustible annual resources, which Parliament
allowed to be mortgaged without check or limit. Already by
1773, the effect of reckless finance had made itself apparent in
many Trusts. "At the first erection of turnpikes," wrote
Thomas Butterworth Bayley, " the people imagine the roads
are to be made and kept in repair by the very charm of the word
turnpike, and not being obliged to continue their statute work
with so much attention as formerly, depend entirely on the tolls,
and fall into a state of negligence and indifference till at length
the first materials are worn out, and then the tolls being mort-
gaged to the height, the whole burden of renewing and supporting
the roads again is laid upon them with the additional tax of the
tolls." By the end of the century the mortgaging of tolls had
been carried to a great height, and many Trusts made default
in the payment of interest on their bond debt. Sir James
Macadam stated in 1839 that he knew of some Trusts which had
paid no interest for over sixty years. " In some instances,"
reported the House of Commons Committee in 1808, " they have
contracted debts bearing an interest nearly equal to the amount
of their tolls, and when those have been increased fresh debts
are incurred ; so that the contributions levied on individuals
using the road become directed to purposes wholly different from
their repair."
With the whole or the greater part of the tolls thus alienated
for payment of interest on past indebtedness sometimes even
with the mortgagees in possession, taking the whole money
I4 2 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
revenue for their arrears of interest and heavy legal expenses
the expenditure on the repair of the road was naturally reduced
to a minimum, and it may well be that the last state of such
turnpike roads was worse than the first. Arthur Young, in his
travels about England, clearly implies that the great majority
of the turnpike roads were far better than the parish highways,
but occasionally he comes across one in Wales, in Lancashire or
in Suffolk which he cannot believe to be a turnpike, so vile is
its conditions of disrepair. It was, indeed, as was subsequently
perceived, a " great defect in the system of turnpike laws "
that there was an utter lack of " provision to compel each trust
to account before some competent tribunal. Road Commis-
sioners," said the Edinburgh Review in October 1819, " are the
only persons entrusted by Parliament to levy a large revenue
from the public without being required to account in any way
for what they receive. A still greater defect is the want of any
proper remedy when a set of commissioners abuse their trust.
They may suffer their road to become a perfect ruin ; they may
embezzle funds and commit every sort of malpractice, and yet
go on levying tolls, keeping possession of the road and defying
all complaints." There was, in fact, no practical method of
bringing a defaulting, hopelessly incompetent or dishonest
Turnpike Trust to book. Subject to no official superintendence
or central control, under no inspection, rendering no accounts,
it could use or neglect its powers as it chose. A Turnpike Trust
could not even be indicted for letting its roads become impassable.
The only legal remedy was the presentment or indictment of the
parish or township within which the road lay. The creation of a
special statutory trust had left unimpaired the liability of the
parish to maintain " the good passage " on all parts of the King's
Highway, whether or not some other persons had received a
statutory right to exact tolls from those who travelled on it.
Spasmodically the law would be put in force. Some public-
spirited Justice of the Peace would formally present an exception-
ally neglected bit of turnpike road, or the parish would find itself
indicted at the suit of some aggrieved user of the road,
with the result of a fine, a special highway rate, a momentary
spurt of activity in enforcing Statute Labour, and an early
reversion to the former neglect. It is true that, from 1773
onward, the Court could apportion the fine and costs between
THE PARISH HAS TO PAY 143
the parish and the Trust, but only " in case it shall appear to
the Oourt from the circumstances of the Turnpike debts and
revenues that the same may be paid without endangering the
security of the creditors who have advanced money upon the
credit of the tolls " ; and the parish, in practice, never got
reimbursed the expense to which it was put. So flagrantly
unjust was it to punish the local parishioners, who had nothing
to do with the administration of the Turnpike Trust, for the
default or neglect of a separate authority, which still went on
exacting its tolls, that this procedure of presentment and indict-
ment was, in practice, even less effective for turnpike roads than
for parish highways. The injustice moved even the Yorkshire
antiquary, Whitaker, to an outburst of indignation amid his
church annals and genealogies. " It is a great iniquity," he
says in his Loidis and Elmete, " as well as absurdity, that parishes
and townships should be indictable or presentable for the neglect
or passive defaults of others over whom they have no control,
while they are condemned to be passive in the introduction
of expensive and burdensome roads through their respective
districts, and at the same time actively responsible for all the
consequences occasioned by the fraud or negligence of strangers."
Public opinion was arrayed against it, and in 1809 it was
definitely discouraged by a Committee of the House of Commons.
The foregoing description of the theory and practice of
turnpike administration, and our analysis of its defects, might
lead the student to assume that all the effort and money lavished
by the eighteenth-century Turnpike Trusts resulted in no net
advantage to the community. This would be a false conclusion.
The parish highway often consisted, as we have already described,
of a mere horse track across a miry common, or a watery hollow
lane twisting between high banks and overhanging hedges.
So deep and narrow were these ways that " the stag, the hounds
and the huntsmen," Edgeworth tells us, " have been known to
leap over a loaded waggon in a hollow way without any
obstruction from the vehicle." Such a highway was practically
impassable for wheeled vehicles, and sometimes even for horse-
men, for half the year. With the coming of the Industrial
Revolution, with a rapidly increasing population, with manu-
factures ready to leap from the ground, with unprecedented
opportunities for home and foreign trade, improvement of com-
I 4 4 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
munication between different parts of the kingdom became,
from the standpoint of material prosperity, the most urgent of
national requirements. To-day, the railway and the tramway,
the telegraph and the telephone, have largely superseded roads
as the arteries of national circulation. But, barring a few
lengths of canal in the making, and a few miles of navigable
river estuaries, it was, throughout the eighteenth century, on
the King's Highway alone that depended the manufacturer
and the wholesale dealer, the hawker and the shopkeeper, the
farmer, the postal contractor, the lawyer, the government
official, the traveller, the miner, the craftsman and the farm
servant, for the transport of themselves, and the distribution of
their products and their purchases, their services and their
ideas. Hence, to open up even some of the ways between the
Metropolis and the rest of the country, between the ports and
the landward counties, between the food-producing districts
and the new manufacturing centres, was worth almost any
money cost, however vexatiously it might be raised or however
wastefully it might be spent. And all contemporary evidence
indicates that, what with surface-making and embanking,
widening and straightening, levelling and bridging, the mileage
of usable roads was, by the eighteenth-century Turnpike Trusts,
very greatly extended. The frequent complaints of the local
absence of turnpikes indicate in themselves how completely
the new system had commended itself to the ordinary traveller.
Before the middle of the century particular roads are marked out
for praise. Between 1750 and 1770, when the number of Turn-
pike Trusts was actually trebled, the contemporary self-com-
placency over the new roads rises to dithyrambic heights.
" There never was a more astonishing revolution accomplished
in the internal system of any country," declares an able and
quite trustworthy writer in 1767, " than has been within the
compass of a few years in that of England. The carriage of
grain, coals, merchandise, etc., is in general conducted with
little more than half the number of horses with which it formerly
was. Journeys of business are performed with more than
double expedition. . . . Everything wears the face of dispatch
. . . and the hinge which has guided all these movements
and upon which they turn is the reformation which has been
made in our public roads/' Thirty years later, when the standard
ADVANTAGE OF THE TURNPIKE 145
of efficiency in roads had greatly risen, the reports by the critical
surveyors of the Board of Agriculture are more grudging. But
with the exception of Wales, they everywhere report a substantial
improvement and development, by the agency of the Turnpike
Trusts, of the means of communication within each county.
And we have the significant fact that the most eminent observers
of, and participators in, the local government of the latter half
of the century Sir Henry Hawkins, Dr. Richard Burn, John
Scott, and Arthur Young all expressly assert, or at least un-
equivocably imply, the expediency of the Turnpike Trust and
its toll. Our own conclusions coincide with this verdict. The
intense jealousy of any increase of the national executive govern-
ment, and the abhorrence of new local rates would have made
impracticable any project for a centralised road administration,
or for raising the necessary income by direct assessment. " If
rates on land had been resorted to," said Sir Henry Parnell,
" the measure would inevitably have failed, because the land-
owners would, beyond all doubt, have preferred bad roads and
low rates to good ones and high rates ; in point of fact, very
indifferent roads would have answered all their local purposes.
If the roads had been vested in the hands of government, it may
safely be said that this plan would also have failed, for govern-
ment would never have been able to obtain the consent of
Parliament to vote upwards of a million and a half a year for
those roads only which now are turnpike roads. It is therefore
to the turnpike system of management that England is indebted
to her superiority over other countries with respect to roads. . . .
Nothing but leaving the management of the roads to those
people who live in their neighbourhood would ever have induced
the people of England to pay, as they now do, a road revenue,
arising from turnpike tolls, to the amount of 1,500,000 a year ;
for, though tolls are in every respect fair and proper for main-
taining a road ; and although Government by employing
scientific engineers, might have expended the produce of them
with greater skill than country gentlemen ; the hostility to pay
them, if they had been wholly at the disposal of government,
would no doubt have prevented the making of useful roads
so universally over the whole country as they have been made
under the established system." The Turnpike Trust and its toll y
was, in short, the only way open. Without the local initiative
L
146 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
and local support fostered by the thousand separate Trusts ;
without the emulation and mutual instruction which their
several experiments promoted ; without the large revenues
which the toll drew from the multitudinous but politically
helpless road users, no considerable improvement in the high-
ways of England would have taken place for, at any rate, the
first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and very little
would have been achieved before the passing of the Reform Bill.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 114. Of the Turnpike Trusts no systematic history has been
written, and the student can only be referred to such general references and
descriptions as are to be found in the History of Private Bill Legislation, by
F. Clifford, 1885-87, vol. ii. chap. vii. ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry
Parnell, afterwards Lord Congleton, 1st edition, 1833, 2nd edition, 1838 ;
Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer, Written by Himself, edited by John
Rickman, 1838 ; Voyages dans la Grande Bretagne, by Baron Charles Dupin,
1824, troisieme partie, " Force Commerciale," vol. i. p. 33 ; Descriptive
and Statistical Account of the British Empire, by J. R. M'Culloch, 1846,
vol. ii. chap. v. sec. 3 ; and to the almost innumerable Parliamentary
Reports on Highways and .Turnpikes throughout the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. A good vision of the working of a Turnpike Trust is
afforded by the two Reports of a Select Committee on various Metropolitan
Turnpikes, one printed at length in the House of Commons Journals for
1763 (vol. xxix. pp. 645-664), the other presented in 1765 ; in the brief
account of the " Whetstone Turnpike Trust, 1754-1863," in Middlesex and
Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, vol. iv. pp. 91-94 ; in A Turnpike Key, or
an Account of the Proceedings of the Exeter Turnpike Trustees, 1753-1884, by
W. Buckingham, 1885 ; and in the interesting volume entitled Minutes of
the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone,
1891. Much incidental information of all sorts is afforded in the excellent
manual, Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott,
1778. The MS. Minutes of the eleven hundred Turnpike Trusts, where
they are preserved at all, are mostly hidden away in solicitors' offices,
but they are occasionally to be found among municipal or county archives.
We have had access to the MS. Minutes of the Oldham Turnpike Trust,
1806-80; the Dursley and Berkeley Turnpike Trust, 1779-1874, and a
few others ; but we have found most information in the (literally) tens of
thousands of bills, petitions, reports of committees and proceedings in
Parliament relating to roads during the past two centuries.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 147
Page 114. Littleton's suggestion of a toll is in A Proposal for the
Highways, 1692, p. 11. The quotation as to a toll is from An Enquiry into
the Means of Preserving the Publiclc Roads, by Rev. Henry Homer, 1765,
p. 18. Road tolls seem to have been unknown in England in 1650, as they
had been for a century or more, except where a Municipal Corporation
charged a " Through Toll " or other octroi, and possibly in the cases of a
few private franchises as to bridges. Various isolated precedents for their
levy, by royal license, on particular stretches of road, can be found in the
records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Authority seems to
have been given in 1267 to levy a toll in a Gloucestershire manor ; " capiat
in feod unum dener, le quelibet caracte transeunte per manerie qua de
Thormerton et Littleton " ; see Index of the Patent Rolls, Henry VII.,
and Notes and Queries, 27th December 1851. " In 1346 a toll for pavage
was levied by the City authorities on vehicles passing from " St. Giles in
the Fields to Temple Bar " (History of Private Bill Legislation, by F.
Clifford, 1885-87, vol. i. pp. 4-5, vol. ii. pp. 3-8).
The name " turnpike " was given from the adoption of " horizontal
tapering bars of iron or wood suspended upon a rigid perpendicular pillar,
around which, as an axis they revolved. They corresponded," says an
author of 1845, " with those modern cross wickets or sidegates, which may
be seen in the vicinity of certain towns, with this difference that, until the
dues or toll was paid, these pikes or styles could not be made to turn either
to right or left " (Road Reform, by William Pagan, 1st edition, 1845, 3rd
edition, 1857, p. 1). "A turnpike road," said a learned judge in 1840,
" means a road having toll-gates or bars on it, which were originally called
' turns.' . . . The distinctive mark of a turnpike road is the right of turn-
ing back any one who refuses to pay toll " (Lord Abinger, C.B., in Northam
Bridge Co. v. London and Southampton Railway Co., 1840, 6 M. & W. 428).
" Pike " came popularly to be used for the tollbar or tollgate ; and also for
the toll itself.
Page 1 14. Notes from the Hertfordshire County Records, p. 6 ; Bygone
Hertfordshire, by W. Andrews, 1898, p. 264.
Page 115. 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663) renewed by 26 Car. II. (1674) 4 & 5
William and Mary (1692), and again by 6 Anne (1707), as to which see
House of Commons Journals, 8th, 21st, 27th January and 6th March 1707.
The 1663 Act is described in the History of Commerce, by A. Anderson,
vol. v. p. 44 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards Lord
Congleton, 1833, p. 17 ; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford,
1885-87, vol. ii. pp. 12-14 ; and in " The Old North Road," by J. H. Hinde,
in Archoeologia Aeliana, part ix., 1858, pp. 237-255. But most of these
Acts have remained unnoticed, and the whole episode deserves further
study.
Page 115. The Harwich road, Essex (7 & 8 William III. c. 9, 1695,
containing the first statutory mention of the word "Turnpike"); the
Wymondham and Attleborough road, Norfolk (7 & 8 William III. c. 26,
1695 ; renewed by 7 Anne, c. 4, 1708, 12 George I. c. 22, 1729, and 20
George II. c. 16, 1746) ; the Reigate and Crawley road, Surrey (8 & 9
William III. c. 15, 1697) ; the Birdlip and Gloucester road, Gloucestershire,
(9 & 10 William III. c. 18, 1698, renewed by 9 George I. c. 31, 1723 and 16
148 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
George II. c. 21, 1742) ; the Minehead roads, Somerset (12 & 13 William
III. c. 9, 1701) ; the Woodford road, Essex (1 Anne, s. 2. c. 10, see House
of Commons Journals, 19th November 1702, renewed by 10 George I.
c. 9, 1723, and 17 George II. c. 9, 1743) ; the Barnhill to Hatton Heath
road, Cheshire (4 & 5 Anne, c. 9, 1705) ; the Hockley and Woburn road,
Bedfordshire (5 Anne, c. 10, see House of Commons Journals, 22nd
February 1707) ; the Sheppard's Shord and Devizes road (5 Anne, c. 26,
see House of Commons Journals, 13th, 26th and 31st March 1707) ; the
Bath roads (6 Anne, c. 1, 1707, renewed by 7 George I. c. 19, 1721) ; the
Portsmouth road (9 Anne, c. 8, 1710) ; the Gravesend and Rochester road
(10 Anne, c. 34, 1711). Almost the only mention of these Acts, and then
only of one or two of them, is that in the History of Private Bill Legislation,
by F. Clifford, 1885-87, vol. ii. pp. 15-16.
Page 115. 5 Anne (1706), not printed, but mentioned in House of
Commons Journals 3rd and 27th March 1707, 15th and 24th February
1710, and in preamble of 3 George I. c. 15 (1716) ; 8 Anne c. 15 (1709) ;
renewed by 11 George I. c. 15 (1725) ; 9 Anne, c. 7 (1710), of which we may
quote the quaint preamble : " Whereas by the happy union of this
kingdom the great post road from London to North Britain is become much
more frequented than the same formerly hath been, and a great part of
that road ... is become very ruinous, insomuch as without very great
hazard and danger members coming up to Parliament and other persons
cannot pass that way ... for remedy whereof, &c."
Page 116. The arrangement of the statute law is so defective that it
is difficult to state with absolute certainty what Acts were passed. Down
to 1702 turnpike statutes were " public," and easily accessible ; from
1702 to 1720 they were all classified as " private " and were not always
printed, so that our information may be incomplete ; from 1720 to 1753
they were printed and bound with the ordinary public general statutes ;
from 1753 to 1798 they were bound separately, and are described as
" Public Acts not printed in the collection," or, more succinctly, as " Road
Acts " ; whilst from 1798 to 1868 they were included among " Acts Local
and Personal." After 1868 there are three divisions, viz., Public General
Acts, Local Acts and Private Acts (see House of Commons Journals, vol. lii.
p. 413 ; History of Private Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1887-89, vol. i.
p. 269 ; Legislative Methods and Forms, by Sir C. P. Ilbert, 1901, pp. 26-27 ;
Municipal Origins, by F. H. Spencer, 1911, pp. 46-48).
Page 117. So by the Act of 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663) ; but no one was to
be compellable to travel above three, four, or five miles from home, nor to
work more than two days in any one week, nor on any day in seed-time,
hay-time or corn harvest (7 & 8 William III. c. 9, 1695 ; so also 7 & 8
William III. c. 26, 1695). The power of the Surveyor to require this extra
labour is given without limit in 9 & 10 William III. c. 18 (1698). In the
Kent County records in 1729 we read that " it is ordered by this Court that
it be referred to Thomas Marsh, Esq., one of His Majesty's Justices of the
Peace for this County, and the rest of the Justices of the Division wherein
Longport lies, to settle and set the price of labourers employed in and about
the repairing, surveying and looking after Boughton highways, in this
County, on the London road," the amount so set to be paid by the
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 149
County Treasurer (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, East Kent, 10th
October 1729).
Page 117. As regards these powers, see, for instance, the nuisance and
obstruction clauses in 7 George II. c. 13 (1733) ; 1 George II. c. 33 (1727) ;
17 George II. c. 29 (1743) ; and especially the very comprehensive powers
given in 20 George III. c. 71 (1780).
Page 117. As regards powers over private property, see, for instance,
15 Car. II. c. 1 (Great North Road Turnpike Act, 1663) ; 7 & 8 William III.
c. 9 (London and Harwich Turnpike Act, 1695) ; 6 Anne, c. 1 (Bath and
Kingsdown Hill Turnpike Act, 1707). Subsequently, private interests are
better safeguarded. The Surveyor has to pay reasonable rates for the
material so taken from private land (6 George I. c. 25, Stevenage and
Biggleswade Turnpike Act, 1720) ; later on, express notice must be given
to the owner, and specific order made by Justices, after hearing objections
(39 & 40 George III. c. 3, Leicester and Hinckley Turnpike Act, 1800).
The 1663 Act had required pits from which materials were dug to be filled
up and levelled, " or else railed about ... so as that the same may not
be deemed dangerous or prejudicial to man or beast " (15 Car. II. c. 1) ;
an obligation not made usual until the Public General Act of 1753 (26
George II. c. 28), which required any holes or pits made in commons or
wastes for this purpose to be fenced ; and specific clauses to this effect
again appear in many subsequent Turnpike Acts, " so that " these pits
" may not be dangerous to passengers or cattle " (see 10 George III. c. 54,
Norwich and Block Hill Turnpike Act, 1770).
Page 117. The relations between the Parish Surveyor and the Turnpike
Surveyor thus became complicated. The Parish Surveyor of Highways
was to deliver a list of persons liable ; the Turnpike Surveyor was to give
him notice of the time and place for them to come ; he was then to summon
all persons liable ; and they were to put in three days' work on the turnpike
road ; see 1 George I. sess. 2, c. 25 (Tyburn and Uxbridge Turnpike Act,
1714, for what is now the Bayswater Road, Netting Hill and Uxbridge
Road) ; see also the detailed clause in 13 George II. c. 9 (Hockliffe and
Stony Stratford Turnpike Act, 1739). As late as 1800 there was an appeal
by a Parish Surveyor of Highways against a conviction by Petty Sessions
for not having summoned, in response to a demand from the Turnpike
Surveyor, certain inhabitants " to perform their statute work upon part
of the said road " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Lancashire, 15th July
1800).
For cases in which the Justices were left to fix the number of days'
labour to be given to the turnpike road or by whom it should be given, see
7 George I. c. 18 (Highgate and Barnet Turnpike Act, 1720) ; 16 George II.
c. 21 (Birdlip and Gloucester Turnpike Act, 1742) ; 13 George II. c. 9
(Hockliffe and Stony Stratford Turnpike Act, 1739) ; 17 George II. c. 9
(Harlow and Stump Cross Turnpike Act, 1743).
Page 118. For power to require a money composition, see 3 George I.
c. 4 (Highgate and Hampstead Turnpike Act, 1716) ; 4 George I. c. 4
(London and East Grinstead Turnpike Act, 1717) ; 4 George I. c. 5 (South-
wark and East Greenwich Turnpike Act, 1717) ; and many subsequent
Aots. In 19 George II. c. 19 (Liverpool and Prescot Turnpike Act, 1745),
i 5 o THE TURNPIKE ROAD
the power to raise the composition money by rate is expressly given to the
Parish Surveyor of Highways. These compositions naturally led to
embittered negotiations between the Parish and the Trust. Hackney, for
instance, was made to pay 100 a year towards the Kingsland Road Turn-
pike Trust, and this arrangement was embodied in 12 Anne, st. 1, c. 1 (1714).
In 1741-44 payment was, on some pretext, withheld by the parish, and to
compel the parish officers to collect the necessary rate required a special
Act (17 George II. c. 41, 1743), which changed the composition for the
future to 200 days' work of eight hours, by teams of three good horses,
able to carry 24 bushels each load, each to be attended by two able men.
Twenty-three years later, the Vestry Minutes show the parties to be again
at issue. " The parishioners present were acquainted that the Trustees of
the Kingsland Turnpike Road were making an application to Parliament
to enlarge the term and powers of the Acts relating to that Trust, and that
by the said Acts the Parish of Hackney are to do yearly 200 days' statute
work with teams on that road, or pay to the Trust the sum of 100 in lieu
thereof, and that by an Act of the last session of Parliament relating to the
public highways, and the determination of His Majesty's Justices of the
Peace in consequence of it, every person liable to do statute work with a
team might compound for the same for 4s. 6d. a day instead of the former
penalty of 10s. ; and that if the said Trustees should obtain a clause in the
said intended Act for this Parish to pay the Trust 100 per annum in lieu
of statute work, it would be a net loss to the Parish, as the Parish must
by composition lose 5s. 6d. in every ten shillings." The Vestry thereupon
appointed a committee to watch the bill (MS. Vestry Minutes, Hackney
(Middlesex), 12th December 1767). Twelve years later the Vestry opposes
another Bill of the same Trust, because it was proposed to fix the rate of
composition for the parish contribution of statute labour at too high a
figure (ibid. 23rd March 1789). The sum of 100 seems to have been a
favourite one for the annual composition of a large parish. The Surveyor
of Highways of the Township of Manchester had, down to 1812, for many
years paid to the Trustees of the Oldham Turnpike Roads a lump sum of
100 a year by agreement in " lieu of statute labour and liability, by
indictment or otherwise " (MS. Minutes, Oldham Turnpike Trust, 29th
August 1806, llth September 1812).
Page 118. The usual toll was from one to six pence. Thus, whilst a
horse was charged a penny, every stage coach, hackney coach, carriage,
waggon or cart was charged sixpence, every score of sheep a penny, every
score of calves or hogs twopence, and every score of cattle sixpence (8 & 9
William III. c. 15, Reigate and Crawley Turnpike Act, 1697). Double tolls
were usually charged on Sundays. A later specimen makes the toll on a
carriage drawn by six or more horses one shilling, by four sixpence, by two
or three threepence, by one three halfpence ; a one-horse cart or waggon
paid a penny ; a two-horse ditto, three halfpence ; a horse, mule or ass,
a halfpenny ; a drove of meat cattle, fivepence a score ; a drove of
calves, hogs, sheep or lambs, twopence halfpenny a score (11 George II.
c. 33, Loughborough and Derby Turnpike Act, 1737).
We do not find in England the ordinary French provision for exacting
double tolls at the entrance to the Metropolis, or any place at which the
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 151
King or Queen is staying (see, for instance, Liste Generate des Pastes de
France dressee par ordre de . . . Comte Dargenson, 1751).
Page 118. For power to bring the Turnpike Trust prematurely to an
end, see, for instance, 15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663), 8 & 9 William III. c. 15 (1697).
A similar power is given to Quarter Sessions in many Turnpike Acts down
to the middle of the eighteenth century ; but we have not noticed it in any
later Act.
Page 118. The regulations as to tickets were varied. A ticket was
given on each payment of toll, and this freed the payer from any further
payment for the same animal or vehicle during the same day, according to
the terms of the particular Local Act and the orders of the particular
Trustees, either at that gate, or at that gate and some others, or at all
gates on a particular section of road, or at all the gates of the Trust. The
" day " usually ended at midnight (sometimes at midnight in summer and
10 P.M. in winter ; see 3 George I. c. 4, Hampstead and Highgate Turnpike
Act, 1716). A more complicated arrangement prevailed on the Kensington
road, where it was expressly ordained " that for all droves of cattle passing
through the turnpike gates, the tickets that shall be delivered on Saturday
shall be in force till Monday noon following ; and the tickets that shall be
delivered for droves of cattle every other day besides Saturday shall be in
force till the day following at noon" (House of Commons Committee
on the Management and Application of money collected during the last
eleven years for repairing any particular highway ; see House of Commons
Journals, 19th April 1763, vol. xxix. p. 646).
Page 119. For the provision making the levying of the tolls contingent
on sureties for the repair of the road, see 9 & 10 William III. c. 18 (1698).
In an early Bedfordshire Act it was provided that " No turnpike is to be
erected nor toll demanded . . . nor shall the said causey, without the
consent of the lord ... of the . . . manor . . be laid open for ...
carriages, until sufficient security be given by able and sufficient persons
to the Justices of the Peace . . . that the said way . . . shall within
three years be sufficiently repaired and amended " (5 Anne, c. 10, Hockley
and Woburn Turnpike Act, 1706). The Justices' power to investigate the
state of the road and the amount of the toll was given, generally, in 9
George I. c. 11 (1722).
Page 120. The general statutes relating to turnpike roads, prior to the
consolidating Acts of 1766 and 1773, were 1 George II. c. 19 (1727);
5 George II. c. 33 (1731) ; 8 George II. c. 20 (1734) ; 14 George II. c. 42
(1740) ; 21 George II. c. 28 (1747) ; 24 George II. c. 43 (1750) ; 26 George
II. c. 30 (1753) ; 28 George II. c. 17 (1755) ; 30 George II. c. 27 (1757) ;
30 George II. c. 43 (1757). The Act imposing the penalty of death for
destruction of turnpike property was that of 1734. These statutes,
together with the consolidating Acts of 1766 and 1773, were made the
subject of an able and instructive commentary by John Scott, in his
Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, 1778, from which the
quotations in the text are taken (pp. 277, 265, and 259). The 1773 Act,
together with fifteen subsequent statutes of 1774 (4), 1776 (2), 1777, 1778
(2), 1781, 1785, 1812, 1813, 1815 and 1817, were repealed and re-enacted
by 3 George IV. c. 126 (1822) ; see The General Turnpike Road Act, by
I 5 2 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
Joseph Bateman, 1822, and A Supplement to the General Turnpike Road
Act of 3 George IV. c. 126, by the same, 1823, and, as to the muddle, An
Argument for more of the Division of Labour in Civil Life in this Country, by
William Wickens, 1829, pp. 67-73.
Page 122. The quotations from petitions for and against Turnpike
Bills are from the House of Commons Journals (8th January 1707, 24th
January 1709, 20th December.1709 and 3rd February 1710).
Page 123. For the successful turnpike riots at Kingswood in 1727,
see Oldmixon's History of England, 1735, p. 804 ; for those at Hereford, see
Read's Weekly Journal, 25th November 1732, and House of Commons
Journals, 2nd and 28th March 1732 ; compare also the account of those at
Ledbury in 1735 in Daily Gazetteer for 8th October and 9th December
1735, given in The Law of Highways, by W. C. Glen, 1865, pp. 53-5. For
the riots at Bristol in 1734 and 1749, see Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth
Century, by J. Latimer, p. 157, and Gentleman's Magazine, August 1749,
p. 276 ; for that at Leeds in 1753, see Loidis and Elmete, by T. D. Whitaker,
1816, p. 77.
Page 125. The optimistic statement of John Holt is in his General View
of the Agriculture of Lancashire, 1794. It was quoted in Second Report of
House of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808, Appendix 7A, p. 183.
Page 125. For the condition of the Glasgow to London road in 1739,
see Dr. Bannatyne's scrapbook, quoted from in Cleland's Statistical Account
of Glasgow ; Penny Magazine, 16th March 1833 ; Place MSS. 27828-10.
For the foreigner's account of the road from London to Land's End, see
Gentleman's Magazine, November 1752. Two years later, another corre-
spondent stated that, out of the 172 miles to Exeter, there are "no turnpikes
more than 40 miles from London, except . . . people go round by Bath or
Wells " (ibid. August 1754).
Page 125. The reference to the multiplicity of turnpikes around one
particular city is in the Gentleman's Magazine, August 1752.
Page 126. For the opinion of the Commissioners employed by the
Board of Agriculture in 1794, see, for instance, General View of the Agri-
culture of Hereford, by John Clark, 1794, p. 61 ; General View of the Agri-
culture of Northumberland, by John Bailey and George Culley, 1794, p. 56 ;
General View of the Agriculture of Durham, by John Granger, 1794, p. 26.
" Had . . . plans and sections," sums up Thomas Butterworth Bayley,
" been sent with the petitions for Turnpike Acts during the last 40 or 20
years, Parliament would not have sanctioned the enormous waste of public
money in carrying on the schemes of ignorant projections or interested
individuals.'*
Page 126. The quotation from the House of Commons Committee is
from the Second Report from the House of Commons Committee on Broad
Wheel Acts, 1806, p. 12.
Page 126. The quotation as to the wilful diversion from the straight
course is from the General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, by John
Clark, 1794, p. 53.
Page 126. As to the Tamworth case, see Times of 31st May and 16th
June 1828, which explains that "It so happens . . . that the residence
of Sir Robert Peel is distant from Tamworth about 2 miles and immediately
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 153
adjacent to his cotton and spinning factories at Fazeley, a village almost
exclusively Sir Robert's own property, with a population consisting of his
artizans. Under these circumstances Sir Robert has been using his
powerful interest to exclude Tamworth in order to bring the road through
Fazeley, and the proposed line is now changed accordingly, by which
Tamworth will be entirely ruined."
Page 127. The quotation from John Scott is from his Digests of the
General Highway and Turnpike Laws, 1778, p. 317.
Page 127. The exempted areas of Lancashire are described in the
General View of the Agriculture of Lancashire, by John Holt, 1794, and in
the Second Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808,
Appendix A, p. 182. Another case may be cited from Yorkshire. When
in 1802 the trustees of a certain twenty miles of the Great North Road in
the North Riding got their Act, the inhabitants of the two little villages
of Thirsk and Yarm, which formed the terminal points, secured clauses
inserted forbidding the erection of toll gates within four miles of each place.
The result was that all local traffic was able to use eight out of the twenty
miles free of toll, and cunning travellers managed even to get free of
the toll on the other twelve, by using slightly longer parallel bye-lanes
(Statement concerning the Thirsk and Yarm Road, by the Committee of
Trustees, etc., Stockton, 1823).
Page 127. The quotation is from An Inquiry into the Means of Preserv-
ing and Improving the Public Roads, by Rev. Henry Homer, 1765, pp. 21-2.
Page 128. For the petitions against the new Horsley to Dudbridge
road, see House of Commons Journals, 25th and 28th January 1780. A
new road, admittedly advantageous, might even be opposed by a rival
trader. In 1760 there was a petition presented against a new Turnpike
Bill by an individual Derbyshire coalowner on the plea that the new road
would " give such advantage to the proprietors of the collieries " near it
as to be detrimental to his trade (House of Commons Journals, 22nd Febru-
ary 1760). For the petition against the Macclesfield and Buxton Turnpike
Trust Bill, see ibid. 21st February 1780. For the struggles between the
rival roads between London and the North, see ibid. January and February
1750. For that in protection of Maidenhead, see ibid. 9th June 1800.
Page 129. For cases of the grant of " pontage " during the fourteenth
century, see the references to the Parliament Rolls in History of Private
Bill Legislation, by F. Clifford, 1887, vol. i. pp. 25-35.
Page 129. It was in 1621 that the Lancashire Quarter Sessions was
seeking to suppress the exaction of tolls on County Bridges. " The
Justices here present are of opinion that if any toll or stellage be taken
for the carriage over Crosford Bridge or any other bridge repaired by the
common charge of the County the same is extortion, and ought not to be
taken or paid, and that the takers thereof shall be dealt with withall by
indictment of extortion quo warranto or otherwise as the law will warrant,
yet nevertheless all bridges shall be repaired by the charge of Counties and
Hundreds as formerly they have been accustomed " (Manchester Sessions
Notes of Proceedings, 1616-1623, edited by Ernest Axon, 1901, p. 142).
More than a century later, the Essex Quarter Sessions had expressly to
require the " owners of any bridge or bridges built over any river or stream
i 5 4 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
running across any highways . . . immediately (to) take or cause to be
taken the chain or chains from off the same " (MS. Minutes, Quarter
Sessions, Essex, 15th July 1746).
Page 129. Among the Local Acts authorising toll bridges to be built
by Municipal Corporations may be mentioned those of Norwich (1726),
Windsor (1735), London (1756, 1758, 1762, 1767, etc.), Maidenhead (1772).
Special bodies of commissioners were incorporated by Local Acts for
the purpose of building and maintaining Westminster Bridge (1741, 1744,
1745); Putney Bridge (1725) ; Preston Bridge (1750) ; Deritend Bridge at
Birmingham (1788, 1792, 1813 and 1822 ; see Old and New Birmingham,
by R. K. Dent, pp. 421-2 ; A Century of Birmingham Life, by J. A. Lang-
ford, pp. 68-71); Bishopwearmouth Bridge at Sunderland (1792, 1814).
To these must be added the Local Acts obtained by landowners or private
speculators, such as those for bridges at Walton-on-Thames (20 Geo. II.
c. 22, 1746) and Hampton Court (23 Geo. II. c. 37, 1749), and those relating
to the various toll bridges built by joint-stock companies in the Metropolis
(Report of House of Commons Committees on Metropolitan Bridges, 1854,
1876, 1877 and 1881). The most valuable toll bridge, still existing as
private property, is probably that of Lord St. Levan, connecting Plymouth
with Devonport, and yielding a revenue of many thousands a year. In
1800 the tolls were rented from year to year at the " immense sum of
2500 " (The Plymouth Dock Guide, 1800, p. 28 ; A View of Plymouth Dock,
1812, p. 53).
Page 130. It would be wrong to imply that the establishment of the
Turnpike Trust did not lead to some improvements in road-making. Thus,
the remarkable work of " Blind Jack of Knaresborough " (1717-1810), the
self-taught genius at simple road construction, was wholly executed for
the Turnpike Trusts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Cheshire
(John Metcalf, His Life, 1795 ; Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles,
1861 ; Old Yorkshire, by William Smith, 1883, pp. 170-74 ; Road Making
and Maintenance, by Thomas Aikken, 1900, p. 11). But only very slowly
and gradually does the idea arise that the construction and mainten-
ance of roads requires expert knowledge and professional training. The
eighteenth-century roads had not the advantage even of such engineering
skill as then existed, as road-making was regarded as beneath the dignity
of a civil engineer ; and right down to the nineteenth century this pro-
fession," says Sir Henry Parnell, " has been too commonly deemed by
Turnpike Trustees as something rather to be avoided than as useful and
necessary to be called to their assistance " (A Treatise on Roads, by Sir
Henry Parnell, 1833, p. 291). " Every ignorant peasant," it could be said
in 1818, " considers himself competent to lay out and execute roads in all
directions " (Practical Directions for laying out and making Roads, by James
Clarke, 1818, p. i). Even so wise a man as John Scott could imagine no
better road engineer than himself, or any other country gentleman who
would apply himself to the details of road administration. Even the art
of taking levels," it was said in 1765, " was at first above the capacity of
country surveyors, whose contracted ideas extended no further than to the
surface of the land which was the scene of their operations. To them it
would have appeared a chimerical undertaking to have attempted to
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 155
execute any plan for reducing ground to a regular descent when it was
to br effected by raising valleys and sinking hills " (An Inquiry into the
Means of Preserving and Improving the Public Roads, by Henry Homer,
1765, p. 33).
In 1800 we find a Turnpike Trust suggesting the engaging, " at least
experimentally," of " some person or persons scientifically acquainted with
and practically experienced in the formation and management of turnpike
roads. Without hastily abandoning the present system, a trial might be
made by the mile on certain parts of the road . . . and thus your surveyor
might be improved in theory and in practice, and a desirable emulation be
excited " (Report of Committee of Trustees of the Hammersmith and Brentford
Turnpikes, 1800, p. 17).
Page 130. The examples of the Justices' action are taken from the
Minutes of Quarter Sessions, Essex, 1704-75. In 1704 " it is ordered that
Mr. L. and Mr. E. A. of Coxford in this County are hereby appointed
Surveyors for the road lying between Kelvedon and Strennaway, commonly
called Domsey Road, for one whole year, and . . . that all the moneys
now in the hands of ... (the) Receivers of the toll at the turnpike be by
them paid unto the said Surveyors and by them ... to be employed and
laid out in repairing Domsey Road " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex,
25th April 1704). For 15 Orders for payments to as many parishes, see
MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 5th October 1725. For the order
to the Justices to view the roads in their Divisions, ibid. 15th January
1722.
Page 131. The quotation is from the General View of the Agriculture
of Surrey, by W. James and Jacob Malcolm, p. 62.
Page 132. The quotation as to " farming " is from Digests of the
General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 345.
Page 132. Dissertation concerning the Present State of the High Roads
of England, especially those near London, by Robert Phillips, 1737, pp. 3,
4,15.
Page 133. As to the fantastic shapes of roads, see Digest of the General
Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 322. " Some roads
in England ... are laid wavy, or rising and falling, and men attend . . .
after rain, to let out the water with their spades " (Gentleman's Magazine,
May 1749, p. 218). " In level countries, where the roads are cut, these
waves are absolutely necessary. . . . The first waving of the roads was
begun in Whitechapel on the Essex Road," or else in Leicestershire. " The
waves were then short and high, and soon were found so excessively in-
convenient to the travellers, both on foot and horseback and in carriages,
that they were discarded. . . . The Hackney road . . . followed the
waving method, but made the ascents and descents longer " (ibid.
November 1759).
" The angle in the pantile roof road," observes Scott, " is often so great
as to endanger overturning on the least collision of carriages, and always
enough to occasion anxiety to the timorous passenger " (Digests of the
General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 320). For
the concave road or hollow way, see Dissertation concerning the State of the
High Roads of England, by R. Phillips, 1737, p. 15. This is, we imagine,
156 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
the " washway " referred to in the Inquiry into the Means of Preserving
and Improving the Public Roads, by Rev. Henry Homer, 1765, p. 30. In
such a road, " instead of the water being thrown off, it is here made the
repairing agent, by being conducted from the sides to the centre, and from
thence to the lowest part of the road, where a side outlet is made for it ;
in its course the water washes the whole surface, carries off the mud, and
leaves the road firm and clean " (C. M. Ward to Sir John Sinclair in Report
from House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads,
1809). The wilful obstruction of any " water which, by order of the
Trustees or their Surveyor, shall be reserved to run or be let in upon any
part of the said road " was often made punishable by fine and imprison-
ment (see, for instance, 17 George III. c. 20).
Page 133. See, for the best opinion on road-making in 1778, the
admirable Appendix " On the Construction and Preservation of Roads,"
in the Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott,
1778, pp. 313-52.
Page 134. For the cases of road- widening cited, see Notes from the
Hertfordshire County Records, p. 39 ; and MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions,
Essex, 5th October 1725 ; and Gentleman's Magazine, May 1753.
Page 135. See, for all this, the Minutes of the Epping and Ongar
Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891.
It may be here noted that it is to the turnpike roads that we owe the
general establishment of milestones, which (if we ignore those which were
placed by the Romans on their roads) date from about 1720. At first they
were put up voluntarily on a few roads. " At every mile from Grantham
to Stangate," says Defoe, " are stones set up by Mr. Boulton which
he designed to have carried on to London for the general benefit " (Tour
through the whole Island of Great Britain, by Daniel Defoe, vol. iii. p. 28,
edition of 1748). From about 1744 most Turnpike Acts contain a clause
(see, for instance, 17 George II. c. 4, Chatham and Canterbury Turnpike
Act, 1744) requiring the Trustees to measure their road and set up stones or
posts stating the distance. In 1766 this requirement (including also those
of direction posts at crossways and " graduated posts or stones " where the
road was subject to " deep or dangerous floods ") was made universal by
7 George III. c. 40, sec. 30 (the General Turnpike Act, 1766), re-enacted
by 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 41 (the General Turnpike Act, 1773). The
" milestones " were sometimes wooden posts ; those of the Epping and
Ongar Turnpike Trust in 1787 were to be of oak, 5 feet high and 11
inches wide; angular, with letters and figures on each side denoting
the distance from Epping and Chelmsford respectively (Minutes of the
Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by B. Winstone, 1891,
p. 138).
The signpost is earlier than the milestone. Paul Hentzner, the German
traveller, was directed by a signpost in Kent in 1598 (ItinerariumGermaniae,
Galliae, Angliae, Italiae, by Paul Hentzner, 1612). In 1695 we read of
Lancashire, " they have one good thing the most parts of this County . . .
that at all cross ways there are posts with hands pointing to each road
with the names of the great town or market towns that it leads to " (Through
England on a Side-Saddle . . . Diary of Celia Fiennes, edited by the Hon.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 157
Mrs. Griffiths, 1888, p. 157). As early as 1697 the Justices in Special
Highway Sessions were authorised to require Surveyors of Highways to
put up a " direction stone or post " at " cross highways " (8 & 9 William
III. c. 16).
Page 135. With regard to jobbery, it seems to have been quite usual
for a Turnpike Trust in spite of an express prohibition by Parliament, to
give orders for materials or work to individual Trustees. Thus, when a
House of Commons Committee looked into the accounts of the Kensington
Turnpike Trust for 1764, it was found that an incredible number of loads of
gravel were entered as put on three-quarters of a mile of road (Piccadilly)
between Clarges Street and Knightsbridge ; and further enquiry revealed
that the gravel was supplied by one of the Trustees. All the carpenter's
work of the same Trust was contracted for by the partner of another Trustee
(Report of House of Commons Committee appointed to enquire into the
application of money collected within the last twelve years, by virtue of
any Act of Parliament, for repairing any particular highway, 1765 ; see
House of Commons Journals, vol. xxix.). Adam Smith had, it will be
remembered, the meanest opinion of the financial management of Turnpike
Trustees. " The money levied is more than double of what is necessary
for executing, in the completest manner, the work, which is often executed
in a very slovenly manner, and sometimes not at all " (Wealth of Nations}.
John Scott, who knew them at first hand, remarks that " the Surveyors
of turnpike roads . . . are frequently decayed farmers or tradesmen,
recommended by some friend or relation to an office they are absolutely
unqualified to execute.'* . . . [Some] " Trustees . . . are most earnest to
provide a maintenance for their poor favourites by recommending them to
offices they are unfit for " (Digests of the General Highway and Turnpike
Laws, by John Scott, 1778, pp. 255, 350).
Page 136. Evasion by taking off supplementary horses before coming
to the turnpike gate was specifically forbidden by 24 George II. (1750).
There is a reference to this practice in Gentleman's Magazine, September
1752. Lightening the load in the same way was prohibited by 13 George
III. c. 84, sec. 10 (General Turnpike Act, 1773). " Returning by way of
frolic," relates Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, " very late at night, on horseback,
to Wimbledon from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon,
where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow the Chancellor, Pitt and Dundas
found the turnpike gate situate between Tooting and Streatham thrown
open. Being elevated above their usual prudence, and having no servant
near them, they passed through the gate at a brisk pace, without stopping
to pay the toll, regardless of the remonstrances and threats of the turnpike
man, who running after them discharged the contents of his blunderbuss
at their backs. Happily he did no injury."
Page 136. The exemption found most serious to the Turnpike Trustees
seems to have been that in favour of manure carts, perhaps because of the
fact that, with the increasing use of town manure (which Arthur Young
found still unusual in most parts of England), this exemption became
greatly stretched. " It would undoubtedly be a real hardship on a
farmer," said Scott already in 1778, " to pay toll for bringing dung a few
poles' length from his own yard to his own fields , . . but the matter is
158 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
quite dissimilar when old rags, chalk, lime, bones, etc., are carried, in heavy
loads, ten, twelve and perhaps twenty miles, and at once reap the benefit
of the road and contribute to damage it " (Digests of the General Highway
and Turnpike Laws, by John Scott, 1778, p. 276). It was just these
" narrow wheeled waggons carrying muck from Norwich " that were com-
plained of in 1808 as perpetually cutting up that turnpike road. " The
damage which this never-ceasing wear and tear does to the road," it was
said, " is much greater than arises from all the other traffic upon it put
together " (Second Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways,
1808). Attempts were made to get also exempted carts and waggons
going empty to town in order to bring back manure ; see the report of the
meeting of " gentlemen, farmers, gardeners, and landowners " held in
London, Morning Advertizer, 4th April 1810. This was conceded by
Parliament under complicated restrictions. The toll was to be paid, and
a special " manure ticket " given in exchange, on production of which on
the return journey with manure, the money was to be repaid by the toll-
collector (52 George III. c. 145, 53 George III. c. 82).
Page 136. Special exemptions in the interests of particular trades
included the following : (a) flour-milling : Exempted from toll were " all
persons who shall carry any grist to be ground for their own private use,
and all horses (called the load horses) employed by any miller to carry grist
belonging to any private family to or from the mill," as well as " horses
and carriages " used to carry materials for " building and repairing mills,"
17 George II. c. 13 (Evesham Turnpike Act, 1743) ; (b) cloth making :
20 George II. c. 6 (Reading and Puntfield Turnpike Act, 1746) ; (c) coal-
carrying : 24 George II. c. 11 (Lancaster and Richmond Turnpike Act,
1750) ; (d) peat-carrying : 20 George II. c. 6, 1746 ; (e) hay and straw
carrying : 17 George II. c. 13 (Evesham Turnpike Act, 1743).
Page 137. The invariable provision as to doubled tolls on Sundays did
not satisfy the Sabbatarians, and it was frequently urged that there should
be " a great additional toll at each turnpike gate," on carriages passing
through on Sunday ; see for such a recommendation in 1800, Anecdotes of
the Life of Richard Watson, Bishop ofLlandaff, by his son, Richard Watson,
1817, p. 342.
Page 137. As to exemption on election days, see, for instance, 24
George II. c. 29 (Ludlow Turnpike Act, 1750), we append a specimen
exemption clause : "No toll shall be taken for any person . . .
carrying any quantity of materials for repairing the said road ; or
for carrying dung, mould, soil or compost of any kind for manuring
lands or gardens ; nor for carrying hay or corn in the straw being
the product of ... the said townships ... to be laid up in the
houses, etc., of the . . . inhabitants . . . nor shall toll be taken for any
ploughs or other instruments of husbandry . . . nor for any person re-
siding in the townships . . . passing ... to and from church ... or
who shall attend the funeral of any persons who shall die or be buried
in either of the said townships ; or for post-horses carrying the mail or
packet ; or for any cattle going to or from water or pasture ; nor for the
horses of soldiers on the march or carriages attending them ; or for
horses, carts or waggons travelling with vagrants sent by legal passes "
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 159
(24 George II. c. 13, Stretford and Hulme Turnpike Act, 1750). As
regards soldiers, " in early Turnpike Acts, as for instance local statutes
passtd in Charles II.'s and later reigns, the army upon its march
was exempted from the tolls thereby imposed. In 1778 the General
Turnpike Act (18 Geo. III. c. 63) contained the first general exception in
favour of the Army, which in the year 1799 was inserted in the Mutiny
Act " (Military Forces of the Crown, by C. M. Clode, 1869, vol. i. p. 214).
The exemption in favour of the Post Office had a similar history. Practi-
cally all Turnpike Acts contained clauses exempting the mails, but some
mentioned only post-horses, others also carriages carrying mails. A
General Act of 1785 made the broader exemption universal (25 George III.
c. 57).
Page 137. We append some particulars as to these compositions. In
a 1746 Act a clause was inserted exempting from toll " the owners, occupiers
and inhabitants of Coley House and of the farm adjoining thereunto . . .
their several workmen, servants and agents . . . with horses, cattle,
coaches, carts and carriages " (20 George II. c. 6, Reading and Puntfield
Turnpike Act, 1746).
In lieu of erecting a new turnpike gate at a certain point, the Trustees
of the Lincoln and Peterborough Road were authorised to agree with the
inhabitants of fifteen specified parishes for an annual payment of not more
than 40 each, in lieu of toll ; so long as this sum is paid, the gate is not
to be erected (39 & 40 George III. c. 70, Lincoln and Peterborough Turn-
pike Act, 1800).
In 1764 the " compositions " received by the Kensington Turnpike
Trust amounted to 326, or 8 per cent of the total receipts from toll ; and
those of the Marylebone Turnpike Trust to 308, or 13 per cent (Report
of House of Commons Committee to enquire into the application of money,
etc., 1765).
For the Epping and Ongar case, see Minutes of the Epping and Ongar
Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, pp. 103-104,
137-138, 154.
Page 138. For the prohibition of " pikemen " to leave their posts,
see Report of House of Commons Committee on the management and
application of money collected during the last eleven years for repairing
any particular highway ; House of Commons Journals, 19th April 1763,
vol. xxix. p. 646.
Page 138. Letting of Tolls.
In 1709, the turnpike on the " Mountnessing road . . . with its profits
and tolls " was let by the Essex justices to a man for 400 per annum ; and
in 1710 the lease was renewed to the same tenant at the same rent for
three years (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex, 12th July 1709, llth
July 1710).
" Ordered . . . that it be referred to the Justices of the Peace of
Chelmsford Division or to any two of them at their Petty Sessions ... to
treat with the present tenants of the profits of the Turnpike arising at
Mountnessing or with any other person for the letting the same for a
term of years, and that they endeavour to procure the best rent and
tenants that can be got for the same, and do make report thereof at the
160 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
next General Quarter Sessions " (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Essex,
7th October 1718).
The West Kent Justices in Quarter Sessions let the " profits and tolls "
of the turnpike at Chalk in 1747 to the local alehousekeeper for 260 a
year, and in 1750 to " James Pearson of Chalk, Labourer," for 300 for a
year (MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, West Kent, 6th June 1747, and llth
January 1750). In 1773 alehousekeepers were prohibited from being either
Turnpike Trustees, or surveyors or toll-collectors ; but they might become
toll-farmers, if they employed others as collectors (13 George III. c. 84,
sec. 46, General Turnpike Act, 1773).
Page 138. The quotation as to the pikeman's costume is from The
Exeter Road, by C. G. Harper, 1899, p. 4.
Page 138. The statutory requirement of a minute-glass at toll auctions
is in 13 Geo. III. c. 84, sec. 31. For specimen advertisements of such
lettings, see that of the Trustees of the Whetstone Turnpike, Morning
Advertizer, 25th January 1806 ; the Trustees of the Marylebone Turnpike,
for two newly erected " weighing engines or bridges," ibid. 19th May 1806 ;
the Trustees of the Old Street Road Turnpike, ibid. 22nd March 1810 ; the
Trustees of the Surrey New Roads, and those of the Old District of Brent-
ford (including weighing engine), ibid. 13th February 1818. The toll
auctions were frequently made scenes of convivial festivity, in order to
attract possible bidders. In one case, in 1814, 10 was granted for a dinner
to those who attended the auction (Minutes of the Epping and Ongar
Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, p. 172). A
graphic description of a letting of tolls in the early part of the nineteenth
century is given in Records of Old Times, by J. K. Fowler, 1898, chap. ii.
The sums involved were sometimes very large. One gate on the Brighton
road was said to take 2400 a year in tolls. Levy, who was the Napoleon
of toll-farmers, is said to have contracted at one time for as much as half a
million a year, being a third of the aggregate toll revenue of the Kingdom ;
as well as for 300,000 a year post-horse duty (Highways and Horses, by
Athol Maudslay, 1888, pp. 84-85 ; Old Coaching Days, by Stanley Harris,
1882, p. 188). The tolls of the Whetstone Turnpike Trust, for 8 miles in
Middlesex of the London and Holy head road, were let by auction in 1831
for no less than 7530 per annum (Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and
Queries, vol. iv. pp. 91-94). At this time there were daily on the road to
Barnet " 18 mails and 176 other coaches, besides road waggons, post-
chaises and other vehicles " (The Holyhead Road, by C. G. Harper, 1902,
vol. i. p. 27).
Page 139. As to "knock-outs" and other conspiracies with regard to
toll auctions, it was definitely said in 1833 that " combinations have been
. . . successfully organized to defeat the provisions of the said Act . . .
with regard to the letting of tolls " (Second Report of House of Lords Com-
mittee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833). One such combination or " knock-out "
we see in the case of the letting of the Epping and Ongar Turnpike tolls in
1801, when the two pretended rivals in the auction-room afterwards come
forward jointly to take up the contract which had been knocked down to
one of them for 1055. The Trustees " suspected that there had been
underhand proceedings . . . collusion between those bidding for the
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 161
tolls." This was eventually admitted by the parties, who agreed to an
increase in the price to 1201, at which a lease was granted to them
(Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 17 '69-187 '0, by Benjamin
Winstone, 1891, pp. 162-164).
Page 139. The quotation as to fraud by pikemen is from a letter of
C. M. Ward to Sir John Sinclair ; see Report of House of Commons Com-
mittee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809, Appendix A. There
are frequent complaints as to the arbitrary exactions of the " pikemen "
from inexperienced or timid travellers; see letter to Times, 18th June
1824. The lessee of the Epping and Ongar tolls in 1816 was found
persistently " taking more tolls on coaches, postchaises, etc., than he was
entitled to." Criminal proceedings against him were begun, but subse-
quently compromised (Minutes of the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust,
1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 1891, pp. 173-174).
Page 140. The provision as to a weighing machine is in 14 Geo. II. c. 42
(1740) ; the power was often specifically repeated in Turnpike Acts ; see,
for instance, 20 George II. c. 7, Essex Turnpike Act, 1746 ; it was after-
wards embodied in the General Turnpike Acts, 7 George III. c. 40, sec. 1,
and 13 George III. c. 84, sec. 1. For the uncertainty of such weighings, see
Report of House of Commons Committee on the General Turnpike Acts,
1796, p. 749. " The persons concerned in the trade of market gardeners
never are able to know the weight of their articles, for sometimes it happens
from a shower of rain a loading of 2 tons 5 cwt. will be increased three or
four hundredweights."
Page 140. As to the dilemmas presented by the weighing machine, see
letters from C. M. Ward and F. Dickins to Sir John Sinclair, in Report
of House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads,
1809, Appendix A. The Clerk to the Trustees of the Stamford Hill roads
said that he was satisfied that the lessees of the weighing machines suffered
" carriages to pass through upon a certain weekly sum without weighing
them," though he could not prove it. This led to the recommendation :
" that ... as weighing engines are intended to prevent excessive weights,
and not to increase the revenue of the turnpikes, the trustees of road
should be restrained from leasing or otherwise letting the same " (Report
of House of Commons Committee on the General Turnpike Acts, 1796).
It was perhaps in consequence of this dilemma that these costly weighing
engines were sometimes left, like one at Hammersmith in 1800, " for many
years disused and suffered to fall into decay " (Report of a Committee of the
Hammersmith and Brentford Turnpike, 1800, p. 7). Already in 1796 the
Trustees of the Surrey Turnpike had removed their engine seven or eight
years before (Report of House of Commons Committee on the General
Turnpike Acts, 1796). A Committee in 1833 recommended the total
" abolition of the use of weighing engines " (Second Report of House of
Lords Committee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833).
Among other heavy vehicles objected to came, in the latter part of the
century, the heavily laden stage coaches, which were exempt from sub-
jection to the weighing engines. An Act of 1788 restricted them to six
outside passengers, in addition to two on the box by the driver (28 George
III. c. 57). A more stringent measure in 1790, known as " Gammon's Act,"
M
162 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
attempted to reduce this to four and one respectively, or fewer if under three
horses, and did its best to prevent drivers allowing more by imposing a
toll of five shillings on every passenger in excess (30 George III. c. 36).
But, as with the excess tolls for overweight, it was soon found that the
pikemen " notoriously compound with the drivers of coaches," and the
practice continued unabated (Report of Committee of Hammersmith and
Brentford Turnpikes, 1800, pp. 18, 33). "Mr. Gammon's Act," it was
pointed out in 1794, " is now openly set at defiance, and sometimes 20
persons are to be found at the outside of a stage coach on the roof which
by law is limited to six " (Times, 19th April 1794). " The salutary regula-
tions provided by these Acts," reported a Committee of 1806, " have been
by a variety of contrivances most grossly evaded, insomuch that instead of
6 (the number limited by the original Act) 20 passengers and more are
often carried on the outside of stage coaches " with results not only " ex-
tremely destructive " to the roads, but also dangerous, as " scarce a week
passes without some of these carriages breaking down " (First Report from
House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpikes Roads,
1806). A further Act was then passed, facilitating the enforcement of the
preceding ones (46 George III. c. 136). See The Danger of Travelling on
Stage Coaches and a Remedy Proposed, by Rev. W. Milton, 1810, and
Brief Considerations on the Present State of the Police of the Metropolis, by
L. B. Allen, 1821.
Page 141. Observations on the General Highway and Turnpike Acts, by
Thomas Butterworth Bayley, 1773, p. 52. " Cases may be found," said
the House of Commons Committee, " where persons taking the manage-
ment are rather disposed to maintain establishments beneficial to them-
selves, than to relieve . . . the public burdens " (Second Report of House
of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808). " There is not a gentleman
in the Kingdom," writes one who was himself a squire, " who cannot
bear testimony to the lax manner in which the duties of turnpike road
commissioners are discharged, to the total absence of all personal re-
sponsibility . . . and to the general improvidence of the expenditure "
(A Letter to the Right Hon. C. B. Bathurst, M.P., on the subject of the Poor
Laws, by Richard Blakemore, 1819, p. 32).
Page 142. When the Post Office wanted to extend its mail coach
service from Shrewsbury to Holyhead, and found the turnpike road actually
unsafe, the Postmaster- General began by sending letters to the Treasurers
of the several Turnpike Trusts on the route, asking them to effect improve-
ments. This producing no result, he had 21 parishes indicted, and thus
compelled them to do some repairs, though they proved insufficient to bring
the road up to the requirements of a fast mail coach route (Second Report
of House of Commons Committee on the Holyhead Road, 1810 ; Her
Majesty's Mails, by W. Lewins, 1864, p. 142).
The provision as to apportioning the fine and costs is in 13 George III.
c. 84, sec. 33, General Turnpike Act, 1773. " As the Law now stands,"
wrote Sir J. C. Hippisley to Sir John Sinclair in 1808, " if any part of a
turnpike road be out of repair, remedy is given by presentment or indict-
ment of the parish in which such road is situate, subjecting the parish to
great expense and inconvenience, although the nuisance be wholly im-
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII 163
putable to the trustees of the turnpike. ... It is true that . . . Quarter
Sessions may apportion fines and costs between the Parish and Turnpike
Trust, yet this power can afford very inadequate relief or compensation in
many cases, where the parishes have been harassed by prosecutions for
nuisances for which they have in no respect been equitably responsible,
for their parish officers, travelling thirty or forty miles to the Quarter
Sessions, for loss of time, &c."
(Sir J. C. Hippisley, Bart., M.P., to Sir John Sinclair, 4th April 1808 ;
Second Report of House of Commons Committee on Highways, 1808,
Appendix A., p. 136.)
Page 143. Loidis and Elmete, by T. D. Whitaker, 1816, p. 82.
" That it is the opinion of this Committee that, in the case of any pre-
sentment or indictment of any highway being a turnpike road, the said
presentment or indictment should be preferred against the treasurer of
such Trust, instead of the parish through which such roads run " (Report of
House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads,
1809).
Page 143. The quotation from R. L. Edgeworth is from An Essay on
the Construction of Roads.
Page 144. Praise of particular roads. " The Commissioners of the
road from Whitechapel into Essex very well understand and perform their
office. . . . Justice ought to be done also to the Commissioners of the
Turnpikes leading into Kent over Shooters Hill, who endeavour to make
the road straight, by cutting off all angles, and widening it " (Gentleman's
Magazine, May 1749). Speaking generally of the roads in England, a
writer declares in 1754 that " amendments made of late years . . . have
been very considerable. . . . The turnpike now forming from Truro to
Falmouth, on the West, and to Grampound on the East, I look upon as a
very masterly and complete piece of workmanship ; and indeed, it must be
acknowledged that the new turnpikes are better than the old. Thus, the
Taunton Turnpikes are better than the Bath or Bristol ; the Exeter better
than either ; and the Truro in a fair way to exceed them all " (Gentleman's
Magazine, October 1754). The dithyrambic quotation is from An Enquiry
into the Means of Preserving and Improving the Public Eoads, by Henry
Homer, 1765, p. 8.
We may quote a few of these statements of the surveyors employed by
the Board of Agriculture in 1794. Of Kent we read that " the turnpike
roads, and those most frequented, are kept in tolerably good order ; but
the bye-roads of West Kent are frequently impassable for postchaises "
(General View of the Agriculture of Kent, by J. Boyes, 1796, p. 90). Of
Westmoreland it is said that " the great roads leading through the county
are kept in excellent repair by the sums collected at the turnpike gates "
(General View of the Agriculture of Westmoreland, by A. Pringle, 1794, p. 37).
The Nottinghamshire reporter testifies that " the roads of this country are
of late years much improved, many parishes having learnt from the
example of the turnpikes to form them properly, and have them executed
under an understanding surveyor " (General View of the Agriculture of
Nottingham, by R. Lowe, 1794, p. 53). Of Northumberland it is said
that " the turnpike roads are most in good order, but badly designed "
i6 4 THE TURNPIKE ROAD
(General View of the Agriculture of Northumberland, by J. Bailey and
G. Chilley, 1794, p. 56). As to Lancashire, where manufactures had so
enormously increased, and turnpikes were almost universal, we are told
that " Great exertions have been of late years at very considerable expense
to improve the roads, the effects of which are very apparent " (General
View of the Agriculture of Lancashire, by John Holt, 1794, p. 64).
Page 145. A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, afterwards Lord
Congleton, 1833, pp. 263-264, 288-289.
CHAPTER VIII
WITH the opening years of the nineteenth century we become
conscious of a change in opinion as to the whole system of road
communication. What were then the best-kept turnpikes, once
thought something like perfection, come now to be deemed only
passable, whilst the condition of the worser sort of roads is
again felt to be an intolerable public nuisance, much as it had
been at the close of the seventeenth century. It is plain that a
much higher standard is being set. We ascribe this onward
stride of public opinion to many converging influences. The
political necessity for improving the means of communication
in Scotland and Ireland had led to successful road-making experi-
ments in those countries, planned by expert engineers, and
executed by the regular labour of hired workers. These roads
were reported to be better than the best of the English turn-
pikes. " For a country so far behind us as Ireland," exclaims
Arthur Young, in 1780, " to have got suddenly so much the
start of us in the article of roads is a spectacle that cannot fail
to strike the British traveller." The Irish gentlemen who now
came to Westminster found, like R-. L. Edgeworth in 1817,
" on a journey of many hundred miles, scarcely twenty miles
of well-made road," according to the standard set in Ireland.
" Comparing all the roads in that country with the roads in
England," he continues, " the shameful inferiority of the latter
would evidently appear." Englishmen who had seen the
Highlands of Scotland reported that the roads laid out by Lord
Daer, the eldest son of the Earl of Selkirk ; by Abercromby, a
gentleman by birth who became a professional road engineer,
165
166 " TELFORD " AND " MACADAM "
and especially those executed for the Government Commissioners
of Highland Koads by Telford, had effectually opened out those
hitherto inaccessible regions. Meanwhile the urgent need for
a better system of land communication in England was being
consciously felt by powerful sections of the community. The
rapid multiplication of public coaches, the development of the
postal service, the growing multitude of men and beasts ever on
the move from place to place, the huge tonnage of goods now
dragged by wains and carts all this was enormously augmenting
the use of the English roads. The agriculturists sending crops
to market, the merchants and manufacturers intent on disposing
of their greatly augmented output ol wares, the newly enriched
classes hankering after the luxuries of the East and the West,
were none of them in the humour to put up with the constant
delays and extravagant cost of land carriage to which the previous
century had been accustomed. This new note of discontent
with the roads is heard in evergrowing strength in a series
of House of Commons Committees extending, almost without
interruption, from 1806 to 1830. " It is a matter to be wondered
at," reports the Committee of 1808, " that so great a source of
national concern has hitherto been so much neglected." " The
many important advantages," reports the Committee of 1811,
"to be derived from amending the highways and turnpike
roads of the kingdom need hardly be dwelt upon* Every
individual in it would thereby find his comforts materially
increased and his interest greatly promoted. By the improve-
ment of our roads, every branch of our agricultural, commercial
and manufacturing industry would be materially benefited.
Every article brought to market would be diminished in price ;
the number of horses would be so much reduced that by these
and other retrenchments the expense of five millions would be
annually saved to the public. The expense of repairing roads,
and the wear and tear of carriages and horses, would be essentially
diminished, and thousands of acres, the produce of which is
now wasted in feeding unnecessary horses would be devoted to
the production of food for man." For the first few years the
deliberations of these successive Committees seem to have been
dominated by the old assumption that what had to be discovered
was some way of regulating the use of the roads so that their
maintenance should involve the minimum of cost. Hence we
THE GENERAL POST OFFICE 167
find elaborate resolutions, appendices and notes of evidence
concerned with the shape of wheels, the weight of waggons, the
defects of weighing machines and the overcrowding of passenger
coaches. The impression which these voluminous discussions
of archaic technique leaves on the student is that, in the matter
of road administration, the landed interest in the House of
Commons had made scarcely any intellectual progress during
a whole century. Only very gradually does there arise a suspicion
that even economy might be furthered by putting more thought
and care into the actual construction of the roads. But this
leads to nothing more practical than haphazard resolutions
condemning the scandalous negligence of the Surveyors of
Highways, the slovenly performance of Statute Labour, in-
capacity of the men jobbed in as turnpike officials, the circuitous
and badly constructed roads which they provided, and the
reckless finance which was steering more and more of the Turnpike
Trusts into bankruptcy. It is difficult to see how the House of
Commons would have got out of these meanderings, if it had
not been for the energetic intervention of two Government
departments, and the emerging, under the patronage of the
chiefs of these departments, of two experienced enthusiasts,
Thomas Telford and John London Macadam.
The first effective step forward came from the General Post
Office. The growing postal business of the country, at a time
when all mails were road-borne, and, since the union between
England and Ireland, the need for improving the means of travel
between London and Holyhead, had, from the very beginning
of the nineteenth century, been leading the Postmaster-General
to interest himself in the state of the main lines of road. We
see him writing to different Turnpike Trusts, stirring up Quarter
Sessions, indicting parishes and sending his " riding surveyors "
to inspect the principal routes. Whatever success these measures
may have had elsewhere, they proved quite ineffectual in getting
anything like a decent road between London and Holyhead,
which the Postmaster-General found actually unsafe for a mail
coach. The Irish Members of Parliament, and all who had
occasion to use this route perpetually complained of " the
extreme inconvenience, difficulty and danger of travelling it."
A Special Committee of the House of Commons in 1810 reported
strongly that something must be done. The Government then
i68 "TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
bethought themselves of the promoted stone-mason and County
Surveyor, Thomas Telford Southey's " Pontifex Maximus "
who had been, since 1803, successfully overcoming the hills and
bridging the streams for the Commissioners of Highland Roads ;
and in 1810 he was set to work to make a complete survey of
the line. In 1815 the Treasury summoned up enough courage
to ask the House of Commons to grant 20,000 towards the
construction of the necessary lengths of new road, as an enter-
prise transcending the capacity of any existing local road
authority. As in the case of the Highland Roads, the work
was entrusted to a special body of commissioners, established by
Act of Parliament. These commissioners, ten in number, had
at their head three Ministers of the Crown, but the really active
member, to whom in practice the administrative work was left,
and who for twenty years seems to have devoted nearly the
whole of his energy to it, was Sir Henry Parnell, Bart, M.P.,
afterwards Lord Congleton, who had been, we read, " the
principal instrument in carrying the Holyhead Road Bills through
Parliament."
In the annual reports of these Holyhead Road Commissioners,
and in the proceedings of the various Parliamentary Committees
which considered the matter between 1810 and 1830, we see all
concerned falling more and more under the influence of Telford,
and becoming more and more convinced that what was necessary
to improve the roads was engineering skill and organised pro-
fessional administration. The particular task which they had
taken in hand was, indeed, one of difficulty. They found the
Welsh part of the road " in the worst possible condition, . . .
exceedingly narrow, . . . carried unnecessarily over hills, the
ascents . . . often ... 1 in 10, 1 in 8, and even 1 in 7, many
parts . . . very dangerous to travellers . . . along the side of
precipices." The English part of the road, from London to
Shrewsbury, was, in many parts, seriously defective, soaring
over unnecessary hills, wandering about in circuitous routes,
and having so bad a surface as to be perpetually out of repair.
The whole line of 194 miles was divided among no fewer than
23 separate Turnpike Trusts, which the Commissioners had
no authority to supersede. Each of these Trusts had to be
separately argued with, and persuaded to allow the Government
Engineer to execute the works necessary to improve its bit of
THE HOLY HE AD ROAD 169
line. The 17 English Trusts were, with two exceptions, left
undisturbed in their authority. But in each of their bits of
road Telford had a free hand in carrying out the particular
improvement lowering a steep ascent, raising a hollow way,
embanking a slough, cutting through a hill, building a bridge,
or making an entirely new line of road which he thought
necessary. When the work was done, an addition of fifty per
cent was made to the local tolls, and the proceeds of this surtax
were handed over to the Parliamentary Commissioners. And
although the various Trusts retained their own Surveyors for
current maintenance, Telford was always up and down the
road acting as inspector, advising here, criticising there, and
presently coming to be virtually in the position of consulting
engineer all along the line. In two cases, indeed, those of the
Whetstone and St. Albans Trusts, administering highly important
stretches of road between London and St. Albans, the road was
so bad, and the management so hopelessly incompetent, that a
House of Commons Committee proposed, in 1828, that both
roads should be taken away from the Trustees for three years,
and vested for that time in the Holyhead Road Commissioners.
We do not gather that this drastic step was actually taken ; and
we imagine that the Trustees were by this threat induced to put
them into somewhat better order. With the six little Welsh
Trusts, controlling the most difficult 85 miles of the line, more
severe measures had to be taken. It became clear to Telford
and Parnell that the majority of the Trustees, and all the
Surveyors, were quite incompetent, under the ordinary machinery
of a Turnpike Trust, to manage even the current repairs of their
roads with either honest) 7 or efficiency. It was resolved practic-
ally to get rid of them all. By one means or another Sir Henry
Parnell, who devoted the spring of 1818 to attending their
meetings, induced them to allow their Trusts to be merged by
Act of Parliament into a single body of fifteen Trustees only,
over whom the influence of Telford and his Commissioners was
supreme. It is significant of the dominant idea of the moment
that it was deliberately enacted by statute that these Trustees
should employ a professional civil engineer as their Surveyor
for the whole of their mileage of road. Under Telford's super-
intendence an entirely new system of road management was
introduced. The 85 miles of road were divided between three
170 " TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
assistant surveyors, each having under him about half-a-dozen
foremen, and each of these being made definitely and perman-
ently responsible for four or five miles of road and the super-
intendence of an adequate gang of hired labourers employed
at piece-work rates. But all this work took both time and
money. So successful were the first pieces of improvement
undertaken by Telford, and so unreserved was the confidence
which he inspired, that Parliament voted larger and larger
annual grants and loans towards the complete reconstruction
of this main artery of national communication, until, by 1830,
no less a sum than three-quarters of a million sterling had been
expended on it, including, as it is only fair to observe, extensive
improvements at Holyhead harbour and the erection of the
suspension bridge over the Menai Strait. In return for this
large sum the Commissioners of the Holyhead Road had re-
constructed, through Telford's engineering skill and Sir Henry
ParnelTs energy, a continuous line of road from London to
Holyhead, which though doubtless far inferior to what would
now be produced by a French, a Swiss or a Norwegian road
engineer could be fondly regarded in 1830 as affording " an
example of road-making on perfect principles," a model of " the
most perfect road-making that has ever been attempted in any
country," and which was at any rate far and away the best
piece of land travelling of its time.
Meanwhile another department of the National Government
had been bestirring itself in the attempt to get a better admini-
stration of the roads. The Board of Agriculture, inspired by
the practical genius of Sir John Sinclair, Bart. (1754-1835)
and Arthur Young, had, from 1794 onwards, been incidentally
reporting on the unsatisfactory condition of the English highways
and constantly pressing for their improvement. Early in the
Session of 1806 Sir John Sinclair, the Chairman of the Board,
laid before the House of Commons a Bill for reforming highway
administration generally, a step which produced, not an Act,
but the first of the series of Parliamentary Committees on roads
to which we have already referred. In the proceedings of the
Committees of 1806, 1808, 1809, and 1811 we see Sir John
Sinclair inviting communications from Justices of the Peace,
Turnpike Trustees, County Surveyors and all sorts of cranks
and enthusiasts ; and getting these, with other materials, sifted
THE COMING OF MACADAM 171
by the staff of the Board of Agriculture for presentation to the
committees. Among the communications addressed to the
Chairman of the Board of Agriculture there came, in 1810, a
long memorandum from a fellow-Scotsman, one John Loudon
Macadam, giving it as his opinion that the whole system of
road-making was fundamentally erroneous, and begging to be
allowed to bring under public notice a new plan which he " had
been long endeavouring to get ... fairly tried." " Sir John,"
we are told in his Memoirs, " being pleased with the suggestions
in his letter, " resolved to bring them under the notice of a
Parliamentary Committee on Highways, which was then sitting,
and of which Sir John Sinclair was Chairman. To give the new
method a better chance of success (he) caused the information
sent by Mr. Macadam to be arranged and condensed, and had
it printed in the Appendix to the Keport of the Committee."
From this time onward, until his death in 1836, Macadam
occupied, towards successive Parliamentary Committees on
general road administration, much the same position of expert
authority as did Thomas Telford in those concerned with the
Scottish and Holyhead roads. And it is thus to Macadam, rather
than to Telford, that we owe such modicum of reform as was
effected in the general law and administration of roads between
1810 and 1835.
John Loudon Macadam, when he first gained the attention of
the public in 1810, was, unlike Telford, not a professional road
constructor. He belonged, on the contrary, to the much larger
class of unpaid, amateur administrators, who, as Justices of the
Peace and Turnpike Trustees, were giving orders to parish
Surveyors and turnpike officials. Returning to Sauchrie in
Ayrshire in 1783, with a moderate competency gained at the
early age of twenty-seven as agent for the sale of prizes at New
York during the American War, he was appointed a member
of one of the local Turnpike Trusts ; and when, in the closing
years of the eighteenth century, he moved to the West of England,
he became a Justice of the Peace and a member of various
other Turnpike Trusts. His ostensible profession during the
Napoleonic war was that of victualling agent for the Admiralty ;
his hobby, to which he seems to have given his whole thought,
was the administration of roads. Like the great prison reformer,
John Howard, Macadam had a passion for concrete investigation.
172 "TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
" I have travelled at various times," he tells a Committee of the
House of Commons in 1819, " to ascertain which are the best
roads, and which the best means of road-making, over the whole
kingdom, from Inverness in Scotland to the Land's End in
Cornwall." The materials locally available, those actually used,
the times and seasons chosen for repairing, the instruments
employed, the cost per yard of road under each system or lack
of system, the respective value of Statute Labour, pauper
labour, and labour hired in the open market, by time or by the
piece, the salaries and qualifications of turnpike Surveyors, the
amount of the tolls, the frauds of the toll-farmers and pikemen,
the account-keeping of Turnpike Trusts, the effect on traffic
and on the roads of the regulations concerning wheels, weights,
and draught horses all this mass of technological and admini-
strative detail was absorbed and retained by his intensely
practical intelligence. Like John Howard, he was inapt at
literary expression, and not till after middle life did he succeed
in giving vent to his enthusiasm and experience. But eventually
there emerges, after thirty years of this incessant observation,
a new set of assumptions and maxims as to the object and
methods of road-making, which, like those of Howard in prison
administration, were destined to be revolutionary in their
results. The first and most significant of these was the concep-
tion that roads must be made to accommodate the traffic, not
the traffic regulated to preserve the roads. " The reports of the
Committees of the House of Commons," he quietly remarks in
1810, " seem to have had principally in view the construction
of wheeled carriages, the weights they were to draw, and the
breadth and form of their wheels ; the nature of the roads on
which these carriages were to travel has not been so minutely
attended to. ... Is it not time to enquire whether the system
of road-making now in use is good ? ... to consider the making,
the form and surface of roads scientifically ? If it is found
that a smooth hard surface is the most convenient for a carriage
to pass over, and that it is drawn with the smallest effort of
animal strength, then it will be profitable to enquire by what
means this smooth hard surface is obtained." The new ideal
which Macadam set before the road administrator was not the
mere keeping open of a passage over the natural surface cleared
of obstructions, but the construction of ''an artificial flooring,
MACADAM 173
forming a strong, smooth, solid surface, at once capable of
carrying great weight, and over which carriages may pass with-
out meeting any impediment." To attain this end he devised
his celebrated technique of surface-making a technique which,
whatever may have been its shortcomings, was an enormous
improvement, alike in efficiency and in cheapness, over any
method commonly used by contemporary road officials. To
his particular device for surface-making he attached fanatical
importance ; whilst he seems to have ignored, or greatly under-
estimated, the larger problems of road engineering. As a mere
road constructor he was, it is clear, inferior to Telford, and
doubtless to other civil engineers of the period. But it was
rather in the art of road administration than in road technology //
that Macadam so greatly served his day and generation. Besides
providing a novel objective or ideal, he furnished both legislators
and administrators with sound maxims and new devices of
general administration. Without undervaluing the initiative of
the unpaid amateur, he persistently urged that the essential
feature of any efficient administrative service must necessarily
be the trained professional official, paid a salary which enabled )
him to live without corruption, Macadam said he must be of
good social status, giving his whole time to his duties, and
held responsible by the governing body for the success of the
undertaking. " Gratuitous services," he urged, " are ever
temporary and local ; they are dependent on the residence and
life of the party ; and have always disappointed expectation.
Skill and executive labour must be adequately paid for if ex-
pected to be constantly and usefully exerted ; and, if so exerted,
the price is no consideration when compared with the advantage
to the public." Equally scientific were his views with regard
to the employment of subordinate labour. Statute Labour,
and all service in kind, he unhesitatingly condemned as a relic
from a time " when a fair quantum of labour could not in many
parts of the country be obtained for money." He objected
equally to employing paupers " as inefficient both to the im-
provement of the roads and to the object of relieving the parishes."
He always advocated the employment of fully competent
labourers, using the best implements, and paid at the market
rate, according to a fixed schedule of piecework prices. He
recommended the appointment of them as " milemen," so that
174 " TELFORD" AND "MACADAM''
each might have the undivided responsibility for a mile of road.
And, like his contemporary Edwin Chadwick, he saw that
Local Government could not be carried on efficiently without
central direction and control. He was always in favour of
bringing the Turnpike Trusts under the supervision and control
of Parliament. He insisted on the absolute necessity of their
being compelled to report annually their receipts and expenditure.
What he seems to have contemplated was the establishment of
a strong central department, which should keep an eye on the
operations of all the Trusts, make known their several experi-
ments, advise them in their difficulties, and report on their
defects. In short, he adumbrated, in his confused and unliterary
way, a system of government which should retain the utmost
local autonomy and personal initiative, whilst utilising efficient
bureaucratic organisation, and subject to "a general super-
intendence which would have an interest in the whole.'*
Macadam's enlightened ideas as to the proper organisation
of Local Government services were barely understood, and
certainly not adopted, by his contemporaries. The reforms
proposed by Sir John Sinclair's Committee were insignificant,
and failed to get embodied in law. But the Report of the Com-
mittee incorporated Macadam's main assumption that roads
ought to be made to stand the traffic instead of vehicles being
constructed to preserve the roads ; and from that time forward
Parliamentary Committees ceased to recommend the enforce-
ment and extension of the eighteenth century regulations as to
wheels and weights, number of horses and lines of draught, or even
to trouble themselves to enquire into their working. Moreover,
the publication of Macadam's memorandum, and the influential
approval of the Board of Agriculture, served to bring Macadam
and his particular device of surface-making under the notice
of the larger and more progressive bodies of Turnpike Trustees.
In January 1816 he definitely transformed himself from being
an unpaid amateur administrator into a professional official
and expert consultant. At the request of his co-trustees he
undertook, at a salary of 400 a year, the office of " General
Surveyor of the Roads " to the largest of the Turnpike Trusts
to which he belonged, that of the Bristol District, which had,
since 1799, with 148 miles to look after, become the most exten-
sive single road authority in the Kingdom. In the course of
"MACADAM THE MAGICIAN" 175
two or three years he revolutionised the administration of this
important body, securing a greatly improved surface of road
at a considerably lower cost. The fame of this achievement
spread far and wide, and he was pressed to advise Turnpike
Trustees in all directions. By 1819 he was acting, with the
assistance of his son, as salaried Surveyor to no fewer than
" thirty-four different separate sets of commissioners," having
simultaneously " 328 miles under repair," according to his
system, and another 300 miles under survey with a view to his
advising upon them. The public, we are told, looked upon him
almost as a magician, so novel and extraordinary were the
results that he was believed to have achieved. He was popu-
larly regarded as a great public benefactor. " Our shops,"
said Charles Dickens, " our horse's legs, our boots, our hearts
have all been benefited by the introduction of Macadam." In
1819 his friends in Parliament succeeded in getting a Committee
appointed, nominally to enquire into the state of the highway
law, but really to make known Macadam's successful adminis-
tration. The report of this Committee is one long eulogy of
Macadam and of the efficiency and economy of his improved
system of road maintenance. They recommended the payment
to him of a Government Grant which was eventually made up
to 10,000, in recognition of his eminent public services. His
administrative maxims gain their emphatic approval. " There
is no point," say the Committee, " upon which a more decided
coincidence of opinion amongst all those who profess what may
now be called the science of road-making than that the first
effectual step towards general improvement must be the employ-
ment of persons of superior ability and experience as super-
intending Surveyors." Hence it is suggested that, in each
county, Quarter Sessions should appoint and pay one or more
County Surveyors, to have the superintendence and management
of all the turnpike roads within the county, but to act under
the direction of the several Trusts. The Committee also advo-
cated the consolidation in one body of the numerous Turnpike
Trusts in and around the Metropolis, which Macadam had
reported to be the worst in the kingdom, though they controlled
several hundred miles of most profitable road, yielding the high
average of 500 a year per mile in tolls. They recommended
also a renewed consolidation of the various Turnpike Acts.
i 7 6 " TELFORD " AND " MACADAM "
In the succeeding committees of 1820 and 1821 all these recom-
mendations were repeated and emphasised, and Sir Henry Parnell
and Telford were both brought to testify, from their experience
of the Holyhead Road, to the advantage of professional skill
and of combining Turnpike Trusts into larger areas. Thus,
the two distinct movements of reform, that initiated by the
Post Office and carried out by Telford and Sir Henry Parnell,
and that originating in Macadam and patronised by Sir John
Sinclair and the Board of Agriculture, became united in a
formidable innovating force, which promised extensive changes.
The legislative results with regard to Turnpike Trusts were
disappointingly small. It was not found possible even to remedy
the more important defects of the general turnpike law. The
various Public General Acts on the subject were, it is true,
strung together in 1822 into mechanical unity by a consolidating
Act, carried through Parliament by Sir Frankland Lewis ; but
this left the real complications practically unchanged, and was
itself promptly overlain by a new set of little amending Acts.
In spite of repeated recommendations Parliament failed, until
1831, to devise any remedy for the trouble and expense annually
wasted over the periodical renewal of the Local Acts of the
eleven hundred Turnpike Trusts ; or to protect their promoters
from being mulcted in absurdly heavy fees by the officials of
the two Houses of Parliament ; and even in 1831 could find no
more efficient reform than the inclusion, each year, of all the
expiring Acts in one annual renewal bill. No attempt was made
by Parliament to effect any general reform in the administration
of the existing Turnpike Trusts. Committee after Committee
vainly urged the desirability of " consolidation of areas," but
made no practical proposal for bringing it about. The great
difference in financial position between the various Trusts, and
the natural reluctance of every solvent body to take over the
liabilities of a bankrupt concern, prevented anything of the
kind taking place. The obvious and perhaps the only possible
way of surmounting the financial entanglement of the thousands
of separate mortgages of tolls remaining unpaid, of the great
and growing arrears of interest owing by some of the Trusts, and
of the pledging of particular tolls for separate debts, was com-
pulsorily to amalgamate all the various Trusts, so as to give
each of the mortgagees and other creditors a superior security,
ATTEMPTS AT REFORM 177
and so as to bring the total expenditure within the aggregate
income. This meant, in effect, the merging of them all into a
national department of toll-supported roads, a project frequently
recommended by outside critics and irresponsible advisers.
But under George the Fourth as under George the Third no
Ministry was ever found willing to undertake such a reform,
and no Parliament to sanction such an increase in the executive
power and Government patronage. As an alternative to any
scheme of consolidation under a national department, some
substantial progress might have been made in compulsorily
consolidating the Trusts of particular districts, a policy which
had been strenuously recommended by the Committee of 1819,
with respect to the Metropolis, and had been repeated by succes-
sive Committees in after years. In London, indeed, where
" great dissatisfaction prevailed," owing to the " multiplicity
of the different Turnpike Trusts, . . . great interruption of
the traffic, . . . frequency of turnpike gates," and with all this,
roads of exceptional badness, some measure of consolidation
was at last achieved. In 1820 an energetic knot of members,
headed by Davies Gilbert and Sir Henry Parnell, made an
heroic attempt to roll up all the various Trusts surrounding
the capital into a single effective body a reform to which the
Committees of 1819 and 1821 had attached particular importance
in the hope of rendering " the roads round the Metropolis," on
which an " immense revenue " was " collected from the public,"
a " pattern for the kingdom," so that " the spirit of improvement
radiating from this centre may . . . spread with rapidity
throughout the country." This bill was an extensive proposal,
which would have wiped out more than fifty separate Trusts in
Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent, comprising several thousands
of Trustees, who were to be permitted to select a small body
from amongst themselves as the new Trustees. Though the
second reading was carried by a large majority, the measure
naturally met with " a very great opposition by the several
Trusts that were proposed to be consolidated, and there was no
party possessing the means to forward the measure." Left
entirely to the energy of a few private members, without Govern-
ment support, it was obstructed, postponed, and eventually
defeated in the House of Commons by 72 votes to 71. But the
question was not allowed to drop. Some of the Metropolitan
N
178 " TELFORD" AND "MACADAM''
Turnpike Trusts were raising incomes from tolls far in excess
of their requirements, and rendering no public account of their
disbursements. The renewal, in 1824, of the Kensington and
Hyde Park Turnpike Act led to some damaging criticism. In
the following year Viscount Lowther, M.P., moved for a com-
mittee of enquiry into the turnpikes in and near the Metropolis,
alleging that no less than 200,000 a year was being levied within
a radius of ten miles from St. Paul's ; that much of this enormous
income was wasted or misappropriated, and that some Trusts
were paying as much as 10 per cent interest on money borrowed
from their own members. As a result of this enquiry a modest
measure of consolidation, confined to the principal Trusts in
the County of Middlesex, was carried into law in 1826. By this
Act fourteen of the Metropolitan Turnpike Trusts north of the
Thames were consolidated into a single authority, consisting of
46 named Commissioners of eminence and distinction, adminis-
tering under a carefully drafted statute, 172 miles of streets
and roads, which yielded an annual revenue in tolls of be-
tween sixty and seventy thousand pounds, and became by
far the wealthiest and most important road authority in the
Kingdom.
The movement towards consolidation went no further than
this imperfect Metropolitan achievement. Another alternative
might have been found in the Parliamentary grant of funds to
improve a particular line of road, as had been so successfully
done in the case of the Holyhead road. For a moment it looked
as if the importunities of some of the great towns and the
necessities of the Post Office might lead to the formation of a
second Parliamentary Commission, dominating into some sort
of unity the Trusts along another great line of road. Repeated
memorials from the municipal Corporations of Newcastle, York
and Hull, and from the chief Yorkshire landowners between
1823 and 1827, had induced the Government to allow the Post-
master-General to get Telford to survey the whole line of the
Great North Road from London to Edinburgh. Telford's plan,
which would have saved twenty miles of distance, and substituted
for the existing windings a hundred miles of road from York
to Peterborough as straight as a French chaussee, commended
itself to a House of Commons Committee, which recommended
that the successful precedent of the Holyhead road should be
* THE NORTHERN ROAD BILL 179
followed. When, however, the Northern Road Bill was sub-
mitted to the House of Commons in 1830, it aroused a storm of
opposition. Petitions poured in from the towns on the existing
Grfeift North Road, alarmed lest they should find themselves
" side tracked " by one of Telford's diversions of route. Mort-
gagees and Trustees of the Turnpike Trusts marshalled strenuous
opposition. The House of Commons was indisposed to begin
a work which might possibly involve a cost as great as that
incurred over the Holyhead road. Meanwhile the important
trials of the new locomotive engines had taken place at Rainhill
in 1829 ; and the amazing success of Stephenson's engine, with
the progress of the new railway schemes, made people think
that road travelling might in a few years become obsolete.
The project was therefore presently abandoned, almost by
common consent.
In the sphere of turnpike administration there was, it must
be said, a certain amount of improvement taking place. The
successful operations of Telford and Parnell between London
and Holyhead were year by year extending to neighbouring
branches of road to Chester, to Liverpool and so on whilst
their influence on the Trusts nearer London was leading to
constant improvements. The two Macadams, father and son,
were annually extending their range of work and " macadamiz-
ing " an ever increasing mileage of the roads. The Middlesex
roads were, from 1827 onwards, being transformed by the
Commissioners of the Metropolitan Roads, whilst the 63 miles
of the Surrey and Sussex Turnpike Trust the aggregation
second in importance in revenue (19,000) were steadily
improved by the force of example. The same may be said of
the Middlesex and Essex Trust (11,000) with its 31 miles, and
of the New Cross Trust (14,000) with its 49 miles, both yielding
exceptionally large toll receipts. " The whole of the south and
south-western roads," as we learn incidentally from the
historian of our taxes, " benefited by the impulse to locomotion
in those parts, due to the patronage of Brighton " by George
the Fourth. The much frequented roads about Bristol, where
the consolidation of small Trusts had put 172 miles under one
management (revenue 15,000), were brought to a high state
of excellence by the Macadams, and vied with those of the Bath
Turnpike Trust (51 miles of very remunerative roads yielding
i8o " TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
8000). Other extensive Trusts were those of Worcester (160
miles, 5000), Hereford (156 miles, 5000), Exeter (146 miles,
6000), and Alston in Cumberland (130 miles, 3000) ; whilst
the Manchester and Buxton Trust, with only 45 miles of road,
stood sixth in aggregate receipts (8000). These eleven great
Trusts managed, in the aggregate, 1165 miles of road (or about
6 per cent of the total mileage), but collected no less than
166,000 in revenue (or about 12 per cent of the whole turnpike
receipts). Elsewhere, especially in the more remote and less
frequented parts of the Kingdom, the thousand and odd little
Trusts remained unconsolidated, each administering its ten or
twenty miles of road, and its thousand or two pounds of revenue,
by its miscellaneous fifty or a hundred Trustees ; gradually
executing, it is true, the most elementary improvements, but
for the most part squandering their tolls in extravagant adminis-
trative expenses, and piling up their debts until actual
insolvency beset them, much as they had done for the previous
couple of generations.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 164. For the contrast between Irish and English roads, see Tour
in Ireland, by Arthur Young, 1780, vol. ii. p. 56 ; and An Essay on the
Construction of Moods and Carriages, by R. L. Edgeworth, preface to
edition of 1817, p. 7 ; also p. 46.
Page 165. The government road-making in the Highlands of Scotland,
begun in 1732, went forward with great energy after 1745, with the stimulus
of funds derived from the forfeited estates, under the conviction that the
opening up of the inaccessible districts was the best security for the pre-
vention of further Jacobite risings. The 1500 miles of military roads
constructed by General Wade and his troops, going recklessly over hills
and seeking fords rather than build bridges, were, however, very far from
sufficing for nineteenth-century mail-coaches. In 1802 the problem was
taken up afresh, and, under the authority of an Act (43 George III. c. 80)
of 1803, a special body of Commissioners was created, authorised to provide,
from national funds, half the cost of each new work decided on, if the
balance was found by individual landowners. From 1804 onwards, the
counties sought and obtained Parliamentary powers to contribute towards
the latter half from the local rates. These new roads were designed and
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 181
executed for the Commissioners by Thomas Telford, who in the course of
the ensuing fifteen years constructed nearly a thousand miles of road, and
more than as many bridges over streams and mountain torrents, at a total
expense of about half a million sterling, of which the national government
paid only a half. In 1816 a new Act (56 George III. c. 83) empowered the
same Commissioners to reconstruct the Carlisle and Glasgow road. See
the nine Reports of the Commissioners of Highland Roads between 1804
and 1821 ; the Thirtieth Report of the House of Commons Committee on
Finance ; Voyages dans la Grande Bretagne, by Baron Charles Dupin, 1824,
vol. v. pp. 47-51 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, 1833, pp. 29-
30 ; Lives of the Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. (Telford) ;
Highways and Horses, by Athol Maudslay, 1888, p. 53.
Page 166. The mere trouble and delay caused by having to stop at
the tollgates begins, at the opening of the nineteenth century, to be
seriously complained of, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis,
where the road traffic had become large and incessant. The numerous
tollbars round London, says a writer of 1816, "in a crowded situation,
become no small nuisance. Eastward of the Tower of London stoppages
of this kind exist even in the paved streets, and the populous villages which
encircle the Metropolis are beset in such manner as if locomotion were an
offence prohibited by fine or imprisonment. . . . Within six miles of
London there cannot be less than twenty tollgates on the ten principal roads,
requiring two able-bodied men for each gate, and not fewer side bars on
the crossroads, requiring one man each in all 60 men, whose wages or
profits are not less than 50 per annum each of them." Passengers on
horseback, or in coaches, he continues, would " rather pay double the
present sum than be put to the delay and interruption now incurred "
(Letter by " X. Y. " to Times, 8th February 1816).
Page 166. The quotations are from the First Report of the House of
Commons Committee on the State of the Highways of the Kingdom,
1808 ; and the Report of House of Commons Committee on the Acts now
in force regarding Highways, 1811.
Page 166. " Our object," it was said in 1809, " must be to encourage
the carriage of the lightest weights on the broadest wheels " (Report of
House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809,
Appendix). " A proper construction of carriages," reported one authority,
" is certainly the most easy, and of all others the most effectual means of
security to the roads, but then it should not be such a construction as will
enable them to carry heavy, but such a one as will oblige them to carry
light loads " (T. F. Erskine to Sir John Sinclair, in First Report of the
House of Commons Committee on the State of the Highways of the
Kingdom, 1808, Appendix II.). It needed to be pointed out in 1809, in an
able letter to Sir John Sinclair, that " hitherto the attention of the legisla-
ture has been principally confined to a few restrictive regulations upon
carriages. . . . The important points of the subject, the selection of the
best lines for new roads, or the improvement of the present ones, the best
form of construction, means of repair . . . have been in a great measure
left to chance without any superintending power to control the want of
intelligence or ignorance of individuals " (C. M. Ward to Sir John Sinclair,
182 "TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
in Report from House of Commons Committee on Broad Wheels & Turn-
pike Roads, 1809, Appendix A).
Page 167. The complaints of the Irish members are referred to in the
First Report of the House of Commons Committee on the Holyhead Road,
1817, p. 3. The Statute was 55 George III. c. 52, 1815.
For the story of the Holyhead Road, see the numerous reports of special
Parliamentary Committees, and of the Commissioners, from 1810 to 1830 ;
Voyages dans la GrandeBretagne, by Baron Charles Dupin (1824), vol. v.,
Voies Publiques, pp. 41-7 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell,
1st edition 1833, 2nd edition 1838 ; Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer,
by himself, edited by John Rickman, 1838 ; Lives of the Engineers, by
Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. ; Roadmaking and Maintenance, by Thomas
Aitken, 1900, pp. 14-26 ; The Holyhead Road, by C. G. Harper, 1902. The
Commission was merged in the Office of Woods and Forests, by an Act of
3 & 4 William IV. (1833).
Sir Henry Parnell, Bart. (1776-1842), deserves a biography, which does
not appear to have been written. He was elected to the Irish Parliament
in 1797, and voted against the Union. From 1800 to 1832 (except 1802-6)
he represented Irish constituencies in the House of Commons. He suc-
ceeded to the baronetcy on the death of his elder brother in 1812, and was
created Baron Congleton in 1841. His Treatise on Roads (1st edition 1833,
2nd edition 1838) was long the best book on the subject ; but he is now
better known by his work On Financial Reform, which went through four
editions between 1830 and 1832, and greatly influenced public opinion in
favour of the policy afterwards pursued by Peel and Gladstone (see Finance
and Politics, by the Right Hon. Sydney Buxton, M.P., 1888, vol. i. p. 32).
On the accession of the Whigs in 1831, Lord Grey offered him only a humble
office in the Government, which he refused. He was, however, subse-
quently appointed Secretary at War (Memoir of Earl Spencer, by Sir D.
Le Marchant, 1876, p. 271). As Secretary at War he earned the dis-
approval of Greville, who thought badly of him as an administrator
(Memoirs, by Henry Greville, 1st series, 1874, vol. ii. p. 243) ; and Sir D.
Le Marchant describes him as honest but incapable (Memoirs of Earl
Spencer, p. 271). But nothing could well have been more successful than
his management of the complicated business of the Holyhead Road Com-
mission, which Greville and Le Marchant entirely ignore. His other
publications (besides reports of speeches in 1810, 1814, 1824 and 1825)
include Observations upon the State of Currency in Ireland, 1804 ; History of
the Penal Laws against the Irish Catholics (The Pamphleteer, vols. xx. and
xxi., 1813) ; Observations on the Irish Butter Acts, 1825, and Observations on
Paper Money, Banking and Overtrading, 1827. See Dictionary of National
Biography.
Thomas Telford takes rank as one of the very greatest of our engineers.
Born in 1757 at Westerkirk in Eskdale (Dumfriesshire), the son of a farm
herd, he had the minimum of schooling ; was apprenticed to a stonemason ;
and afterwards worked at his trade in Edinburgh and London (1780-84)
and Portsmouth, where he acted (1784-86) as foreman or manager, if not
also as architect. Appointed, in 1786, County Surveyor for Shropshire,
at a mere retaining fee, he executed all sorts of work for the Justices, and
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 183
practised extensively in the County as an architect ; erecting houses, churches,
a gaol, but above all maintaining roads and constructing bridges. In 1793
he became engineer to the Ellesmere Canal Company, constructing remark-
able aqueducts at Chirk and Pont Cysylltan. A project for a new London
Bridge of a single span in iron attracted considerable attention in 1801.
He reported on Scotch harbours for the British Fisheries Society, and on a
canal through the Great Glen for the Government. In 1802 he went to
Scotland for the Government, where he constructed, within the ensuing
twenty-six years, nearly a thousand miles of road, erected over twelve
hundred bridges, built forty-two churches, executed dozens of harbour
works, great and small, and carried to completion the Caledonian Canal
thus earning from his friend Robert Sou they, who visited him in 1819 amid
his engineering triumphs, the jesting appellations of " Pontifex Maximus "
and " Colossus of Roads." Meanwhile various canal works were constructed
by him, both in England and in Sweden. Prom 1816 onwards he was
busied also over the Holyhead Road and the suspension bridge over the
Menai Strait. In 1818-20 he was the chief founder of what became the
Institute of Civil Engineers. Dying in 1837, he was buried in Westminster
Abbey, where a statue was erected. See the imperfect autobiography,
The Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer, written by himself, edited by
John Rickman, 1838 ; the well-known graphic account in Lives of the
Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. ; History of England, by Spencer
Walpole, 1879, vol. i. pp. 85-8 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry
Parnell ; Southey's account of his tour in 1819 ; articles by Sir David
Brewster in Edinburgh Review for October 1839, and by Southey in
Quarterly Review for March 1839 ; and the brief statements in Sir
David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopedia ; Cresy's Encyclopedia of Civil
Engineering, 1847 ; Chambers' s Biographies of Distinguished Scotchmen,
1870, vol. iii. p. 435 ; and Dictionary of National Biography. There exists
a portrait of him painted by Sir H. Raeburn ; another (in Institute of Civil
Engineers) painted by Samuel Lane in 1830 ; and woodcuts in Caw's
Scottish Portraits, 1903, vol. ii. p. 100, and Harper's Weekly, vol. xxxiii.
p. 633 (1880).
Page 168. The need for expert engineering was now keenly felt.
Thus, in 1817 we read " Your Committee have been induced to suggest the
propriety of having a survey made of each district of the road by a skilful
civil engineer, under the conviction that a much higher degree of science is
requisite for laying out the proper line of a road, and for forming a proper
plan for its construction, than is commonly imagined to be the case ; and in
consequence of great sums of money being so frequently thrown away
under the idea that the most ignorant and illiterate persons were perfectly
competent to execute so easy an operation as that of road-making " (Fifth
Report of House of Commons Committee on the Holyhead Road, 1817,
p. 71).
Page 168. The quotation as to the Welsh precipices is from the Report
of the House of Commons Committee on the Holyhead Road, 1817. " It
was narrow and crooked ; hills had been passed over and valleys were
crossed without any regard to inclinations ; no solid foundation was
prepared ; a very superficial coating of very bad stones or gravel was all
184 " TELFORD " AND " MACADAM "
that covered the soil ; the transverse sections were often just the reverse
of what they ought to be ; the draining was miserably defective, and either
no protecting fences or very weak ones existed along steep hill-sides and
tremendous precipices " (First Annual Report of the Commissioners on
the Holyhead Road, 1824, p. 17 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell,
1833, pp. 31-2).
Page 169. Report of House of Commons Committee on the Whetstone
and St. Albans Turnpike Trusts, 1828 ; see also the article on Road-
making in London Magazine, August 1828. A description and historical
account of the Whetstone Turnpike Trust is given in Middlesex and
Hertfordshire Notes and Queries, vol. iv. pp. 91-4.
Page 169. The statutory requirement of a civil engineer is in 59
George III. c. 30 (Shrewsbury and Bangor Turnpike Act, 1819) ; see
evidence of Sir Henry Parnell before House of Commons Committee on
Turnpike Roads and Highways, 1820.
Page 170. The exact total spent on the construction and management
of the works on the road from London to Holyhead, in the fifteen years
1815-29, is given as 733,502 (Report of House of Commons Committee
on the amount of all sums and money received, expended and repaid by the
Commissioners for the Improvement of the Holyhead and Liverpool
Roads, 1830 ; A Treatise on Roads, by Sir H. Parnell, 1833, Appendix
No. IV. p. 382).
The phrases describing the result are in the Report of House of Commons
Committee on the Holyhead and Liverpool Roads, 1830 ; and in A Treatise
on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, 1833, p. 31.
Page 171. No more detailed life on Macadam (1756-1836) exists than
the notices in the Imperial Dictionary of Biography and the Dictionary
of National Biography, together with that in Chambers' s Biographical
Dictionary of Eminent Scotchmen, 1870, vol. iii. The materials for any
adequate account of his activity have to be sought in his voluminous
evidence before successive Parliamentary Committees from 1810 onwards ;
in the MS. proceedings of the Trusts for which he worked ; in contemporary
newspapers and pamphlets, and in the successive editions of his books,
which had a great vogue between 1820 and 1830, but are now almost for-
gotten. He received a Parliamentary Grant of altogether 10,000 in
recognition of his services, and, towards the close of his life, he was offered
a knighthood (1834), which he asked might be given to his son, instead
of to himself. He resigned his appointment under the Bristol Turnpike
Trust in 1825, after local quarrels. Retiring to Moffat, in Scotland, he
died in 1836. He published Remarks on the Present System of Roadmalcing,
with Observations deduced from practice and experience (1st edition 1816,
32 pp. ; 9th edition 1827, 236 pp.) ; A Practical Essay on the Scientific
Repair and Preservation of Public Roads, 1819 ; and Observations on the
Management of Trusts for the care of Turnpike Roads, as regards the Repair
of the Road, the Expenditure of the Revenue and the Appointment of Officers,
1825. See, for brief notices or criticisms, Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth
Century, by John Latimer, 1887, pp. 63-4; Bristol Mercury, 2nd August
1819, and 22nd July 1820 ; Gentleman's Magazine, 1837, part i. p. 101 ;
Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair, Bart., by Rev. J. S. Sinclair, 1837, vol. ii.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 185
pp. 95-8 ; Account of the M' Adams, by Paterson ; Lives of the Engineers,
by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. p. 430 (with a portrait) ; Highways and
Horses, by Athol Maudslay, 1888, p. 65 ; Roadmaking and Maintenance, by
Thomas Aitken, 1800, pp. 11-14. The name was spelt indifferently in its
various forms. A portrait of him is to be found in Harper's Weekly, vol.
33 (1880), p. 633.
Page 172. Macadam's remarks as to the character of the past legis-
lative activity are in the Report of House of Commons Committee
on Highways and Turnpike Roads, 1811, Appendix C. pp. 27-30.
" The anxious provisions of the legislature for the preservation of roads,"
he observes elsewhere, " have unfortunately taken precedence of measures
for making roads fit to be travelled upon, or worth the care of being pre-
served " (Remarks on the Present System of JRoadmaking, by J. L. Macadam,
1822, p. 12).
His proposal to concentrate on making a surface are in Remarks on the
Present System of Roadmaking, by J. L. Macadam, p. 37 of edition of 1820.
" No one," he observes, " seems to have contemplated the idea of a road
being made at once strong, smooth and solid."
Page 173. The distinctive feature of Macadam's system was to abstain
from the use of clay, dirt, or even pebbles, but " to put broken stone on a
road, which shall unite by its own angles, so as to form a solid hard surface "
to substitute " small angular stones, prepared from larger pieces, for the
large rounded stones then generally made use of in road construction "
and to dispense with " binding material " or any " mixture of earth, clay,
chalk or other matter that will imbibe water and be affected by frost "
(Roadmaking and Maintenance, by Thomas Aitken, 1907, p. 12 ; see
Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering, 1847 ; also Report of House of
Commons Committee on the Highways of the Kingdom, 1819). R. L.
Edgeworth, on the contrary, " recommended that the interstices should be
filled up with small gravel or sharp sand," a practice which, though it was
condemned by Macadam, is now adopted by the best surveyors (The
Construction of Roads and Streets, by Henry Law and D. Kinnear Clark,
1887, p. 9). " Telford's name is associated with the system of handset
stones as a pavement foundation on which the top metal or wearing surface
is placed. . . . Macadam was satisfied with laying the metalling directly
on the surface of the ground, after the irregularities had been levelled, and
side ditches formed. ... A system of bottoming roads combining the
methods practised by Telford and Macadam has long been adopted,"
though the use of the steam-roller has compelled the application of water,
which was to Macadam anathema (Roadmaking and Maintenance, by
T. Aitken, 1900, pp. 249, 251, 253 ; see also The Municipal and Sanitary
Engineer's Handbook, by H. Percy Boulnois, 1883). Not only Telford, but
also, it is said, " Rennie had practised the same method of making roads
over his bridges long before " Macadam's publications (Lives of the
Engineers, by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. p. 185). So, also, it is said, did
Abercromby, who constructed admirable roads in Scotland ; and various
French roadmakers, notably the great Pierre Tresaguet, whom Turgot
employed in 1764 (The King's Highway, the Nature, Purpose and Develop-
ment of Roads and Road Systems, by Reginald Ryves, 1911 ; The Art of
186 " TELFORD" AND "MACADAM"
Roadmaking, by Frost, pp. 159, 160 ; Highways and Horses, by Athol
Maudslay, 1888, p. 63). But in 1830 the French Government officially
adopted Macadam's system, which received the highest praise in 1843
from Dumas, the engineer in chief of the department of Fonts et
Chaussdes (ibid. p. 65).
Page 173. The remarks quoted from Macadam are in Remarks on the
Present System of Roadmaking, by J. L. Macadam, pp. 20-21, 24, 128 of 1820
edition. " Statute Labour," wrote R. L. Edgeworth a little before this
time, " is a remnant of personal service. A gentleman might as well argue
. . . that rents paid in kind are more easy and equitable than monied
rents, as to defend the custom of mending highways by compulsory
labour " (An Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages, 18 13, p. 34
of 1817 edition).
Macadam's fame continued to grow, and the " macadamizing " of roads
spread like a mania. He is said at one time to have had as many as 300
sub-surveyors acting under his directions (Roadmaking and Maintenance,
by Thomas Aitken, 1900, pp. 11-14). So indiscriminating was the popular
eulogy that it led to a reaction. " The public," said the Westminster
Review in 1825, " looks on him as a sort of magician, and his invention, as it
is thought, as something preternatural. Innocent of quackery himself,
he has been forcibly made the great quack of the day ; such is the effect of
a fashion and a name. If his own name had not been Macadamizable into a
verb, it is probable that his roads would, even now, have been little known.
He did not invent the method in question of breaking stone, because it
had long been the practice of Sweden and Switzerland and other countries,
and was long known to every observing traveller" (Westminster Review,
vol. iv. p. 354, 1825). Although Sir Henry Parnell's jealousy on behalf of
Telford led him to quote the above detraction, he is fair enough to add
that Macadam " certainly had the merit, of no inconsiderable value, of
being the first person who succeeded in persuading the Trustees of turnpike
roads to set seriously about the improvement of them. By teaching them
how to prepare gravel materials, and to keep the surface of a road free from
ruts by continually raking it and scraping it, he produced a considerable
change for the better in all the roads in the kingdom " (.4 Treatise on Roads,
by Sir Henry Parnell, p. 25 of 1838 edition). What commended Macadam
to Turnpike Trustees was that he improved the roads without increasing
their cost often, even, whilst decreasing it, and herein lay the " magic."
Telford' s scientific engineering of roads was costly, which led Colonel
Sibthorp, M.P., to refer to him, most unfairly, as " one of those visionary
gentlemen who expects to feed upon the public " (Hansard, 3rd June
1830). As a matter of fact, Telford accepted absurdly low fees, and devoted
his whole energy to his various works, without accumulating, in spite
of extraordinary thrift and abstemiousness, in all his long life, much
more than a single year's income of a twentieth-century engineer of
distinction.
The name was more quickly and more generally used as an adjective,
verb and noun, and used as the stem for derivatives, than in almost any
other instance. From 1821 onwards, we find, in common use by good
writers, such words as macadamize and macadamite. "We shall see no
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 187
more " [of the Surveyor of Highways], wrote Miss Mitford in 1824, " for
the macadam ways are warranted not to wear out " (Our Village).
Page 176. The general legislation about Turnpike Trusts between
1822 and 1834 comprised the 3 George IV. c. 126 (General Turnpike Act of
1822) ; amended by 4 George IV. c. 16 (1823) ; 5 George IV. c. 69 (1824) ;
7 & 8 George IV. c. 24 (1827) ; 9 George IV. c. 77 (1828) ; 1 & 2 William
IV. c. 25 (1831) ; 3 & 4 WUliam IV. c. 78 (1833) ; 4 & 5 William IV. c. 81
(1834). In 1824 a further consolidation was attempted by J. Cripps,
M.P., himself a Justice of the Peace and Turnpike Trustee, who brought in
a Bill to include in a single statute the entire law relating to highways,
parochial as well as turnpike. This was deprecated by Sir Frankland
Lewis as unwise, and was not pressed (Hansard, 25th March 1824).
Page 176. On the vexed question of Parliamentary costs, it was
pointed out in 1827 that Bills for the consolidation of Turnpike Trusts have
" hitherto been visited . . . with the heaviest charges. Turnpike Bills
generally have been always subjected to double House Fees, on some
principle not sufficiently intelligible to your Committee ; but when Trusts
are consolidated, or when roads are divided into two or more districts
... the House Fee is again doubled or trebled, and so on, as the case may
be ; the Committee Fees are also increased, though not in the same pro-
portion." Yet, as was vainly urged, Turnpike Bills, being really measures
for the public advantage, not for individual profit, might properly be re-
lieved from all fees. The limitation of time inserted in them was "a
precautionary provision of the Legislature, not at all requisite for the
purposes of the Trust, but on the contrary, rather injurious to its interests,
having been introduced for the sole benefit of the public, with a view to
procure a periodical revision of the powers and proceedings of the Trust."
All renewal Bills should therefore be exempt from the charges on Private
Bills (Report of House of Commons Committee on Turnpike Trusts Renewal
Bills, 1827 ; see also A Second Supplement to the General Turnpike Road
Acts for 1827, by J. Bateman, 1827, p. Ill ; Municipal Origins, by F. H.
Spencer, 1911, pp. 77-84).
The first of the long series of annual Turnpike Trust Renewal Acts was
1 & 2 William IV. c. 6, 1831, entitled " An Act for continuing until the
30th day of June 1832 the several Acts for regulating the Turnpike Roads
in Great Britain which will expire at the end of the present session of
Parliament."
Page 177. Irresponsible suggestions for turnpike nationalisation crop
up from time to time. Thus in 1800 we have a fussy nonentity writing to
Lord Auckland as follows : " Let all the turnpikes be taken into the hands
of the public. . . . Let all sums lent on turnpikes be funded and all the
tolls of the kingdom be made a security for the amount. This would be a
popular measure, as many of the little turnpikes are unable to pay any
interest, and many more are unable to pay off the principal ; while many
of the great turnpikes could pay the whole debt due on them, but are
obliged not to pay it, in order to be entitled to renew their Acts when they
expire. . . . Turnpike roads in general are now in pretty good condition
and might be kept up at a moderate expense. The improvements still
wanting are chiefly such as exceed the purse of any particular district and
i88 " TELFORD " AND " MACADAM "
the abilities of its Commissioners. Such are new cuts, new bridges, levelling
great hills, or the like, which should be done by able engineers." In 1816
the same irresponsible adviser offers the suggestion to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. " The turnpikes . . . might be made ... a very
efficient source of re 
