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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 revenue as well as useful regulation, if Parliament would 
permit them to be put into the hands of Government. . . . Many indi- 
viduals suffer by having lent money on unproductive turnpikes, to whom 
it would be a great relief to have their loans secured on the tolls of the 
whole kingdom " (John Bowdler to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
12th January 1816 ; in Memoir of the late John Bowdler, Esq. (Anon.) 1825, 
pp. 166-7, 201-2). The same idea of making the roads into a revenue- 
yielding department of government, like the modern Post Office, is ex- 
pounded in A Letter to the Rt. Hon. C. B. Bathurst, M.P., On the subject of 
the Poor Laws, by Richard Blakemore, 1819, p. 33. National adminis- 
tration was implied, too, in the suggestions frequently made that (as in 
Scotland, by General Wade in 1750) the troops should be made use of. 
" Let the military and a proportion of militia (if wanted) be employed in 
repairing the roads," wrote John Bowdler to Lord Auckland in 1800, in 
Memoirs of the late John Bowdler, Esq. (Anon.) 1825, p. 166. " Whenever 
a peace takes place," writes a correspondent of Sir John Sinclair in 1809, 
" I do really think that employing the soldiers on the roads . . . with a 
daily increase to their pay while so employed, would be the best and most 
effectual way of keeping such roads in proper repair " (G. Orr to Sir J. 
Sinclair, in Third Report of House of Commons Committee on Broad 
Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809). More responsible advisers could get 
no further than the creation of a " Parliamentary Commission," to receive 
annual reports from all Turnpike Trusts (First Report of House of Commons 
Committee on the Highways of the Kingdom, 1808). Edge worth proposed 
a National Board to supervise Turnpike Trusts (An Essay on the Construc- 
tion of Roads and Carriages, 1813). The Committee of 1819 could not 
bring itself to recommend "that the turnpike roads of the kingdom 
should be taken into the hands of the government," fearing that " in process 
of time the roads might be considered rather as a source of revenue than 
an accommodation to the public." It therefore recommended the forma- 
tion of a " Parliamentary Commission," having authority to examine 
complaints, audit the accounts, and conduct experiments on its own 
account (Report of House of Commons Committee on the Highways of the 
Kingdom, 1819 ; see A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, 1833, 
p. 306). 

The same indisposition to create a national department of roads con- 
tinued in the Reformed Parliament. In vain did Sir Henry Parnell 
propose in 1833 that all Turnpike Trusts should be placed under the control 
of the Commissioners of Land Revenue (seeing that the latter were, under 
an Act of 1833, just taking over the duties of the Office of Works and the 
Commissioners of the Holyhead Road), and that these Commissioners 
should maintain a staff of engineers to inspect all roads and advise the local 
officers (A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry Parnell, 1833, pp. 301-3). When 
Lord Teynham asked Earl Grey whether it was the intention of the govern- 
ment to take over the management of the turnpike roads, the answer took 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 189 

the form of yet another committee, which reported once more in favour 
of central control without central management (Report of House of Lords 
Committee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833). Three years later, the Committee 
of 1836, whilst recommending some kind of " Boards of Control " over 
Turnpike Trusts, expressly " guard against being understood as conveying 
the recommendation of any executive power or control of management or 
of direction being confided to a Central Board, which might place the 
management of the roads of the kingdom under the same power as the 
roads of France or of Spain " (Report of House of Commons Committee on 
Turnpike Trusts and Tolls, 1836). 

Page 177. The movement towards consolidation in particular districts 
had already led, in 1799, to v the formation of the Bristol District Trust, 
controlling nearly 150 miles of road ; and to a similar amalgamation of 
the Trusts round Exeter. Nine Trusts in Essex had voluntarily associated 
themselves to appoint a common surveyor. They held an aggregate 
meeting of all the Trustees, but the procedure was of doubtful legality 
(Macadam's evidence, in Report of House of Commons Committee on 
Highways, 1819). 

In 1827 it was urged that, " Of all measures the most valuable would be 
to devise some means of encouraging a consolidation of Trusts. The ad- 
vantages of a scientific superintendence, an equalisation of rates on just 
principles, the most appropriate disposition of gates, the purchasing of the 
best materials, the establishment of a uniformity of system, and a greater 
economy in the management of the fund, can only be secured by a general 
consolidation of Trusts " (Report of House of Commons Committee on 
Turnpike Trust Renewal Bills, 1827). Six years later another Committee 
declared that " one of the greatest evils ... is the number of Trusts, as 
well as their limited range and extent. The Committee would recommend 
every consolidation of Trusts which their localities and other circumstances 
will permit. Such consolidation would secure more uniform and efficient 
administration of the Trusts by enabling the Trustees to employ more 
competent and skilful officers, and a reduction of useless expenditure, by 
diminishing the number of clerks and other officers and the outlay incurred 
by the renewal of so many Local Acts " (Report of House of Lords Com- 
mittee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833). The multiplicity of Trusts was, indeed, 
carried to an absurd extreme. Within the municipal boundaries of Leeds 
there were 46 miles of turnpike roads and 30 tollgates, belonging to no fewer 
than 18 different Trusts, and collecting, in 1842, 23,251 per annum 
(Suggestions for consolidating the funds and management of turnpike roads 
within the Borough of Leeds, by Richard Bayldon, 1843, p. 11). Within the 
boundaries of the Parliamentary Borough of Stroud (Gloucestershire) there 
were 13 different Trusts (Rebecca at Stroud, or a few words about the Turnpike 
Trusts, by David Ricardo, 1847). 

Page 177. Davies Gilbert (formerly Giddy), 1767-1839, Sheriff of 
Cornwall 1792, President of the Royal Society in 1827 and a leading 
Cornish antiquary, had a seat in the House of Commons from 1804 to 1832, 
where he was one of the most painstaking members at the useful but un- 
recorded administrative and constructive committee work so typical of the 
time. He is chiefly known by his Parochial History of Cornwall (4 vols., 



igo "TELFORD" AND "MACADAM" 

1838), but his interest in road reform led him to write A Treatise on Wheels 
and Springs for Carriages, and to bring his scientific knowledge to the aid of 
Telford in the calculations required for the Menai Suspension Bridge. See 
Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, by Boase and W. Courtney (1874), pp. 173-5, 
119495 ; Dictionary of National Biography, and the many references there 
cited. 

Page 177. For the state of the roads round London see Report of House 
of Commons Committee on the Highways of the Kingdom, 1819 ; ditto, 
on Turnpike Roads and Highways, 1820 ; ditto, 1821. Before the Com- 
mittee of 1819 it was given in evidence by such competent witnesses as 
the Postmaster-General's superintendent of mail-coaches and the leading 
coach proprietors, that the high roads within fifty miles of London were 
much worse than those in the rest of the kingdom ; that ten horses were 
required on them to do the work of eight ; that the horses lasted only three 
or four years on them, as compared with six years elsewhere ; that the mail- 
coaches occasionally lost twenty minutes in labouring through a few score 
yards of heavily gravelled road ; and that, whilst the amount paid in tolls 
had greatly increased, the state of the roads near London, though in a few 
cases improving, was either stationary or frequently retrograding. 

Page 177. For particulars as to the struggle over Gilbert's abortive 
Consolidation Bill, see Hansard, June and July 1820 ; February and April 
1828 ; and the evidence of Viscount Lowther and James Macadam before 
the House of Lords Committee on Turnpike Trusts, 1833. The Bill was 
opposed also by some of the Vestries ; see MS. Vestry Minutes, Kensington, 
25th March 1821 ; ditto, Chelsea, 29th March 1821. 

Page 178. For Lord Lowther's Committee see Hansard, 5th May 
1824 ; 17th February 1825. The consolidation of these 14 Trusts (which 
had 131 miles of road, extending from Isleworth and Uxbridge to Lea Bridge 
and Edmonton, and on which was levied, in 1826, 75,000 in tolls) that was 
effected by 7 George IV. c. 142 of 1826, was an immense public improve- 
ment. Viscount Lowther (1787-1872), who was M.P. for various constitu- 
encies from 1808, and who succeeded his father as Earl of Lonsdale in 1844, 
was a Junior Lord of the Admiralty in 1809, and of the Treasury from 1813 
to 1826, but (except for very brief intervals in 1828 and 1834-35) was not 
again in ministerial office until 1841. He undertook the chairmanship in 
1826, and, with the greatest assiduity, presided for no less than forty-six 
years over the new body of Commissioners, which worked energetically and 
efficiently. The immediate reduction in cost of official staff was some 
thousands a year, besides great economies in purchase of road materials. 
The troublesome gates, in such busy thoroughfares as the Marylebone 
Road and Old Street had become, were promptly removed ; all weighing 
engines were done away with, and all additional " night tolls " abolished. 
By an amending Act of 1829 (10 George IV. c. 59) the tolls were greatly 
simplified and reduced in frequency ; so that, by 1838, with a length of 
road increased to 172 miles, and growing traffic, the amount levied was only 
66,000. The Trustees appointed, in 1827, as " Surveyor-General of Metro- 
politan Roads," Macadam's son and assistant, who, in 1834, became Sir 
James Macadam (1786-1852). On his death in 1852 he was succeeded by 
his son, William (1803-61), who held the office till his death in 1861, the 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII 191 

Macadam dynasty thus continuing for nearly forty years. Notwithstand- 
ing the inroads made on their tolls by the competition of the new railways, 
the Commissioners managed to pay off all their debt by 1856, besides 
executing many road improvements. In 1864, at the instance of the 
Commissioners themselves, all their roads within the district of the Metro- 
politan Board of Works were freed from toll and transferred to the respec- 
tive parishes (26 & 27 Viet. c. 78, Metropolitan Turnpikes Act, 1863). The 
Commission was terminated, and its remaining roads were freed, by a clause 
in the General Turnpike Acts Continuance Act, 1871. It thus came to an 
end in 1872, a few weeks after the death of its assiduous chairman, whose 
portrait was given in the Illustrated London News for 16th March 1872 
(see also Bourke's History of Whites, 1892, vol. ii. p. 116). See, for its work, 
the 46 Annual Reports to Parliament of the Commissioners of the Metro- 
polis Turnpike Roads (North of the Thames) from 1827 to 1872 ; Morning 
Chronicle, 6th April 1825 ; Times, 10th November 1826 and 12th June 
1828 ; Hansard, 31st March 1829 ; 12th March 1830 ; evidence of Viscount 
Lowther and James Macadam before House of Lords Committee on Turn- 
pike Trusts, 1833 ; A Treatise on Mood Legislation and Maintenance, by 
Richard Bayldon, 1857, p. 23. 

Page 179. For the abortive project of a new Northern Road, see the 
Report of the House of Commons Committee on the State of the Northern 
Roads, 1830 ; House of Commons Journals, May and June 1830 ; Hansard, 
3rd June 1830 ; Gentleman's Magazine, 1861, p. 455 ; Lives of the Engineers, 
by Samuel Smiles, 1861, vol. ii. pp. 433-4. 

Page 179. To give one instance out of many of the activities of the 
Macadam family, the Epping and Ongar Turnpike Trustees appointed 
James Macadam their surveyor in 1830, and borrowed 7000 at 5 per cent, 
to enable him to carry out his plan of making " an entire new line between 
Epping and Woodford Wells," which was completed in 1834 (Minutes of 
the Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 1769-1870, by Benjamin Winstone, 
1891, pp. 199-200). 

Page 179. History of Taxation and Taxes, by Stephen Dowell, 1888, 
vol. iii. p. 45. We may conveniently notice here, as a by-product of all 
this coach travelling, the " road books " which, for a century and a half, 
served our forefathers much as " Bradshaw " does ourselves. The first of 
these, by Ogilvy, appeared in 1675, and ran through many editions. 
Paterson's work superseded it in 1771. The sixteenth edition in 1822 was 
edited by E. Mogg, whose name was placed on all subsequent editions. 
Meanwhile Owen's New Book of Roads was a powerful competitor between 
1805 and 1827. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ROAD LEGISLATION OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

To those who watched, between 1820 and 1835, the rapid 
improvement of the main turnpike roads ; the progressive 
linking up of town with town, until practically every place of 
importance found itself regularly connected, by the network of 
fast stage-coaches, with practically every other town in the 
Kingdom ; the gradual aggregation into extensive administrative 
areas of such Turnpike Trusts as those of Middlesex, Surrey 
and Sussex, Bristol, Hereford, Worcester and Exeter ; the more 
frequent cases in which, as on the Holyhead Road, a practical 
unity of technical administration was achieved by the employ- 
ment of a common Surveyor ; the excellence of Telford's road 
engineering and the success of Macadam's smooth and hard 
road surface ; the average speed of nine or ten miles an hour, 
and occasionally more, which the newest stage-coaches came 
to maintain, even throughout the forty hours' journey to Edin- 
burgh or the twenty hours' journey to Exeter ; and who realised, 
on the other hand, how inefficient was the parochial administra- 
tion of the byroads and side lanes outside the jurisdiction of 
the Turnpike Trusts, and how hopelessly incompetent the Parish 
Vestry and the Surveyor of Highways were still proving, it 
would have seemed incredible that the splendid turnpike system, 
which they so much admired, should be destined, within little 
more than a generation, entirely to pass away, whilst the despised 
parochial administration was to prove the germ of the new order. 
Yet this is what happened. In spite of the improvements here 
and there effected on the main lines of road, and of the really 
great achievements of the capitalist organisers of the stage- 
coach service, the historian has to record the fact that all the 

192 



THE PARISH HIGHWAYS 193 

ferment of reform started by the Government departments 
between 1815 and 1828, all the genius of Telford and Macadam, 
and all the energies that the Sinclairs, Parnells, and Lowthers 
so devotedly put into the work, failed to secure to the Turnpike 
Trust even another fifty years' life. What this generation of 
road reformers accomplished was something quite different. 
Almost against their will, they found themselves promoting 
the evolution of a new system of highway administration ; based, 
not on tolls, but exclusively on compulsorily levied rates ; 
governed, not by a separate ad hoc body, but by the general 
local governing authority of the geographical district in which 
the roads were situated ; administered, not by self-selected 
groups of local dignitaries, but by democratically elected repre- 
sentatives of the whole body of citizens ; acting, not through 
the unpaid amateur doing his term of service as Surveyor, but 
through permanent professional salaried officials ; and getting 
the actual manual labour performed, not by any gratuitous 
common service, but by a permanently employed staff of wage 
earners. This evolution, which took nearly the whole nineteenth - 
century to come about, has now to be traced. 

We must begin, not with the Turnpike Trust, with its 
" telfordised " or " macadamised " roads, but with the humbler 
parish highways. If we had confined our reading between 
1800 and 1830 to the voluminous Parliamentary Papers, to the 
reports and evidence of such experts as Macadam and Telford, 
and to the books, articles, and pamphlets about roads that 
abounded in these years, we might easily have imagined that by 
this time the bulk of the roads throughout the kingdom had 
become turnpikes, and that the condition of such byways and 
country lanes as still remained under the jurisdiction of the 
parish Surveyor of Highways was of no importance. This was 
not the case. Out of a total length of recognised public highway 
in 1820 of about 125,000 miles, only about 20,875 miles, or little 
over one-sixth, was under Turnpike Trusts ; and even by 1838 
the mileage under Trusts had only increased to about 22,000, 
leaving, it was computed, no less than 104,770 miles, with an 
annual expenditure of more than a million sterling, under 
parochial control. Nor did the minority of turnpike roads 
include all the ways much frequented by man, beast, and vehicle. 
The main arteries between the metropolis and the provinces, 

o 



194 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

and the thoroughfares connecting one great industrial centre 
with another, had, it is true, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century come under the management of practically continuous 
Turnpike Trusts. But among the parish highways were to be 
found miles of important streets in those suburbs of big cities, 
and in those industrial villages in which the inhabitants had 
failed to get a Local Act incorporating a body of Street Com- 
missioners. Even across rural parishes, especially in the eastern 
counties and in the south-west of England, many roads of more 
than local importance remained outside the network of the 
eleven hundred Turnpike Trusts. 

These hundred thousand miles of miscellaneous streets, roads, 
and lanes were, in 1830, as in 1730 or in 1630, still administered 
by the thousands of separate parishes and townships, according 
to the mediaeval assumption of personal service and parochial 
obligation that we have in a previous chapter described. The 
annually chosen unpaid Surveyor of Highways, careless or timid, 
illiterate or corrupt ; the forced Statute Labour and Team Duty 
unwillingly rendered on the roads on the six appointed days ; 
the arbitrary compositions and intermittent highway rates, 
spent without skill or audit : this untrained, dilatory, and 
irresponsible service made more irritating and burdensome by 
threats of indictment of the parishioners and arbitrary fines 
levied upon any one of them in short, the whole highway 
mechanism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went 
on for the first thirty years of the nineteenth century practically 
unchanged. " The legislative enactments " for the " mainten- 
ance and repair ... of the parish roads," Macadam con- 
temptuously notices in 1819, " are so inadequate to the object 
that they may be considered as being placed almost out of the 
protection of the law." For, in spite of the condemnation of 
this system by every road reformer, Parliament, amid all its 
numerous Highway Acts, had effected no substantial alteration, 
either in law or practice, since the opening of the eighteenth 
century. To this statement there should perhaps be one 
exception. By the General Highway Act of 1773 the Justices 
j in Special Highway Sessions had been empowered, at the request 
* of two-thirds of the parishioners in Vestry assembled, to appoint 
a salaried Surveyor of Highways for the parish, to be paid out 
of the local rate. For many years, as we believe, little or no 



VOLUNTARY IMPROVEMENTS 195 

use was made of this power ; of a paid Surveyor of Highways 
we near nothing. During the first decades of the nineteenth 
century, however, such an officer was occasionally appointed 
for specially extensive or urban parishes sometimes acting 
for all the numerous townships or hamlets of a large parish 
and becoming, like the permanent overseer, a servant of the 
Vestry, though still fully subject to the orders of the Justices 
of the Peace. These " standing " or " hireling " surveyors did 
not differ, in character and experience, from the paid officer of 
a small Turnpike Trust ; and under the management of these 
promoted labourers, bankrupt tradesmen, or unsuccessful 
farmers, such parish roads seem often to have so far improved 
as to attain the low level of the minor turnpike road. 

Here and there a similar degree of improvement might be 
brought about by the voluntary action of public-spirited in- 
dividuals. Thus, we read in 1768 of a road in Hertfordshire 
which had " for time immemorial been suffered to remain 
impassable by all carriages, narrow-wheeled carts and waggons 
excepted." It " became the subject of universal complaint," 
but nothing was done. " At length ... a person who had 
frequently suffered inconveniences from the road, . . . availing 
himself, as Surveyor of Great Amwell, of the powers granted 
by the late General Highway Act [of 1766], and assisted in the 
execution thereof by some gentlemen in the Commission of 
the Peace . . . applied the whole statute duty of the parish, 
with the addition of parochial rates and liberal subscriptions 
of his own, to improving that part of the road . . . which, by 
these means and the generous aid of a gentleman of Ware, 
was completed to the satisfaction of the public. ... In Little 
Amwell . . . two different subscriptions were solicited, obtained, 
and faithfully expended thereon." A more highly organised 
voluntary effort is seen in the interesting " Vale of Evesham 
Road Club " established by " the gentlemen residing in the 
neighbourhood of Bredon Hill," Worcestershire, who found 
that the highways, " by long neglect become founderous and 
unsafe for travelling," were not only " a blemish and disgrace 
of this our county," and a " drawback to industry and trade," 
but also that they deprived " the county of its social pleasures 
and connections. You too well know," they urge on their 
associates, " that in the winter, when the cheerless season of the 



196 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

year invites and requires society and good-fellowship, the inter- 
course of neighbours . . . cannot be kept up without imminent 
danger to life and limb." They therefore declare that it is their 
" intention from this time to exercise our utmost influence, by 
advice and example, to put the laws relating thereto into strict 
execution ; and for this purpose we will be ready and willing 
to serve (at least in our turns) as surveyors of the roads in 
our respective parishes ; and we strongly recommend to the 
parishioners to appoint such persons as shall be most likely to 
execute the duties of that office with regularity, impartiality, 
and diligence." And they " give notice to all parishes adjacent, 
that if the repairs of their respective roads are not more seriously 
attended to than they have been (the Statute Labour for which, 
duly performed, will in a great measure be sufficient) they are 
determined to unite in indicting such defaulters." In a very 
few years they had " the pleasure," said the reporter for the 
Board of Agriculture, " of seeing their district assume a new 
face under their auspices, and instead of its being studiously 
avoided, as formerly, from the inconvenience and even danger 
of travelling, they have now to congratulate themselves and 
the public on a very safe and pleasant communication." 

Such organised manifestations of voluntary activity with 
regard to road maintenance were, unlike the analogous associa- 
tions for the prevention of crime, extremely rare, and probably 
very transient, for we have discovered no other traces of their 
activity than those above quoted. What was perhaps a little 
I more frequent was the substitution, by voluntary agreement, of 
j a rate for the Statute Labour, and of a road contractor for the 
unpaid Surveyor of Highways. Thus we read of the North 
Riding of Yorkshire in 1794, that " in a township on the north 
side of the Howardian hills " (by which, we assume, is meant 
the estates of the Earl of Carlisle) ..." the practice is to employ 
a person by the year to do all the carriage work and keep the 
roads in repair, the expense of which is raised by an assessment 
laid upon the inhabitants." Far more effective was, however, 
the extra-legal action taken in 1830 by the magistrates of the 
Southwell division of Nottinghamshire, on the inspiration of 
the noted poor-law, prison, and friendly society reformer, the 
Rev. J. T. Becher. " To facilitate information respecting the 
amendment of the highways, and to produce uniformity, Mr. 



A COUNTY SURVEYOR 197 

Bonsor, the Permanent Overseer [Surveyor of Highways] of 
Southwell, who is also the Surveyor of the turnpike roads under 
the Commissioners, is appointed by the magistrates as their 
General Surveyor, to instruct all parochial Overseers [Surveyors] 
of the Highways willing to consult him, which they do very 
frequently. He surveys the whole of the roads in any parish 
requiring his inspection ; reports upon the state of them to the 
magistrates ; recommends such amendments or improvements 
as appear advisable, and when they have been executed, reports 
further ; certifies the state of the highways to the magistrates 
so as to obtain, on behalf of such parish, a reduction of such 
portion of the Highway Rate as can be conveniently dispensed 
with. In this district the whole of the duty to be performed 
upon the roads is converted into money, being at the rate of 
16|d. in the pound sterling, which yields for every 50 assessment 
3 : 8 : 9, so that the value of a team for one day is estimated at 
11s. 5|d., being for six days 3:8: 9, as above shown to be the 
representative of 50. Under this arrangement, which originated 
at Southwell, and has extended itself over a great part of the 
county, the teams and labourers are not called out, as in other 
counties, for a certain number of days, but the duty is converted 
into piecework, and the party liable is allowed to perform 
his team work according to his convenience, and to work out 
the sum due at the rate of one shilling per mile for every ton of 
materials conveyed. . . . The beneficial effects . . . have been 
considerable." 

The scheme adopted by the Nottinghamshire Justices 
amounted, in effect, to the administration of the highways by 
the magistrates of each Division, under guise of their large and 
indefinite permissive powers of control and direction. It was, 
in fact, just such an appointment of a County Surveyor of 
Highways, constantly inspecting all the one or two thousand 
miles of parochial highways within the county, and supervising , 
the action of four or five hundred parish Surveyors, that writer 
after writer, and Committee after Committee of the House of 
Commons, had recommended. The annual appointment of an^ 
unpaid officer in each parish was plainly a defect ; the reliance 
on Statute Labour was admittedly a scandal. " But," concludes 
with emphasis the able report of a Committee of the Norfolk 
Justices in 1826, " the Committee are persuaded that no alteration 



198 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

in the law can be effectual unless the Magistrates are invested 
with a power, when assembled in their Quarter Sessions, of 
appointing persons of superior ability and experience as super- 
intending Surveyors ; and they are confirmed in this opinion 
by the authority of Mr. Macadam, who in his evidence before a 
Committee of the House of Commons, states that the only cure 
for the defects in road management would be to have people of 
a better station of life placed over the Surveyors, not only to 
direct them what to do, but to see that the work is judiciously 
and honestly executed ; and he further states that in his opinion 
a very small proportion of the sum now wasted by bad manage- 
ment would pay for such an establishment." 

In one direction only did the parishes themselves initiate a 
new departure at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
namely, in the employment on the roads of their able-bodied 
poor. To the little farmer or shopkeeper who served as Over- 
seer of the Poor or Surveyor of Highways, as to the farmers who 
met in Vestry at the Parish church, this policy seemed plainly 
advantageous. The parish found itself threatened with an 
indictment for the bad state of its highways. At the same 
time it had to maintain its able-bodied poor. By setting the 
unemployed labourers to work on the roads, the parochial 
authorities seemed completely to fulfil both obligations. They 
supported the poor, kept them out of mischief, and even secured 
something like a test of destitution. They got their roads 
repaired, staved off the indictment, and even carried out slight 
improvements in widening and levelling without cost to the 
ratepayers. Some enthusiastic reformers saw visions of all the 
highways of England being straightened and improved by this 
" much useful employment for our supernumerary poor." It 
was usually the most enterprising and progressive parishes that 
first started this plan. Thus, the little town of Minchinhampton, 
which had been for several years energetically mending and 
improving its roads, pitching and paving footpaths and water- 
courses, and even constructing " underground drains," organised 
in 1826 a systematic combination of road repair and poor relief. 
" Many of the highways in this parish requiring great improve- 
ment," runs a Vestry Minute, " it is unanimously resolved that the 
best means of providing for the able poor will be to consolidate 
the highway rates of this parish, and employ such poor in re- 



PAUPER LABOUR 199 

pairing such highways, and in sloping the quarries of the Common, 
so as to render them less dangerous ; that the price to be paid 
by the parish for labour shall be three-fifths of such sum as shall 
be named by Mr. Smart as a fair compensation ; he so calculating 
as to allow an able labourer accustomed to such work to earn 
ten shillings per week ; that Mr. Smart be appointed super- 
intendent, and that he bring in his charge for such superintend- 
ence at every monthly meeting." By 1833 this policy of putting 
pauper labour on the roads had become so common that the 
Poor Law Commissioners made its working one of the special 
subjects of their enquiry. They found pauper road-mending in 
vogue, as the alternative to the Roundsman System and the 
Labour Rate, all over the south of England. Sometimes the 
Surveyor of Highways undertook, in the interest of the parish, 
to employ all men sent to him by the Overseer. Sometimes, 
when the Surveyor was not so compliant, or when friction arose 
between him and the Overseer, the Vestry would induce the 
Justices to appoint the same person to fill both offices. The 
wages paid by those Vestries that were dominated by the new 
school of Poor Law Reformers were reckoned by piecework at 
rates deliberately fixed below the market price of labour. More 
usually, however, a time wage was allowed, fixed according to 
" the Justices' Scale," and thus varying, not with the efficiency 
of the labourer, but with the size of his family and the price of 
corn. The money was taken sometimes wholly from the Highway 
Rate, sometimes wholly from the Poor Rate, sometimes partly 
from each of these rates. With regard to the results, the reports 
of the Assistant Poor Law Commissioners differ in their tone. 
When the road-work consisted of no more than strictly super- 
vised stone-breaking, at piecework rates, fixed below subsistence 
level, it no doubt served as a severe test of destitution, but in 
that case it effected nothing for the repair of the roads. When 
it amounted to continuous employment at wages, of paupers 
who were not chosen for efficiency, and could not be dismissed 
for idleness, in the place of labour hired in the open market, 
the results were unmistakable. The dissolute idleness of the 
little groups of able-bodied paupers on the roads became notorious. 
Whenever the Surveyor is present " the men bestir themselves 
a little, but the moment his back is turned, a man who gives 
himself any trouble in working more than he can help is laughed 



200 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

at by his companions. . . . Their remark is, * You must have 
your 12s. a week or your 10s. a week, whether you work or not ; 
I wouldn't be such a fool as to work.' ... Of course, under 
these circumstances they do anything but work." It naturally 
followed that, in the worst cases, the money, so far as regards 
any effect on the roads, was wholly thrown away ; whilst even 
in the best cases any repair or improvement was gained at an 
enormously excessive cost. That the " Labour on the roads 
on account of the parish is generally unprofitable " is the universal 
testimony. " We frequently make a contract with the Parish 
Overseer," said the younger Macadam, speaking for his father 
and himself, in their operations on behalf of Turnpike Trusts, 
"to do a certain quantity of work for the road ; in that case 
he employs such persons as he finds most convenient ; in most 
cases where we have done so we find the work has cost the parish 
above three times what we have paid for it." There was, 
moreover, the further drawback that the work had often to be 
done at the season when it was least effective, because it was 
then that the labourers needed relief. Nor did the distribution 
of the unemployed bear any relation to that of the highways 
requiring repair. The parish authorities, it was said, " sent 
their gangs of unemployed labourers ... on roads not in fact 
requiring repair, while the labour might be beneficially employed 
on the highways in adjoining parishes . . . there being fre- 
quently at the same time numerous unemployed labourers 
supported at a heavy expense . . . by a parish whose roads were 
in a good state, while those of an adjoining parish . . . remained 
neglected." Hence, however theoretically possible it might 
be to combine advantageously the duties of road maintenance 
and the relief of the destitute able-bodied unemployed, if both 
were perfectly administered on a national system, it is clear that, 
under the parochial system of 1833, with the Poor Law policy 
of the time, the employment of pauper labour on the roads was 
as ineffective a device for keeping the highways in good repair 
as it was for providing for the destitute. Yet we must not 
underestimate the magnitude, whether for good or for evil, of 
this employment of the unemployed on the roads. In the year 
1832 work was in this way found for no fewer than 52,800 of 
such unemployed men, at a cost to the Poor Rate of no less than 
264,800, implying something like two months' service by each 



THE ACT OF 1835 201 

man. The pauper labour on the roads amounted, in fact, at 
this time to about as much as the Statute Labour and Team 
Duty under the 1555 statute. 

We pass lightly over the dozen or so successive statutes 
relating to roads, by which, between 1800 and 1835, Parliament 
contrived to render more complicated and incomprehensible 
a body of law which was already beyond the comprehension of 
any human being. We have already said enough about the 
futile attempts to regulate the weight, the wheels, the team, 
the line of draught, and their relation to each other. We have 
given in as much detail as can now be endured the incessant 
criticisms and complaints, the perpetual stream of proposals 
and suggestions, as to the state of the roads, the burden of the 
rates and of the tolls, the manifold imperfections of all those 
concerned, and the various ways in which it was supposed that 
the evils could be cured. Starting from 1806, we have, in five 
and twenty years, more than twenty Parliamentary Committees 
hearing evidence on these things, discussing them in elaborate 
detail, and reporting at great length and diversely. In this and 
the preceding chapter we have already sufficiently disturbed the 
dust under which these ancient blue-books lie buried. 

With the reform of the House of Commons, and the greater 
energy in legislation of the Whig administration, we get, at last, 
some definite progress. It was, of course, only to be expected 
that the Keformed Parliament, and eventually the Whig Govern- 
ment, should attempt to apply to the roads the current panacea 
of representative institutions and a ratepaying democracy. 
After eight or ten abortive bills by private members in the five 
preceding sessions, the General Highway Act of 1835 (5 and 6 
William IV. c. 50) repealed practically all the then existing i/ 
statutes relating to highways (as distinguished from those 
relating to the roads under Turnpike Trusts), in order once more 
to codify the whole law in one carefully drafted Act of a hundred 
and twenty clauses, and a schedule of twenty-five forms. This 
consolidating Act set up, in each parish, the meeting of ratepayers 
in Vestry assembled as the supreme governing body ; gave it 
power, in parishes exceeding 5000 inhabitants, to elect a repre- 
sentative board of management ; authorised it to nominate a 
Surveyor in public meeting, who had power to levy a rate, and 
who might be a salaried officer ; and left it free to raise all the 



202 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

revenue required for road maintenance with the minimum of 
interference from the Justices of the Peace. The Justices' 
power of " presentment " of the parish was taken away, and 
replaced by power to fine the Surveyor himself. The ancient 
obligation to render service in kind, by Statute Labour and Team 
Duty, was contemptuously dismissed. All the statutory re- 
strictions on wheels and weights, number of horses and lines 
of draught, were silently repealed. The new assumption that 
collective provision should supersede collective regulation was, 
so far as regards the surface of the road, expressly embodied in 
law ; the old expedient of amateur service by rotation was no 
longer relied on ; and the modern administrative device of 
salaried officials and hired labour was definitively adopted. 
Where the new Act failed to carry out the reforms initiated by 
Sinclair and Macadam, Telford and Parnell, and advocated by 
the Parliamentary Committees from 1806 to 1830, was in its 
selection of the area of administration and of the governing body. 
Every committee of enquiry, like every practical expert and 
every pamphleteer, had asserted the supreme necessity of larger 
areas of administration, and had assumed that the County 
Justices in Quarter Sessions assembled would become inevitably 
the paramount governing authority, for this as for every other 
County service. It was plain that only by having large areas 
could there be any proper economy and organisation in the 
purchase of road materials and the employment of labour, and 
for large areas alone could there be secured the services of the 
trained professional surveyors, paid salaries sufficient to place 
them above petty corruption, who were admittedly required 
for the road-making of the kind now contemplated. Without 
large areas, moreover, it could never be possible for the roads to 
be properly graduated in " width and strength " in the order of 
their public importance, or for the cost of maintenance to be 
equitably distributed among all the inhabitants of the neighbour- 
hood. In road administration, too, where the County Justices 
had actually taken it up, they had shown themselves the least 
corrupt and the most enlightened of contemporary authorities. 
Hence, had the Whig Government of 1835 been concerned 
exclusively with perfecting the highways, it would undoubtedly 
have adopted the County as the area, and Quarter Sessions as 
the supreme governing authority. Such a policy was, however, 



CLOSING FOOTPATHS 203 

in 1835, politically impossible. Apart from the fact that the 
County Justices were predominantly Tory in opinion, it was not 
practically open to a Whig Parliament, so soon after the Reform 
Bill, to give new rating powers to a non-elective body. The 
steady rise in the County Rate, due to the building of gaols and 
lunatic asylums, was just then making Quarter Sessions unpopular 
as an administrative authority. There was, moreover, a special 
reason against giving the County Justices any further powers 
over roads, and (as Hansard records) one specially referred to, 
even by so mild a Whig as the Hon. E. B. Portman, on the 
introduction of his own Bill in 1831. For some time past there 
had been growing up in the new urban districts a volume of 
popular indignation against the magistrates' activity in closing 
public footpaths. By an Act of 1815, any two Justices had: been 
given power summarily to close any footpath which they deemed 
unnecessary, subject only to confirmation by Quarter Sessions. 
Unfortunately, as there is reason to believe, individual magistrates 
up and down the country did not scruple to use this power for 
their own personal advantage whenever they felt inclined to 
exclude the public from crossing their lands. In many counties 
the closing orders were given with the greatest carelessness 
and to the utter disregard of the public convenience. It was 
currently reported that one magistrate would jovially ask 
another to dinner, giving as a reason that he wanted his con- 
currence in stopping up a footpath. Even the country gentlemen 
themselves deplored, in the House of Commons, the " facility 
with which public and most useful highways might be stopped 
up by the order of two magistrates, and the great difficulty of 
getting such orders quashed by appeal to the Quarter Sessions." 
Especially in the new manufacturing districts, where the great 
increase of population made the use of the footpaths a source 
of annoyance to the landowners, were these public rights of way 
arbitrarily abolished, without thought of compensation, to an 
extent which called forth the grave and unaccustomed censure 
of a legal commentator. Hence the Radical members from the 
newly enfranchised industrial districts had both general and 
particular reasons for resisting any project of increasing the 
power of the County Justices over the highways ; there was 
available no other authority for the County than Quarter Sessions ; 
the utmost that could be done to get more satisfactory areas was 



2o 4 ROAD LEGISLATION OP NINETEENTH CENTURY 

to give to parishes the option of combining in the appointment 
of a surveyor an option practically never exercised and 
accordingly, in the choice of an area for the new road authority, 
administrative efficiency had to be sacrificed to popular consent. 

The Act of 1835 thus left intact the immemorial autonomy, 
as regards the roads, of each " parish, township, tithing, rape, 
vill, wapentake, division, city, borough, liberty, market town, 
franchise, hamlet, precinct, chapelry, or any other place or 
district maintaining its own highways " ; and, indeed, by 
diminishing the authority of the Justices of the Peace, increased 
the practical independence of all these little local republics. 
Notwithstanding that there were at least 15,000 such separate 
" Highway Parishes " in England and Wales, half of them 
having only each a few score families, the Act of 1835 definitely 
secured to them the administration, free from any external 
supervision, control, or even audit or, at least from any more 
efficient supervision than the local Justices of the Peace chose 
to exercise over the Parish Surveyor, or from any more practical 
check than the still-surviving Common Law liability to indict- 
ment at Quarter Sessions or the Assizes of the not inconsiderable 
expenditure of a million a year which they were so wastefully 
bestowing upon the hundred thousand miles of road that lay 
outside the jurisdiction of the Turnpike Trusts. The story of 
the ensuing half-century may very largely be summed up in a 
series of attempts to undo this mistake in the choice of an ad- 
ministrative unit, and to find or construct, in lieu of the parish, 
some " Highway Authority " that all those concerned could 
be persuaded to accept as a substitute. 

It was hoped, at first, that parishes would voluntarily consent 
to combine, as the 1835 Act enabled them to do, by application 
to Quarter Sessions or Special Sessions, for the formation of a 
Highway District, able to pay a suitable salary to a competent 
District Surveyor. Such a combination would have left intact 
the financial independence of each little parish, for the Act 
carefully specified that the whole of the rates levied in each 
parish were to be spent on its own roads, unless the Vestry 
meeting chose to authorise a special contribution towards some 
improvement of common interest. So concerned were the 
authors of the Act for the integrity of the parish that the only 
thing that the Highway District would have had in common 



STRUGGLES FOR REFORM 



205 



would have been the District Surveyor and his salary. But in 
nearly all the rural parishes, up and down the country, the 
inhabitants in Vestry assembled saw no reason for incurring 
the expense of a salary at all, and were far too suspicious of 
the neighbouring parishes to combine to pay a common officer, 
who might be found to be spending most of his time over the 
highways of the other parishes. Accordingly, as we gather, 
there were hardly any Highway Districts if, indeed, any at 
all formed under the Act of 1835. 

Another proposal had a little more success. The Act pro- 
vided that, in a parish having over 5000 inhabitants, the Vestry 
meeting might elect a Highway Board being, in effect, a Com- 
mittee of the Vestry, which should itself exercise the powers 
of the Surveyor, and which might appoint and pay an Assistant 
Surveyor to act under the Board's orders. We see this taken 
advantage of at Bradford, and a few other populous places, 
which were not incorporated as Municipal Boroughs, nor yet 
managed by bodies of Street Commissioners under Local Acts. 
But, as the number of such Highway Boards in all England and 
Wales does not appear ever to have exceeded nine, this particular 
detail of administrative machinery need not detain us. 

During the whole of the next thirty years we see one legislator 
after another, whether County Member or Minister of the Crown, 
trying his hand at the curiously narrow issue of how to enlarge 
the administrative unit of area for rural road management ; 
and, as we may now discern, failing just because he could not 
bring himself, as regards each particular locality, to view the 
problem of local government as a whole. More than a dozen 
measures were brought in between 1835 and 1850. Prior to 
the year 1872 all highway and turnpike road matters were 
within the jurisdiction of the Home Office ; and bill after bill 
was prepared on the lines of giving the magistrates in Quarter 
Sessions some general supervising and controlling authority 
sometimes to combine parishes compulsorily into Highway 
Districts ; sometimes to adopt the Petty Sessional Divisions 
for such districts under Highway Boards partly elected by the 
parishes ; sometimes to give the work, incongruous though it 
seemed, to the Boards of Guardians of the Poor, under the 
supervision of Quarter Sessions. Sometimes it was proposed 
to deal only with the parish roads, leaving undisturbed the roads 



206 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

under Turnpike Trusts, a course which largely deprived the 
measure of the driving force of public interest. Any reform 
was, indeed, only too likely to be opposed by all parties by the 
Tory country gentlemen, " because," notes Sir G. C. Lewis in 
1848, " they are sulky about the price of corn," and by the 
farmers, because of their objection to " anything which appears 
to impose any additional * burden ' on the rates." Sometimes, 
on the other hand, it was proposed to put also the Turnpike 
Trusts under the supervision and control of Quarter Sessions, 
or even to include both turnpikes and parish roads in one and 
the same administration, a course which inevitably marshalled 
against the measure the widespread influence of all the eleven 
hundred Trusts and their officials. " The General Roads Bill," 
Sir G. C. Lewis explains in 1849, then Parliamentary Under- 
secretary at the Home Office under Sir George Grey, " was 
met by the opposition of the Clerks to Trusts, who are nearly 
all attorneys, and their influence with members particularly 
as there was at Easter some expectation of a ... dissolution 
was irresistible. We were forced to withdraw it, and the question 
must now be settled in some other way." 

In 1860, Sir George Cornwall Lewis, who had now become for 
a brief period Home Secretary, thought he had found a way in 
the complicated scheme of road administration adopted for 
South Wales. The six southern counties of Wales, as we shall 
presently see, had, already in 1844, as the result of a great social 
convulsion, transferred all their Turnpike Trusts to County 
Roads Boards, under which the turnpike roads were managed 
by District Roads Boards, and to which was at the same time 
entrusted a somewhat shadowy jurisdiction and control over the 
parishes with regard to their own highways. This organisation 
had, during its fifteen years of life, commended itself to South 
Wales. Advantage was now taken of its efficiency and popu- 
larity to bring the parish highways into virtually the same 
hands. The South Wales Highways Act of 1860 (23 and 24 Vic. 
c. 68) made more definite the control of the County Roads 
Boards, and provided for the establishment, in each County, 
of separate Highway Districts and Highway Boards exclusively 
for the parish highways, acting under the supervision of the 
County Roads Board. More important, however, than the 
nominal constitution was the fact that the Surveyor of each 



LOCAL BOARDS OF HEALTH 207 

of the new Highway Districts was appointed by (and thereby 
virtually made responsible to), not the Highway Board whom 
he nominally served, but the County Koads Board, which had 
also its own County officers to advise it. The parochial highways 
of South Wales were thus, in effect, placed under a County 
Authority, and (as we anticipate to say) under the same County 
Authority that itself administered the turnpike roads. It is 
probable that Sir George Cornwall Lewis hoped to achieve the 
same sort of County control for North Wales and for England. 
This was, however, not to be. Any such enlargement of the 
powers of the Justices in Quarter Sessions always failed to secure 
assent ; whilst the various attempts to give the County a more 
acceptable governing body than the Justices were no more 
successful. 

Meanwhile the real solution had been found, though the fact 
was not at first recognised, in another direction. It had been 
persistently taken for granted partly, no doubt, because of 
the historical origin of road administration in the police juris- 
diction of the Manor that the reorganisation of the adminis- 
trative unit would be closely connected with the police and 
magisterial jurisdiction of Quarter Sessions. It proved, on the 
contrary, to be connected with quite a different evolution, 
namely, that of the slowly emerging local organisation for the / 
purposes of Public Health. The problem of parochial highway 
administration was, in fact, first successfully grappled with, 
not in the rural parishes at all, the lanes and byroads of which 
had so far been most prominently in view, but in connection 
with the unpaved thoroughfares of the new urban areas. The 
first breach in the ancient parish autonomy was made by the 
Public Health Act of 1848, which incidentally, and without 
any one realising that it involved ultimately an attack on the 
rural parishes, made the new " Local Boards of Health " them- 
selves the Surveyors of Highways for all the roads within the 
newly created urban areas. By the energy of Edwin Chadwick 
and Southwood Smith at the General Board of Health, a con- 
siderable number of " Local Boards of Health " were set up. 
In 1855, Parliament revolted against the too energetic Chadwick ; 
and the breathless nation paused for a time in its sanitary 
advance. But after 1858 the Local Government Act of that 
year led to a renewed growth of these Local Boards, and, accord- 



208 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

ingly, to a further abstraction of highway administration from 
parochial and from magisterial control. 

So far, however, was any one from realising that the new 
sanitary organisation of the Kingdom was eventually to triumph, 
that, in 1862, the Home Office, under Sir George Grey, at last 
succeeded in passing into law a General Highways Bill which 
adhered to the conventional lines of Highway Districts, at first 
sight much the same as those recently adopted for South Wales. 
The Highways Act of 1862 (25 & 26 Vic. c. 61), the first important 
amendment of the Act of 1835, empowered the Justices in 
Quarter Sessions compulsorily to combine parishes into Highway 
Districts, under Highway Boards, made up partly of Justices 
of the Peace ex-qfficio, but chiefly of the " way wardens " 
elected by the constituent parishes, which then lost the adminis- 
tration of their own highways. All that was left to the Vestry 
meeting was the actual levying of the rate to meet the precept 
of the Highway Board, and the power annually to elect its 
Waywarden, who (besides sitting as a member of the Highway 
Board) might, as regards the highways of his own parish, act as 
a volunteer unpaid assistant to the salaried Surveyor appointed 
by the Highway Board, for such purposes as reporting the need 
for repairs and supervising their execution. But, unlike the 
South Wales Act, the new law left the appointment of the 
District Surveyor to the District Highway Board, not to any 
County Authority. What was, however, fatal to the success 
of this legislation was the attitude of the Home Office an 
attitude worth the notice of the student of English adminis- 
tration, because it was (and to this day remains) characteristic 
of this particular Government Department. When, after pro- 
longed agitation and discussion, an Act of Parliament is passed 
giving any powers or duties to Local Authorities, the Home 
Office habitually regards its own duty in the matter as completed. 
It may or may not notify the Local Authorities concerned of the 
passage of the Bill into law ; for is not every one assumed to 
know the law ? But even if it does as much as send out a 
circular, it seems to consider it beyond its duty to take any steps 
to get the Local Authorities to take action, or to call upon them 
to report annually what action they are taking, or to supervise, 
from year to year, how they are administering (or possibly not 
administering) the powers entrusted to them. Least of all 






HIGHWAY DISTRICTS 209 

does the Home Office seek to guide the action of the Local 
Authorities, or even to bring about any uniformity of policy 
among them ; though in one field after another the lack of such 
direction has produced disaster. 

In the case of the Highways Act of 1862, the abdication of 
leadership by the Home Office led ultimately to the failure of the 
law, and to the reversal of the action taken under it. No advice 
as to policy or administrative direction was given to the Justices. 
This naturally led to a diversity of action and a confusion of 
areas that made the tangle of Local Government still more 
involved. Some Quarter Sessions took action under the statute, 
and began to form Highway Districts. Others did nothing. 
Of those that took action, some adopted the Petty Sessional 
Division as the unit of area ; others chose rather the area of the 
Poor Law Unions formed under the 1834 Act ; whilst others, 
again, constructed brand-new areas corresponding neither with 
the Poor Law Union nor the Petty Sessional Division. The 
Northumberland Justices decided to divide their huge County 
into only four Highway Districts, each electing from 125 to 213 
Waywardens to the Highway Board. The areas of the Districts 
varied, in fact, in the several Counties, from about 12,000 acres 
(or 20 square miles) up to 380,000 acres (or 600 square miles). 
At Alston in Cumberland a single large parish was made a 
Highway District ; in many cases the number of parishes in a 
District was under a dozen ; whilst four Districts had over a 
hundred parishes each. Some Districts found themselves with 
only forty or fifty miles of highway to look after, whilst others 
had six or eight hundred miles. In almost every case the con- 
stituent parishes resented being combined at all. 

The first result of the Act was, however, one which had not 
been foreseen. The parishes did not want to lose their power 
over their own highways. Up and down the country, but 
especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire, there was a rush to 
" adopt " the Local Government Act of 1858 that we have 
already mentioned, by which the parish could become what was 
afterwards to be designated an " Urban Sanitary District " ; 
substituting for its Vestry Meeting an elected Board ; and 
gaining additional powers to execute sanitary and other im- 
provements if and when it chose. It was, however, not for 
any of these objects that the parishes hurried, in 1862 and 

p 



210 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

1863, to " adopt " the Act ; but because by so doing they were 
enabled to retain complete and undivided power over their 
several highways. For it had been provided by a clause in the 
Highways Act of 1862 that no place under the Local Government 
Act of 1858 was to be included within a Highway District. 
Within a year no fewer than nine hundred little parishes many 
having fewer than a thousand inhabitants, and being not more 
" urban " in character than the ordinary English village had 
converted themselves into Urban Sanitary Authorities ; and 
had so put themselves in a position to bid defiance to the desire 
of Quarter Sessions that their highway administration should 
be grouped. Then Parliament intervened. In 1863 the Home 
Office still under Sir George Grey got through an amending 
statute, the Local Government Act of 1863 (26 & 27 Vic. c. 17) ; 
which imposed, for the future, a minimum of 3000 inhabitants 
for the Urban Sanitary District ; and thus stopped the loophole 
through which the little parishes were creeping. 

The parochial opposition to the new-fangled Highway Districts 
was, however, so strong and so universal, and it evoked so much 
sympathy even among Justices of the Peace, that the work of 
combining parishes into Highway Districts was never completed, 
and had eventually to be undone. During the twenty years, 
1862-82, about 8500 parishes were, at one time or other, combined, 
for their road administration, into 424 Highway Districts ; but 
of these a few dozen were subsequently dissolved. The progress 
of consolidation differed considerably from County to County. 
We must first note that about a thousand separate Boroughs 
and Urban Sanitary Districts, comprising all the populous 
towns in every County but Rutland (the numbers varying in 
the different Counties from 1 to as many as 183), managed their 
ocal highways for themselves. In about half the Counties of 
England, and throughout North Wales, the greater part of the 
rural parishes soon found themselves superseded, as regards 
road administration, by the Highway Boards. In five of these 
Counties this supersession of the Parish was, by March 1882, 
absolutely complete. There were, however, in 1879, still 5868 
parishes ; and in March 1882, after the much disliked financial 
provisions of the 1878 Act, as many as 6203 parishes, including 
some of quite trivial population, which maintained the autonomy 
of the Vestry Meeting and the Parish Surveyor of Highways. 



PARISH MANAGEMENT 211 

The great County of York had 759 parishes in Highway Districts 
and 720 separate ; besides 183 Urban Sanitary Districts managing 
their own thoroughfares. Seven or eight Counties, including 
Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Staffordshire and West- 
morland, stood out obstinately for parish management, and 
would have no Highway Boards at all within their areas. 

We find it difficult to account for this passionate attachment 
to parochial management of the highways, in spite of every 
argument of economy and efficiency in favour of wider adminis- 
trative units. How inefficient was usually the road adminis- 
tration of the Parish, even in the middle of the nineteenth 
century, we can now only dimly picture to ourselves. Only 
in an infinitesimal number of extensive parishes did the Vestry 
dream of appointing a qualified professional expert as Surveyor 
of Highways : it would, indeed, seldom have been easy to 
secure such a person for the small fragment of his time that a 
single parish required. The Surveyors of Highways, it was 
deposed as late as 1881, were " farmers, millers, clergymen, 
squires " when they were not gardeners, bricklayers, broken- 
down clerks or shopkeepers, or merely the incompetent relations 
of prominent parishioners. " I do not suppose ten per cent are 
competent," said the witness, " although many are paid." 
For, after the Highways Act of 1835, it seems gradually to have 
become usual for the Parish Surveyor of Highways to receive 
some sort of remuneration, with various minor perquisites. 
Until 1879, indeed, there was no efficient or external audit of 
his accounts. What happened, we gather, in most parishes, 
was that the Surveyor produced to the Vestry Meeting some 
sort of budget of road repair, for which a Highway Rate would 
be required ; and the Vestry Meeting would discuss and wrangle 
whether this road or that needed to be dealt with, and at what 
cost. Eventually some general decision would be come to, a 
resolution would be passed approving a Highway Rate of so 
much in the pound, and the Surveyor would execute the work 
as he chose. Under such a system, each parish seems to have 
thought that its own highways could not possibly be so well 
managed as they were when the parishioners themselves saw 
to the repairs of their own roads that they would certainly 
cost more, because it was vainly imagined that the local farmers 
would lend their carts free of charge to carry stones to their 



212 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

own roads that to pay the District Surveyor of Highways a 
salary of 200 a year for a whole Highway District was more 
extravagant than letting a score of parish Surveyors allow 
themselves perquisites, or even 10 or 20 salary, for their 
amateur work. Above all, there seems to be everywhere a 
rooted distrust of the parishes at the other end of the district ! 
This became intense after the Highways and Locomotives Act 
of 1878, which incidentally made a common fund for each 
Highway District, replenished by a common Highway Kate, 
instead of each parish being financially separate. Who could 
be sure that an unfair proportion of the common Highway Fund, 
and an undue share of the District Surveyor's time, was not 
being given to the parishes a dozen miles away, where the soil 
was soft, the traffic heavy, and so on ? The feeling was in- 
tensified by the fact that the Highway District often extended 
into two or more Poor Law Unions, each with its own basis of 
assessment ; and the common Highway Rate might accordingly 
fall (or be supposed to fall) with unequal burden on parishes 
assessed with different degrees of leniency or laxness. After 
nearly half a century of advocacy of Highway Districts, and 
nearly twenty years' experience of them, witness after witness 
before the House of Lords Select Committee on the Highways 
Acts, in 1881, argued and pleaded, almost passionately, for a 
reversion to parochial management. 

The grouping of parishes had, however, by that time gone 
too far to be given up. The question at issue was only how to 
group, and how to complete the work. Here, again, it proved 
to be the Public Health organisation that cut the Gordian knot. 
The Royal Commission on Sanitation had reported in 1869 
in favour of the complete division of England and Wales into 
sanitary areas on a uniform plan ; and, rejecting both the 
County and the Parish, had finally decided on the Poor Law 
Union as the best available unit of area for the rural districts. 
This decision, which was the turning-point in the Local Govern- 
ment history of the nineteenth century, proved to be the turning- 
point also for highway administration. In 1872, under section 36 
of the Public Health Act of that year, the jurisdiction of the 
Home Office with regard to highways and turnpike roads was 
transferred to the newly created Local Government Board ; 
which combined Public Health and Poor Law administration, 



HIGHWAY BOARDS 213 

and started free from the traditional bias of the Home Office 
in favour of the police and magisterial influence, and the County 
area. The Public Health Act of 1872 (35 & 36 Vic. c. 79), re- 
enacted with amendments in 1875 (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55), ignored 
the County altogether, and parcelled out England and Wales, 
for purposes of Public Health administration, among Urban 
and Rural Sanitary Authorities respectively, the former com- 
prising the Boroughs and Urban Districts already existing, or 
to be established, and the latter those portions of the Poor Law 
Unions that lay outside such urban areas. The Urban Sanitary 
Authorities were, as we have seen, already managing their own 
highways, under the Acts of 1848, 1858, 1862 and 1863. It 
followed, almost of necessity, that, outside such urban areas, 
the administration of the highways, like other local services, 
must fall eventually to the Rural Sanitary Authorities. This 
was made clear by the Highways and Locomotives Act of 1878 
(41 & 42 Vic. c. 77), the first Highways Act passed under the 
influence of the Local Government Board. This Act directed 
that Quarter Sessions should, for the future, when forming 
or altering Highway Districts under the Highways Acts, make 
them as far as possible coincide with Rural Sanitary Districts. 
Moreover, the Justices were at the same time empowered, in 
all cases in which the Highway District coincided in area with 
the Rural Sanitary District, to dissolve the Highway Board, 
and transfer its powers to the Rural Sanitary Authority, which 
then merged the expenses of road administration in those of 
general sanitary services, and provided for them by a common 
rate. This provision came into effect with regard to forty-one 
Boards. Where the Highway Boards continued to exist, the 
separate interest of each parish in its own roads was weakened 
by the abolition, under the same Act, of parochial separateness 
as regards highway finance. Instead of charging the cost of the 
parish highways to the parish, the whole of the Highway Board's 
expenditure was thenceforth borne by a common fund, re- 
plenished by a common Highway Rate. 

The parish, as the Highway Authority, and the Highway 
Board, as an ad hoc authority for the highways of a wider 
area, still maintained a vigorous existence, even after the heavy 
blows dealt to them by the Acts of 1872, 1875 and 1878. Very 
few additional parishes allowed themselves to be formed into 



2i 4 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Highway Boards ; and in very few cases did Quarter Sessions 
find it practicable to coerce them. Only about ten per cent of 
the Highway Boards were actually merged in the Rural Sanitary 
Authorities. In both cases the " chaos of areas " stood in the 
way. Parishes and Poor Law Unions overlapped County 
boundaries, Highway Districts overlapped Poor Law Union 
boundaries, and so on. In 1894 the number of Highway Districts 
in existence had fallen to 357, leaving over 5000 separate " High- 
way Parishes," annually electing their Surveyors of Highways, 
and mending their own roads, as they had done since 1555, at 
least. The need for wider areas of administration became, 
however, to the country gentlemen, the Members of Parliament 
and the official class, more and more indisputable, with the 
steady increase of through traffic, as compared with local user 
of the highways. Presently the time arrived when drastic 
measures could be taken. So completely had opinion swung 
round to the inclusion of road management among sanitary 
services generally, that the very measure aiming at a rehabilita- 
tion of Parish Government could, without objection, be used 
to give the death-blow to parochial road administration. The 
Local Government Act of 1894 (56 & 57 Vic. c. 73) definitely 
abolished both Highway Districts and " Highway Parishes,'* 
merging them in the Rural Sanitary Authorities for their localities. 
This, however, it was easier to enact than actually to accomplish, 
because of the overlapping of areas ; and each County Council 
was accordingly empowered to postpone the operation of the 
law as regards highways for three years, or for such further 
period as the Local Government Board might, on the Council's 
application, allow. Under this provision repeated postpone- 
ments took place. In only ten Counties could the Act be brought 
into force at once for the whole area. Meanwhile many minor 
adjustments of parish, union and County boundaries were made. 
Gradually the tangle was straightened out. The number of 
Highway Boards sank from 357 in 1894 to 45 in 1897 ; and 
within two years more the last had been dissolved. The same 
years witnessed also the merging of the last surviving " Highway 
Parishes," which numbered 6454 in 1894, and only 1168 by 
September 1897. By the end of the nineteenth century, the 
last trace of the immemorial responsibility of the Parish for its 
highways may be said to have disappeared. 



THE " CALAMITY OF RAILWAYS" 215 

Meanwhile what was happening to the eleven hundred Turn* 
pike Trusts, with their twenty-two thousand miles of relatively 
good roads, connecting town with town, and daily traversed 
in 1830, as we have described, by tens of thousands of stage- 
coaches, postchaises and private carriages ? We must here look 
beyond legislation, of which, as regards the Turnpike roads, 
the output was small. In 1822, it is true, the whole law had 
been consolidated into a single statute (3 George IV. c. 126), 
without essential alteration. From first to last the constitution 
and powers of the Turnpike Trust remained singularly unchanged. 
Its most glaring abuses were, as we described in a previous 
chapter, to some extent mitigated in the principal centres of 
population and along the main lines of route. By 1830 the 
nation had come to be proud of its great lines of stage-coach 
communication, on which travelling seemed to contemporaries 
to have been brought to a high pitch of perfection. In 1837 
the toll revenue rose to its highest point, exceeding one and a 
half million pounds. 

Suddenly, with little warning, there fell, upon all concerned, 
what Sir James Macadam described as " the calamity of rail- 
ways." The short lines between Stockton and Darlington 
(1825), and between Liverpool and Manchester (1830), proved 
to be only the beginning of a complete supersession of through 
passenger traffic by road, whether by stage-coach, postchaise or 
private carriage ; and it was mainly upon the great development 
of this passenger traffic that the Turnpike Trusts had come to 
depend for their revenue. Each stage-coach journeying daily 
from London to Manchester was contributing over 1700 a year 
in turnpike tolls to the different Trusts along the route. It was 
computed that each coach paid something like 7 a year in tolls 
for each mile of road that it traversed. The transfer of this 
business was instantaneous and complete. Every coach had 
to be taken off the road the moment the railway was open to 
the towns along its route. No one took a postchaise when he 
could take the train. Whatever might be the fascination of the 
road, or the transient apprehension of danger by rail, no one 
was prepared to forgo the advantage of travelling thirty miles 
an hour instead of ten, at a price considerably less than that of 
the stage-coach. The last stage-coach between London and 
Birmingham ran in 1839 ; the last between London and Bristol 



216 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

in October 1843 ; the last to Plymouth in September 1847 ; the 
last to Bedford in 1848 ; the last out of Manchester to Derby 
in 1858. Between 1837 and 1850 the toll revenue of the Turnpike 
Trusts fell off by half a million sterling, or by one-third. 

The weakest point of the Turnpike Trust had, as we have 
seen, always been its financial basis. There was no invariable 
relation, and no necessary connection, between the amount 
that it cost to keep a particular mile of road in repair, and the 
amount that could be collected in tolls. Moreover, the cost of 
collection, including the waste by peculation, fraud and the 
swollen profits of the toll-farmers, was relatively enormous. 
The tolls, too, were practically always mortgaged for the debt 
that had been incurred in the construction or improvement of 
the road ; and the interest on this debt was legally the first 
charge on the gross receipts. Upon what remained there 
battened a host of treasurers, attorneys, clerks, surveyors, and 
road contractors, numbering between three and four thousand 
persons not to mention the 20,000 " pikemen," or collectors, 
at the 7800 toll-gates with very little effective supervision from 
the Turnpike Trustees, few of whom could even be got to attend 
a meeting. Under these circumstances, it is not remarkable 
that, whilst a few Trusts enjoyed ample incomes, most of them 
found it difficult to spare much money for road repair, or that 
many of them failed to keep up their payments of interest on 
their bonds. Already by 1830, notwithstanding the great increase 
in traffic and tolls, some Trusts had paid no interest for thirty 
or fifty years in succession, their bonds becoming valueless ; 
whilst numerous others had their tolls taken possession of by 
their creditors, so that the whole accruing daily revenue was 
sequestrated towards meeting the interest on the bonds. 

The " calamity of railways " that fell upon the Turnpike 
Trusts between 1830 and 1850 brought down a large number of 
them to the state of chronic insolvency into which some had 
already fallen. The receipts at many gates hardly paid the cost 
of collection. The bonds, once thought a safe security, became, 
in most cases, more and more depreciated. What was more 
important to the nation at large was the inability of the Trusts 
to maintain their roads in any decent repair. This threw the 
burden of maintenance again on the parishes through which the 
roads passed. The common law liability of the parish had never 



THE REBECCA RIOTS 217 

been taken away ; and, indeed, in many Trusts, the Surveyor 
had continued to insist on Statute Labour and Team Duty 
being done on the turnpike road, as on others, right down to the 
Highways Act of 1835. Since that Act, the liability of the 
parish for turnpike roads had, in practice, not been enforced. 
Now, the Legislature sought to revive it by empowering, in 1841 
(4 & 5 Vic. c. 59), the Justices in Special Sessions to order a 
contribution from the Highway Rates to be made towards the 
repair of turnpike roads where the toll revenue had proved 
insufficient. 

Any such subsidising of the Turnpike Trust by the parishes 
through which its roads passed making the unfortunate 
parishioners pay both the cost of repair and also the toll whilst 
it failed to cure the evils of Turnpike Trust finance, naturally 
excited local resentment. In South Wales, where the little 
farmers and smallholders were already suffering from adverse 
economic conditions, this resentment flared up, in 1842-43, into 
a convulsive popular rebellion known as the Rebecca Riots. 
Especially in Carmarthenshire had the Turnpike Trusts been 
oppressive, in the excessive number and close proximity of the 
gates and side-bars, at which every vehicle or beast was taxed ; 
the toll-farmers had exacted heavy, and sometimes illegal, tolls ; 
and the Trusts had required the parishes to repair the turnpike 
roads in ways of doubtful legality, on roads on which heavy 
tolls were also levied. It is impossible to read the voluminous 
evidence of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into South Wales 
in 1844 without feeling that the hard-driven smallholders of 
South Wales were being seriously oppressed. This was partly 
the fault of Parliament, which had heedlessly given vexatious 
and oppressive powers to irresponsible bodies. It had carefully / 
limited the amount of each toll, but had not specified how 
frequently the toll might be exacted. " We know no reason," 
gravely reported the Royal Commissioners, " why the Trustees 
should not, if they thought fit, in virtue of the large and lavish 
powers committed to them, establish a gate and demand a toll 
at intervals of 100 yards each throughout the County of 
Carmarthen." In one unfortunate district, two rival Turnpike 
Trusts had both been given power to tax the traffic on roads 
which ran in and out of each other's territory in such a confused 
network that each Trust did its best to multiply toll-gates, and 



2i8 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

the public was fleeced by both. Political rivalry lent animus 
to this economic competition, for one of these Trusts (that of 
Kidwelly) was, we learn, " blue " and the other (Three Commotts) 
" red," the Trustees of each belonging almost exclusively to one 
political party. The country gentlemen were blamed for 
neglecting their duty as Trustees and also for expending large 
sums on building bridges at the public expense, mainly for 
greater convenience of access to each other's houses. Grievances 
connected with tithe, and resentment at the New Poor Law 
swelled the discontent. Suddenly, in the winter of 1842-43, 
there was an epidemic of riotous destruction of the hated turnpike 
gates and side-bars, especially the newest and most oppressive, 
throughout all the six Counties of South Wales. That winter 
will never be forgotten in the valleys of South Wales so long as 
tradition endures. Some Turnpike Trusts found every one 
of their gates destroyed, the gate-posts being neatly sawn across 
close to the ground, with more or less tumult ; with their entire 
revenues brought at an end. Carmarthenshire alone had eighty 
gates destroyed. Throughout two whole Counties (Pembroke 
and Cardigan) not a gate was left standing. The outburst had 
its fantastic aspect. Wild proclamations were issued in the 
name of Rebecca, in allusion to the verse of Genesis (xxiv. 60) 
in which it is promised to the wife of Isaac that her seed should 
possess the " gate " of her enemies. The armed mobs, which 
collected suddenly on some secret signal, were often led by a 
man disguised in women's clothes, and they claimed to be 
" Rebecca and her children." The insurrection for to that it 
almost amounted was organised with a secrecy and an efficiency 
that have seldom been equalled, " By day," writes its best 
historian, " all was quiet enough. The most vigilant of the 
constabulary could see nothing but the ordinary sights of the 
roads and fields no groups in consultation, no mysterious 
looks nothing but jogging riders who duly paid their tolls, and 
people about their proper business in their fields or at home. 
If there was a suspicion of an intended attack on any particular 
gate, that gate was sure to be left in peace ; and while it was 
watched half a dozen were levelled at some opposite point of the 
county." The unfortunate pikekeeper and his family " were 
roused by the blare of a multitude of cowhorns and the popping 
of a dozen guns ; their door was burst open, and they saw a 



COUNTY ROADS BOARDS 219 

crowd, some on horses and some on foot some in women's 
clothes and others with veiled faces with the flaring torches 
and the glittering saws and hatchets. The toll-takers must 
move out their furniture or lose it ; and strong hands helped to 
carry bed and table and utensils into the field or the dry ditch, 
while others were sawing off the gate-posts close to the ground 
and chopping up the gate. Then off came the roof of the toll- 
house, and down came the walls, and up came the flags of the 
very floor ; the road was made clear for passengers, and then 
the uncouth creatures leaped on their horses again, hallooed, 
blew their horns, fired their guns, and galloped off to some 
distant point which they would approach in dead stillness as in 
this case." The patrolling of the local constabulary was in vain. 
Under their protection the gates were put up again ; in many 
instances only to be again destroyed a few nights later. One 
gate was thus demolished five several times. Who started the 
movement and who led the mobs was never discovered. Eventu- 
ally a considerable force of Metropolitan Police and of regular 
troops had to be quartered in South Wales to maintain order. 
But the people had, to a large extent, won their case. The 
Turnpike Trusts abandoned their most oppressive gates, which 
were never reinstated. Only a small number of the rioters were 
arrested. Public opinion ran so strongly in favour of the move- 
ment that the Government preferred to act with leniency. A 
Special Commission, under Baron Gurney, was sent to try the 
prisoners, three of whom were sentenced to transportation, 
others to short terms of imprisonment, whilst the majority were 
simply bound over to keep the peace for the future. A Royal 
Commission of three members was immediately sent to enquire 
on the spot into all the grievances, and remedial legislation 
was promised. In the end, Sir James Graham, then Home 
Secretary, carried through an Act which summarily dismissed 
all the Turnpike Trustees throughout South Wales, merging all 
the Trusts in new " County Roads Boards," appointed by 
Quarter Sessions, and consisting of from six to twelve Justices 
of the Peace, with certain members ex officio. These County 
Roads Boards took over the roads, the debts, the officers and the 
tolls of the former Trusts ; but they were assisted by a Govern- 
ment engineer, a " General Superintendent of County Roads in 
South Wales," who was appointed by the Home Secretary. 



220 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

The sum of 218,000 was advanced by the Government to pay 
off the creditors of the Trusts, the whole debt being thus con- 
solidated, county by county, into terminable annuities at 3J per 
cent interest. Under what was virtually Government control, 
the County Roads Boards greatly reduced the tolls, the excessive 
number of gates, and the other oppressive exactions which had 
led to the popular revolt. Notwithstanding these concessions, 
by consolidation of areas, establishments and debts, by honesty of 
management, and expert direction, the County Roads Boards were 
able not only to pay their way, but also within thirty years to dis- 
charge their bond debt, which was practically all paid off by 1876. 

If something of the same sort could have been done with the 
English Turnpike Trusts in 1844, they might have been spared 
the long-drawn-out agony of the ensuing half-century. But 
every attempt at legislation was defeated by the inability of 
reformers to agree upon the constitution of a County authority ; 
the objection of the Justices of the Peace to any centralization 
or Government control ; the difficulty presented by the com- 
plications of all the eleven hundred separate debts ; and the 
interested opposition of the treasurers, attorneys and clerks 
of the eleven hundred Trusts. We cannot say that the episode 
reflects any credit on English statesmanship. So far as the 
Government was concerned, under the timid and unresourceful 
advice of the Home Office, and the refusal of successive Cabinets 
to trouble themselves about the subject, the Turnpike Trusts 
were allowed to go on just as before, annually getting their ex- 
piring terms renewed by Parliament as a matter of course, fall- 
ing, most of them, progressively further and further behind their 
task, and many of them, deeper and deeper into insolvency. 

We date from the early sixties, so far as such a change can 
be precisely dated, the growth of a widespread public determina- 
tion, notably in Parliamentary and official circles, to get rid 
altogether of the Turnpike Trust and its toll. Road tolls had 
been wholly abolished in Ireland by 1858, and no difficulty had 
been experienced in maintaining the roads entirely out of rates. 
The sense of annoyance and impatience at the irritating impost 
in England was growing more and more acute. The passage of 
the Highways Act of 1862 made it possible to expect the formation, 
all over the country, of Highway Boards, to whom, more reason- 
ably and more equitably than to the Parish Vestries, the turnpike 



TOWARDS ABOLITION 221 

roads might be entrusted. And though Sir George Grey 
remained Home Secretary continuously from 1861 to 1865, it 
is perhaps not altogether imaginary to date a change of policy 
from the retirement in 1862 of his Parliamentary Under- 
secretary George Clive, M.P., to whom the Turnpike Trust 
business was entrusted, and who seems to have favoured the 
renewal of the terms of the expiring Turnpike Trusts, from 
inability to imagine that any other course was practicable. 
Immediately he retired, we seem to notice a change. In 1863 ^ 
a short Act (26 & 27 Vic. c. 94) facilitated the application by 
the Justices in Special Sessions under the Act of 1841 of part 
of the local Highway Rate to the repair of a Turnpike Road 
which found its toll revenue insufficient. A Select Committee 
of the House of Commons in 1864 once more enquired into 
Turnpike Trusts, but this time with a significant difference. 
Instead of how to maintain the Trusts, the question was, practic- 
ally, how to get rid of the tolls. Mr. W. B. Wrightson, M.P. 
for Northallerton Borough, who had had nearly forty years' 
experience of the House of Commons, threw himself energetically 
into the agitation for relieving the traveller from an unpopular 
impost. Practically all the witnesses before this Committee 
were in favour of abolishing the toll, alleging that all experience 
proved it to be a costly and wasteful method of raising the 
necessary revenue, as well as a tax extremely partial and unfair 
in its incidence. The Committee, unaided by guidance from the 
Government, reported that the turnpike tolls were " unequal in 
pressure, costly in collection, inconvenient to the public, and 
injurious as causing a serious impediment to intercourse and 
traffic " ; that the abolition of Turnpike Trusts " would be both 
beneficial and expedient " ; and that the most practicable 
course was to let the turnpike roads be vested in a public 
authority as had been done in South Wales. 

Still the Cabinet ignored the question, and, whichever party ^ 
was in power, persisted in formulating no policy. What happened, 
in effect, was that the House of Commons itself took the matter 
up. In the absence of any definite policy from the Government, 
either under Sir George Grey or under Spencer Walpole, and 
failing any direction from the Ministerial Bench, we see the 
House of Commons Committees hammering out for themselves V 
a policy of gradual abolition. From 1865 onwards we get tolls 



222 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

abolished, here and there, in Scottish Local Acts. From 1871 
onwards there was appointed annually a Committee on Turnpike 
Trust Bills, over which Lord George Cavendish, M.P., presided. 
This Committee had referred to it, each year, all the applications 
for the renewal of the terms of Turnpike Trusts; and every year 
it presented a report to the House, recommending (and thus 
virtually deciding) in which cases the Trusts should be allowed 
to come to an end, and in which cases, and subject to what 
conditions, a further term should be granted. The policy of this 
Committee, which was that of the House of Commons rather 
than that of the Cabinet, was decidedly in favour of winding up 
as many Turnpike Trusts as possible ; and of conceding a renewal 
only where the financial position of the Trust or the circumstances 
of the locality made such a renewal almost irresistible. From 
1864 onwards, Turnpike Trusts now dropped out at the rate 
of twenty or thirty a year, their roads being handed over to 
the Highway Districts, or to the separate Highway Parishes, 
in which they lay. Presently the dissolution went ahead at an 
accelerating rate. The Act of 1870 disposed of no fewer than 
78 Trusts. The Act of 1871 ended tolls in London. From 1871, 
when there were still 854 Trusts existing, they had fallen by 
1875 to 588, by 1881 to 184, and by 1883 to only 71. In that 
year the Scottish Turnpike Trusts ceased to levy tolls. In 1887 
only 15 Trusts were left, and in 1890 only two. It was, however, 
not till 1895 that the last surviving Turnpike Trust, that for the 
Anglesey portion of the Shrewsbury and Holyhead road, came 
to an end, and on November 1, 1895, the last toll was levied 
almost exactly coincident, as we have seen, with the final ex- 
tinction of the Parish as a Highway Authority. 

So continuous and rapid an addition to the burden of road 
maintenance, borne by the Highway Districts and Highway 
Parishes, as followed on the transfer of thousands of miles 
of " disturnpiked " roads, naturally excited some resentment. 
It formed a serious item in the increase of local burdens of which 
the County Members complained. From 1876 onward the 
burden was mitigated by a Grant in Aid of about two hundred 
thousand pounds, specially in respect of the " disturnpiked " 
roads. In 1878 an attempt was made to equalise the remaining 
burden, as among the different parishes in each County, by 
requiring (in the Highway and Locomotives Act, 1878) the 



THE PRESENT SYSTEM 223 

Justices in Quarter Sessions to contribute from the County Fund 
one-half of the annual cost of maintenance of roads " disturn- 
piktd " subsequent to 1870. Ten years later, in the Local 
Government Act of 1888 (51 & 52 Vic. c. 41), when additional 
aid was given to the County from the Exchequer, the obligation 
was placed upon the new County Council of entirely maintaining 
the " main " roads within its County ; with power to add to the 
" disturnpiked " roads such others as it might think fit to regard 
as main roads ; and also to contribute, at its discretion, to the 
District Councils for any other roads in the County (hence called 
" contributory " or " secondary " roads). Thus, at last, after 
three-quarters of a century of argument and discussion, the 
County became, to this partial extent, the local Road Authority. 
This last reform practically brings the story down to date, 
so far as the constitutional machinery of local road administration 
is concerned. Our highways are (1913) still administered, 
within Boroughs or Urban Sanitary Districts, by the Town or 
District Council ; outside these urban areas, the main roads by 
the County Council, the others by the Rural District Council. 
In each case there is a Surveyor, paid by salary, who executes 
the necessary work of construction or repair exclusively by hired 
labour at wages. The cost is provided entirely from the local 
rates, either of the County or County Borough, or of the Urban 
or Rural District, or by subsidy from the one to the other. We 
had by 1888 travelled so far from the demand, set up by the 
" new users of the roads " in the eighteenth century, for a higher 
standard of road administration, that we had forgotten the whole 
controversy. Suddenly, at the end of the nineteenth century, 
we found another set of " new users of the roads " invading our 
highways. To this phenomenon, and its immediate results on 
road administration, we devote our final chapter. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 
NOTES AND REFERENCES 

Page 192. We have been surprised to find how obscure is the history 
of road administration in the nineteenth century. We know of no hook 



224 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

in which the successive stages can be traced ; and we have found it difficult, 
without consulting the MS. Minutes of Vestries, Highway Boards and 
Quarter Sessions (which we must confess not to have had time to do for 
the period after 1835), or the confidential archives of the Home Office 
and Local Government Board, which are not yet accessible, to form any 
exact idea of what was happening. Our account is pieced together from 
statutes and Parliamentary papers, with such incidental references as we 
have found in the books mentioned below. 

Page 192. For a vision of the stage-coach organisation at its best, see 
such books as Coaching, with Anecdotes of the .Rood, by Lord William Lennox, 
1876 ; Annals of the Road, or Notes on Mail and Stage Coaching in Great 
Britain, by Nimrod (Captain) Malet, 1876 ; Old Coaching Days, 1882 ; and 
The Coaching Age, 1885, by Stanley Harris ; Brighton and its Coaches, by 
W. C. A. Blew, 1894 ; Forty Years at the Post Office, 1895, and On the 
Track of the Mail Coach, 1895, both by F. E. Baines ; Coaching Days and 
Coaching Ways, by W. 0. Tristram, 1901 ; and Stagecoach and Mail in 
Days of Yore, by C. G. Harper, 1903. " A passenger could coach from 
Portsmouth to Holyhead, from Barnstaple to Berwick, with changes and 
stoppages it is true, but by a continuous mailcoach road, without passing 
through London. The country resounded with the blast of the horn and 
the rattle of pole-chains " (Forty Years at the Post Office, by F. E. Baines, 
1895, pp. 37-8). There was eventually coaching communication, with 
changes, from Falmouth to Thurso. Birmingham was, in effect, the 
centre of the system, at which most coach lines crossed. 

Page 192. The state of the roads and lanes under the parish Surveyors 
of Highways, for the period between 1800 and 1835, is hardly even men- 
tioned. Contemporary discussion and criticism of roads dealt almost 
exclusively with the turnpikes. Macadam scarcely ever alluded to the 
parish highways. The three most important contributions to current 
periodical literature relating to roads the articles in the Edinburgh 
Review, October 1819, the Quarterly Review, May 1820, and the London 
Magazine, August 1828 are concerned only with turnpike roads. It 
was practically these alone that were made the subjects of Parliamentary 
debates and enquiries between 1806 and 1830 ; and there was no legislation 
relating to parish highways between 1814 and 1835. Practically the only 
author who, in these years, dealt with parish roads was the able Berkshire 
Justice who published anonymously a lengthy pamphlet entitled Highways 
Improved, 1825, which is wholly devoted to them. 

The statistics given in the text are derived from the Report from the 
House of Commons Committee to consider Acts regarding Turnpike Eoads 
and Highways, 1821 ; ditto, House of Lords Committee on Turnpike 
Trusts, 1833 ; ditto, Royal Commission on the State of the Roads, 1840 ; 
and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, January 1839. It may be 
added that, whilst the 22,000 miles of the 1116 Turnpike Trusts in 1838 
had 3555 treasurers, clerks, and Surveyors (besides 20,000 toll collectors, 
etc.), and levied 1,458,000 a year at their 7796 toll-gates and sidebars, 
spending in all 51 a year on each mile of road, and having over seven 
million pounds of debt, the 104,770 miles of parochial highways, dispersed 
among more than 15,000 parishes, etc., were divided among about 20,000 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 225 

Surveyors of Highways, who spent upon them little over 11 per mile, 
and had practically no debt. With these figures may be compared the 
miles ge for the close of the century. In 1897 there were estimated to be 
altogether 119,523 miles of public highways in England and Wales (apart 
from town streets), of which all but 1825 miles were regularly metalled. 
Only 21,536 miles out of the total were classed as " main roads " (i.e. were 
paid for by the County (Pratf s Law of Highways, 14th edition, by William 
Mackenzie, 1897, p. 7). 

It may be added that, prior to 1818, there were no general statistics 
as to highways. The Act of 1815 (55 George III. c. 47) required returns 
to be made, but these were first published in 1818. The House of Lords 
ordered returns which were published in 1827. The next were those of 
1833 and 1839, obtained by order of the House of Commons (Report of 
Royal Commission on the State of the Roads, 1840). The Third Annual 
Report of the Local Government Board (C-1071 of 1874, pp. 476-92) 
gives later statistics at length. 

Page 193. It is difficult to realise how rare was the turnpike road in 
some parts of England and Wales. In the whole of the Cleveland District 
there was, for instance, no turnpike in 1808, apart from the Great North 
Road. There were no turnpikes at all in the Isle of Wight until 1813. In 
1815 Cornwall had only 75 per cent of its total road mileage under Turnpike 
Trusts ; and Devon only 11 per cent ; Norfolk only 7-8 per cent ; Cumber- 
land only 8 per cent ; Suffolk and Essex only 10 per cent ; and Lincoln 
only 11 per cent. On the other hand Middlesex had 31 per cent of its 
mileage turnpiked ; Huntingdonshire (through which ran the Great North 
Road) 28 per cent ; Herefordshire and Derbyshire 27 per cent ; Mon- 
mouthshire and Staffordshire 25 per cent ; and Shropshire 24 per cent 
(Report of Royal Commission on the State of the Roads, 1840). 

Page 194. Probably, by 1830, the Surveyors of Highways had come, 
in most places, to enforce only the Team Duty, and had given up expecting 
personal labour from the cottagers. " There is a part of the Statute Duty," 
said a Dorset landlord in 1834, "which ... no one could at this time 
attempt to enforce, namely, that which allows the Waywarden to call upon 
every labourer to contribute his portion of labour to the maintenance of 
the parish road" (Hon. E. B. Portman, M.P., in Report of House of 
Commons Committee on County Rates, 1834). 

Page 194. Remarks on the Present System of Roadmaking, by J. L. 
Macadam, 1819, p. 29. 

Page 195. The reform effected by the appointment of a paid Surveyor 
in a large Yorkshire village in 1807-16 happens to have been described. 
" The township of Liversedge (Yorkshire) contains 2133 acres of land, and, 
in 1814, a population of 3606 persons, and about 9 miles of roads, of which 
part are turnpike, and the rest general highway. The usual mode of 
providing for the repairs of these roads was formerly the same that is 
understood to be commonly adopted in this country. That is to say, 
Surveyors, under the direction of Trustees for the different turnpike roads 
lying in the township, so far as their funds enabled them to do so, and the 
township occasionally suffered fines when the road was out of repair. 
The repairs of the other roads were provided for under the General Highway 

Q 



226 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 






Act. The township was divided into different subdivisions usually called 
hamlets. A Surveyor was appointed for each hamlet and had his separate 
rate and separate share in the Statute Duty, and in the composition. At 
the same time the township at large was liable to any fine which might be 
levied in case of the indictment of any road in the township. The sub- 
division of the business of repairing the roads in the same township is 
supposed to have been greatly unfavourable to the interests of this township 
and to the accommodation of the public. Small tradesmen " having no 
time to spare from " their own business, and no practical knowledge at all of 
the business of repairing roads, were often appointed Surveyors. . . . Previous 
to the year 1807 the roads in this township were managed by five different 
Surveyors." In 1810 the Vestry was persuaded to nominate one only for 
the whole parish ; and in 1811 to ask the Justices to appoint him at a 
salary. The result was a fall in the cost of the roads from an average 
total of expense and fines, 1797-1806, of 3560, to one of 2480 for 1807-16 
(The Select Vestry, or Parish Committee, by Rev. Hammond Roberson, 1818). 

Page 195. The quotation as to the voluntary improvement of the 
roads of Great and Little Amwell is from A Letter to the Inhabitants of 
Hertford, 1771, pp. 2-3. We may here find place to remind the student 
that the maintenance of roads and bridges, which had been a favourite 
object for charitable bequests by pious testators in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries, appears to have ceased to be the subject of bequests 
in the seventeenth century, when the function became specifically provided 
for as part of Local Government. Old trusts in aid of road maintenance 
were usually merged in other parish or municipal property, or completely 
lost. In some cases, however, separate bodies of feoffees or trustees 
continued, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to administer 
considerable funds, intended, wholly or partially, for the maintenance of 
highways. Where the trust included other objects, such as maintaining 
bridges, supporting a school or providing for the poor, the tendency was 
naturally to drop the expenditure on the roads, and to leave these to the 
parish or the Turnpike Trust. The most important instance is that of the 
" Pious Uses Trustees " of Leeds, whose administration excited the anim- 
adversion of the Radicals of 1830. After prolonged controversy the 
" Board of Surveyors of Highways for the Township of Leeds " took upon 
itself to publish, at the public expense, An Abstract of Accounts for Fourteen 
Years ending Whitsuntide 1840 . . . of the Pious Uses Trustees, 1841, 
with the following aggressive preamble : " Be it known then to all whom 
it may concern that there are fifteen Pious Use Trustees, self-elected, all 
Tories, who hold in trust a vast amount of property, bequeathed for 
repairing the highways, maintaining the Free Grammar School and clothing 
the poor." The radical grievances were the lack of publicity of the 
trustees' administration and, strangely enough, the fact that the funds 
were not spent in the relief of the highway rates, but in specific public 
street improvements, for which rates were not applicable. 

Page 195. " Rules and Regulations of the Vale of Evesham Road 
Club," 1792, in General View of the Agriculture of the County of Worcester, 
by W. T. Pomeroy, 1794, p. 23 and Appendix 5, p. 15; Annals of Agriculture, 
pp. 262-8. They added a feature vainly demanded by Dr. Burn lor 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 227 

before, in which English villages still compare unfavourably with those 
of France and Germany. " An agreeable embellishment, if it may not be 
called an improvement, and not very expensive, is the practice they have 
adopted of affixing the name on some conspicuous place at the entrance 
of every village " (General View of the Agriculture of the County of 
Worcester, by W. T. Pomeroy, 1794). Unfortunately, this custom neither 
lasted nor spread to other districts. Right down to the closing years of 
the nineteenth century it was frequently possible to ride through an 
English village without seeing its name anywhere displayed. In 1897 
the present writers had an opportunity of mentioning the matter to Mr. 
(afterwards Sir) Spencer Walpole, then Secretary to the Post Office, who 
promptly caused steps to be taken to request every country post office 
to put up the name of the village in which it was situated, thus, to some 
extent, fulfilling the want. 

Page 196. For the North Riding of Yorkshire case of a voluntary 
rate see General View of the Agriculture of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 
by J. Tuke, 1794, p. 86 ; for the Nottinghamshire (Southwell) case see 
First Report of Poor Law Enquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A, 
vol. ii. p. 1069. 

Page 197. For the Norfolk Justices' report as to a County Surveyor 
see MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Norfolk, Michaelmas, 1826. An able 
pamphlet of 1825, by an anonymous country gentleman of Berkshire, 
had urged the appointment, by the Justices in Quarter Sessions, of a 
salaried County Surveyor, who should inspect every public road and foot- 
path in the county at least three times a year, and give peremptory orders 
to the parish Surveyors, enforcible by fine at Petty Sessions. See Highways 
Improved, 1825. 

Such a County Surveyor had, indeed, been proposed more than a 
century earlier, by the House of Commons Committee "appointed to 
enquire into the repairing and amending of the Highways " in 1718, which 
recommended " that a General Surveyor should be appointed who shall 
be under the order and government of the Sessions " (House of Commons 
Journals, 31st January 1718). A recommendation for larger areas was 
made in 1772, when a Committee reported that the Highways Act " would 
be better enforced and executed if, instead of appointing Surveyors of every 
parish . . . the Justices . . . were to ... appoint larger districts for 
Surveyors to act in " (Ibid. 3rd June 1772). 

Page 198. For an enthusiastic view of what could be done, by employ- 
ing the paupers on the roads, see The Improvement of the Public Roads 
urged during the Existing Dearth of Employment for the Poor. Anon. (1821). 
Such employment was strongly advocated by the Quarterly Review, 
December 1832. 

Page 198. MS. Vestry Minutes, Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire), 
14th August 1826. 

Page 198. In the Isle of Wight, in 1833 (First Report of the Poor Law 
Enquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix), we read that " the able-bodied 
who apply for relief as out of work now receive the following ticket : 
' To Mr. Surveyor of the Highways for the Parish of 

Employ a pauper in your parish wanting work, and having a wife 






228 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

and children, for days, in the repairs of the Roads and Highways, 
taking care that he works the usual hours of labourers employed in 
husbandry, and that he be allowed half an hour for breakfast and one hour 
for dinner, and no more.' " 

Page 200. The quotations are from the First Report of Poor Law 
Enquiry Commissioners, 1834, Appendix A, vol. i. (Richardson's Report), 
and ibid. vol. i. (Chapman's Report) p. 431 ; and Macadam's statement, 
ibid. Appendix C. In the Isle of Wight it was said that the paupers " are 
sent to idle on the roads without having any one to control or look after 
them. . . . The Surveyor of Roads, appointed annually, is generally a 
farmer, who, having other business to attend to, seldom sees these men 
more than once in the day. Two-thirds of the money paid to men employed 
on the roads is charged to Poor Rates. The sum charged under this head 
last year is 4732. . . . Therefore 7098 was the sum expended on road 
labour only ; which, taking the highest rate, Is. 6d. per diem, represents 
the labour of 94,640 men for one day, or an average of 215 for each working 
day . . . notwithstanding which the roads . . . are far from being 
good" (Ibid. Appendix A, Pringle's Report, p. 307). The quotation as 
to the labour being confined to the roads of the parish is from ibid. vol. i. 
(Majendie's Report). On the other hand, Mr. (afterwards Sir) George 
Nicholls, at Southwell, had employed the able-bodied paupers on the roads, 
with good results, and got himself made Surveyor of Highways, as well as 
Overseer of the Poor, with this very object (Eight Letters on the Poor 
Law, by an Overseer). The employment of paupers on the roads continued 
for some time to be advocated by so-called " practical " men, see A Practical 
Treatise on the Best Mode of Repairing Roads, by Charles Penfold, 1835, 
p. 1 ; The Practice of Making and Repairing Roads, by Thomas Hughes, 
1838, p. 1. 

Page 201. The most persistent road reformer during 1831-33 was the 
Hon. E. B. Portman, M.P. for Dorset, who introduced a Bill in 1831 to 
correct the " monstrous evils which had grown up with respect to the 
management of the highways," on the lines of giving the Vestry in each 
parish complete control over the Surveyor of Highways. The Government 
thereupon promised to bring forward a Bill of their own (Hansard, 9th 
August 1831). As this did not appear, Portman reintroduced his Bill 
in 1833, and, with the support of Shaw-Lefevre and Sir Oswald Mosley, 
got it referred to a Select Committee (ibid. 23rd July 1833), over which 
George Pryme presided (Autobiographic Recollections of George Pryme, 
1870, p. 199). Portman had proposed to make it optional to each parish 
to abolish Statute Labour, wholly or partly ; but the Select Committee 
thought it better to get rid of it altogether, as they found that " in every 
instance . . . where a money payment was made instead of statute duty 
the roads were invariably better and cheaper kept " (see Portman's evidence 
in Report of House of Commons Committee on County Rates, 1834). He 
said that, whilst unions of parishes were desirable, the country was not 
prepared for the compulsory formation of such road districts, but that he 
proposed permissive powers to unite, which he thought would lead to 
voluntary unions (Hansard, July 1833, p. 1144). His Bills were thus the 
foundation of the plan adopted by the Government in 1835. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 229 

Page 201. 5 & 6 William IV. c. 50 (General Highway Act, 1835). 
This Act became the subject of many legal text-books ; see The General 
Highway Act 1835, by Joseph Bateman, 1835 ; The Present General Laws 
for Regulating Highways in England, by W. F. A. Delane, 1835 ; The 
General Highway Act of 5 & 6 William IV. c. 50, by Leonard Shelford, 

1835 ; a Familiar Abridgment of the General Highways Act, by F. A. Fry, 

1836 ; The Office of Surveyor of the Highways, by a Magistrate, 1836. The 
Act (sec. 113) was not to apply to any highways managed under Local 
Acts, hence (besides all Turnpike Roads and all streets in places having 
statutory bodies of Commissioners) the Isle of Wight was entirely excluded 
from its operation, as its highways, whether turnpikes or not, were adminis- 
tered by a statutory body of commissioners for the whole island (under 
53 George III. c. xcii., Isle of Wight Highway Act, 1813). The Metropolis 
also was virtually excluded, as it was provided that the Act should not 
interfere with or abridge the provisions of 57 George III. c. 29 (Michael 
Angelo Taylor's Act, 1817), or the privileges of the City of London (sees. 
112, 115). 

So fondly did the farmers cling to the performance of Team Duty as a 
means of avoiding payment of a rate, that, in deference to their feeling, 
a section was inserted in the 1835 Act enabling them to continue to avoid 
payment in cash. If the inhabitants agreed at a specially summoned 
Vestry Meeting, the ratepayers having teams might share among themselves 
whatever work of carrying materials the Surveyor might require, in pro- 
portion to the rate chargeable upon them ; whereupon they were to be 
paid the value of the work so performed, at piecework rates fixed by the 
Justices in Special Sessions (sec. 35). This curious survival from the old 
Statute Labour system, rendered innocuous by the requirement that 
payment should be at officially fixed piecework rates, is still law, but has, 
we believe, usually remained a dead letter. 

With regard to the repeal of the statutory regulations as to weight, 
etc., it should be mentioned that it was noted at the time that it had 
been held to be a public nuisance at Common Law to carry an unreasonable 
weight, with an unusual number of horses, to the injury of the public 
highway (The General Highway Act of 5 and 6 William IV. c. 50, by 
Leonard Shelford, 1835, p. 90). 

Page 202. In 1833 Sir Henry Parnell's authoritative manual was 
explicit on the question of areas. " The principle. ... of placing the 
highways of the kingdom under as many separate governing authorities 
as there are parishes is in every respect repugnant to anything like a 
sound principle of management ; and until it is abandoned, no efforts 
of legislation can prove successful in introducing any real improvement. . . . 
Instead of the governing authority of a parish, that of a county should 
be substituted, or, when counties are very large, that of a division of a 
county. The private interests of a Vestry lead it to be satisfied with 
very imperfect highways. A road that will allow a waggon to be drawn 
upon it without much difficulty will answer the purpose of those who 
commonly compose a Vestry. But such a road need not have any other 
qualities than two ruts for the waggon and a trackway for the horses. . . . 
The limited extent and funds of a parish will not admit of giving such a 



230 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

salary to a surveyor as will secure the services of a man educated in the 
principles of road management " (A Treatise on Roads, by Sir Henry 
Parnell, p. 291 of edition of 1838). Macadam, in his evidence before 
committees as well as in his books, was always pressing the same views. 
" The practice of passing Road Acts as a matter of course," he wrote in 
1825, " has divided the kingdom into 955 small communities for the care 
of roads, each having an establishment ill-paid, ungoverned, and inefficient. 
Such a system is as expensive as it is imbecile ; half the road funds are 
frittered away on salaries and expenses altogether insufficient for producing 
any good" (Observations on the Management of Trusts for the care of 
Turnpike Roads, by J. L. Macadam, 1825, p. 33). The need for a larger 
area of administration than the parish had indeed been insisted upon, 
almost continuously, from the middle of the eighteenth century; and 
every writer had suggested the appointment by the Justices of a salaried 
surveyor for the whole county, or for each district of a large county, paid 
from the county rate, who should advise and superintend the parish 
Surveyors of Highways, direct the mode of repair, see the orders of the 
Magistrates properly executed, and keep them informed as to the state of 
the roads. Indeed, as early as 1675, Thomas Mace had expressly urged 
the necessity " for every hundred or two hundred miles, more or less, as 
may be thought fit," of having " one Surveyor-General, some active, 
trusty, honest man, who should constantly be on horseback himself . . . 
riding upon his station day after day " (Profit, Convenience/ and Pleasure 
to the Whole Nation, being a short rational discourse . . . concerning the 
Highways of England, 1675, p. 15). The idea was persistently urged from 
the middle of the eighteenth century ; see Proposals at Large for the Easy 
and Effectual Amendment of the Roads, by a Gentleman, 1753, p. 27 ; A 
Treatise upon Wheel Carnages, by Daniel Bourn, 1763, p. 35 ; History 
of the Poor Laws, by Richard Burn, 1764, p. 239 ; Observations on the 
General Highway and Turnpike Acts, by T. B. Bayley, 1773; Second 
Report of House of Commons Committee on the Highways of the Kingdom, 
1808 ; Highways Improved, 1825 ; Report of Committee of Justices as 
to the Highways, MS. Minutes, Quarter Sessions, Norfolk, Michaelmas, 
1826. 

Page 203. The Act as to closing footpaths was 55 George III. c. 68, 
sec. 2 (1815). We see the beginning of the tendency to close footpaths 
described in 1809, before the facilities for legally closing them were given : 
" At present," writes a correspondent in 1809, " any person who may 
possess only a few acres of land, and finds that the footpath in his neigh- 
bourhood either spoils the appearance of his grounds, or deprives them 
of that privacy he wishes, immediately proceeds barricading the said 
footpath ; puts up a board ' No thoroughfare,' ' Shut up by order of the 
Justices,' * Shut up by Order of the Commissioners for enclosing Waste 
Lands,' threatening ' prosecution for trespass as the Law directs,' and 
such like intimidations, to the labouring peasant or artificer, who by such 
artifices are forced out of their road" (H. Clifford to Sir J. Sinclair, 
21st March 1809, in Report of House of Commons Committee on Broad 
Wheels and Turnpike Roads, 1809). For references in debate see Hansard, 
3rd and 9th August 1831. Even the legal text-book writer was moved to 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 231 

indignation. In the preface to a treatise on the Law of Highways, pub- 
lished in 1829, which long remained the standard work, we read as follows : 
" It may here be remarked, with regard to the diversion and extinction of 
highways, that it is a prevalent opinion that the powers for this purpose 
which are given to Justices of the Peace are so given to be exercised for the 
benefit of the proprietor, and not of the public. And this proposition has 
in an especial degree been reduced to practice in the instance of footpaths. 
The supposition ... is utterly untenable. ... In almost every instance 
the closing of a public way for the benefit of the proprietor is an absolute 
gift, without consideration, to an individual, out of the possessions of the 
public. . . . Justices . . . ought never to grant their assistance as a 
matter of favour. The Act expressly declares that the alteration thereby 
authorised is to be made only when the change will be more beneficial to 
the public : those who know how its provisions have been carried into 
execution can best tell the use which the Magistracy have made of it" 
(Treatise on the Law of Highways, by Robert Wellbeloved, 1829, pp. viii.-ix.). 
For the whole episode as to the Stopping Up of Footpaths, see The 
Parish and the County, by S. and B. Webb, 1907, pp. 599-602. 

We find practically no reference to footpaths (other than footways 
bordering carriageways) in eighteenth-century highway literature, and 
the innumerable paths across private land were apparently used by the 
public without objection. A footpath was included in the term highway. 
Lord Coke in a celebrated passage said : " There be three kind of ways 
whereof you shall read in our ancient books : first a footway, which is 
called iter, quod est jus eundi vel ambulandi hominis . . . the second is a 
foot and horse way, which is called actus, ah agendo ; and this vulgarly is 
called pack and prime way. . . . The third is via or aditus, which contains 
the other two, and also a cart way, etc." (Institutes, vol. i. p. 56). It 
might be inferred that the parish was liable at Common Law to maintain 
a footpath (lying apart from any road) like any other public highway, 
but we have found no case of its being required to do so ; and the matter 
was not dealt with statutorily until 56 & 57 Vic. c. 73 (the Local Govern- 
ment Act, 1894), which required the new Parish Council to maintain 
footpaths, stiles, etc. By the General Highway Act of 1773 (13 George III. 
c. 78, sec. 21), express power had been given to the Justices to divert 
footpaths (like other highways), and to close the old ways when the new 
ones had been opened. In 1815 an Act (55 George III. c. 68, sec. 2) for 
the first time distinctly enabled a footpath to be closed merely as un- 
necessary, without the provision of any new way. Any two Justices, after 
due notice, might without any opportunity for public hearing, make a 
closing order, which could only be upset by immediate formal appeal to the 
next Quarter Sessions (Treatise on the Law of Highways, by R. Well- 
beloved, 1829, p. 390). The 1835 Act transferred the power to make the 
closing order to Quarter Sessions (though two Justices could still initiate 
the proceedings), after trial (in case of objection) before a jury, whose 
verdict was decisive (5 & 6 William IV. c. 50, sec. 89). 

The existence of a public right of way for foot-passengers across a field 
does not prevent the owner from ploughing up the field, thus obliterating 
the track and to some extent obstructing the passage (Arnold v. Blaker 



232 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

and another, L.R. 6 Q.B. 433 ; see Open Spaces, Footpaths and Eights 
of Way, by (Sir) Robert Hunter, 1896, p. 294). In the Reformed Parlia- 
ment so keen was the momentary feeling in favour of preserving footpaths 
that an amendment came near being carried, to the Highway Bill of 1833, 
on which the 1835 Act was founded, which would have prohibited such 
ploughing up a public footway. The votes were equal, and the chairman 
of the Committee, George Pryme, proudly relates that he gave his casting 
vote against the proposed clause, as one imposing a new burden on agri- 
culture (Autobiographic Recollections of George Pryme, 1870, p. 199). A 
bridle way the old pack and prime way, or drift way was protected 
against this kind of obstruction. Thus, various persons were indicted 
in 1809 for " ploughing up the earth and soil in and across and along a 
certain part of an ancient pack and prime way ". (MS. Minutes, Sessions, 
Northumberland, 13th April 1809). 

With regard to footways by the side of roads, provision was made in 
both the General Highway Act and the General Turnpike Act of 1773 
(13 George III. c. 78, sec. 52, and c. 84, sec. 39) for penalties against drivers 
damaging " causeways," and in the case of turnpikes, specifically against 
driving a carriage " upon such horse or foot causeways." But prior to 
the nineteenth century there were seldom any " footpaths along the sides 
of the highways, no general law having been enacted respecting either 
their formation or their protection afterwards, although the importance of 
furnishing foot passengers with that desirable accommodation can hardly 
be too highly appreciated" (Report of House of Commons Committee 
on Highways and Turnpike Roads, 1811). Such raised footpaths were 
thereupon often constructed, and this consideration for foot-passengers 
received high praise from Baron Dupin (The Commercial Power of England, 
translated from the French of Baron Dupin, 1825, p. 178). " England," 
he said, " is now of all countries that in which people travel least on foot, 
and yet of all modern nations it is that in which most has been done to 
secure the comfort and convenience of foot-travellers (p. 178). "Many 
such . . . footways in parish roads," says the Quarterly Review in 1820, 
" have been recently formed, either by the public spirit of individuals, 
or by parishes at a loss for employment for their poor, but they are out of 
the protection of the law, and at the mercy of every mischievous wight 
who thinks proper in the insolence of his heart to drive or ride upon them " 
(Quarterly Review, May 1820). Trustees of turnpike roads were expressly 
empowered in 1822 to construct such " causeways " (3 George IV. c. 126, 
sec. 111). The author of Highways Improved (1825) also urges that foot- 
causeways in parish roads should have the same protection as those in 
turnpike roads (p. 14). This was made law in 1835 (5 & 6 William IV. 
c. 50, sec. 72). Some responsibility for footpaths was given to Improve- 
ment Commissioners under the Towns Improvement Clauses Act, 1847. 
In 1894 the Local Government Act (56 & 57 Vic. 73, sec. 25) expressly 
made the District Council liable for the maintenance of footpaths as of 
our highways ; but the Parish Council was by the same Act (sec. 13) 
empowered to undertake the maintenance of any footpath not being by 
the side of a public road. 

Almost the only work on the subject is Preservation of Open Spaces, 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 233 

Footpaths and Rights of Way, by (Sir) Robert Hunter, 1896 ; but see 
Renton's Law Encyclopaedia under "Footpath." 

Page 205. For the " Board of Surveyors " formed under the Act of 
1835 by the Vestry of Bradford with a clerk at 25 a year and an Assistant 
Surveyor at twenty-four shillings a week see Historical Notes on the 
Bradford Corporation, by William Cudworth, 1881, pp. 84-7. 

Page 205. Among the proposals for, and attempts at legislation 
relating to highways between 1835 and 1872 (apart from the South Wales 
Highways Act of 1860 and the General Highways Act of 1862), we may 
mention the suggestions contained in The Practice of Making and Repairing 
Roads, by Thomas Hughes, 1838 ; Road Reform : a Rate on Property more 
just and expedient than a Horse Tax, by T. M. Gemmell ; Road Reform, 
A Practical Treatise on Making and Repairing Roads, by Edmund Leahey, 
1844 ; The Highway Surveyor's Guide, 1852 ; Rebecca at Stroud ; or, a 
Few Words about the Turnpike Trusts, by David Ricardo, 1847 ; Turnpike 
Traffic and Tolls, 1847, and A Treatise on Road Legislation and Manage- 
ment, 1857, both by Richard Bayldon. 

Page 206. Letters of Sir George Cornwall Lewis, by Sir G. F. Lewis, 
1870, pp. 187, 204, 205, 220, 223. 

Page 207. The controversy as to the reform of road administration 
formed only a part of that as to reform of Local Government generally. 
Something may be gained from the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners 
on Local Taxation, 1834 ; The Local Taxes, by Danby P. Fry, 1846 ; Local 
Self- Government and Centralization, by J. Toulmin Smith, 1851 ; the 
Tayler Prize Essay on the Local Taxation of Great Britain and Ireland, 
by R. H. Inglis Palgrave, in Journal of Royal Statistical Society, June 1871 ; 
Local Taxation and Parochial Government, by Thomas Sheppard, 1870 ; 
the two volumes of Cobden Club Essays on Local Government and Taxation 
in the United Kingdom, 1882 ; An Outline of Local Government and Local 
Taxation in England and Wales, by R. S. Wright and Henry Hobhouse, 
1st edition, 1884 (with which compare the 3rd edition, 1910) ; the suc- 
cessive editions of Local Government, by W. Blake Odgers, 1899, etc. ; and 
of An Outline of English Local Government, by Edward Jenks ; Local 
Government in England, by Josef Redlich and F. W. Hirst, 1903 ; and 
History of Local Rates, by E. Caiman, 2nd edition, 1912. See also the full 
bibliography appended to Grants in Aid, by Sidney Webb, 1911. 

Page 207. Some insight into the way the Vestry and the Surveyor 
of Highways proceeded may be gained from The Parish, by J. Toulmin 
Smith, 1857, pp. 331-65 ; The Coaching Age, by Stanley Harris, 1885, 
pp. 24-7 ; and, at a later date, from the evidence before the House of 
Lords Select Committee on the Highways Acts, 1881. Charles Penfold, 
author of A Practical Treatise on the Best Modes of Making Roads, and one 
of the ablest of the paid surveyors, described his own experience in the 
parish of Croydon as follows. He had held office for eight years, and had 
reduced the total rate from an average of 1047 during his first four years, 
to an average of 485 during his last four years. " I reduced the rate," 
he told the House of Commons Committee, " from 1000 to 500 a year. 
I had 100 guineas a year for my trouble. Some of the inhabitants thought 
that 100 guineas a year appeared a large proportion out of the 500 to give 



234 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

me for looking after the roads : they said ' This will not do, to give the 
surveyor one-fifth part of the whole ; we might have done it cheaper.' 
Another man jumped up who said, ' I will do it for nothing.' I said, 
* Of course, if that is so I must resign ; I cannot afford to work for nothing.' 
The Vestry gave me a vote of thanks and I retired. This man took the 
work for nothing : he held it one year, spent 100 more than I did, and 
had the assistance of many of the paupers out of employ, and also a gravel- 
pit, which I had not. The next year he said, * I will not carry it on by 
myself ; I must have somebody to help me,' so they appointed a carrier 
travelling between London and Croydon, and gave him 50 guineas a 
year with the result, as the witness declared, that the rates rose and the 
roads were spoilt " (Report of House of Commons Committee on County 
Rates, 1834, p. 8). " Many of the parish roads," we read in 1847, " are 
in a wretched condition. The system adopted by most parish surveyors 
being merely to fill the ruts and inequalities with stones picked from the 
surface of the land, or gravel dug in some convenient spot ; this operation, 
repeated in the Spring and Autumn, constitutes their whole duty; no 
attention being paid to the nature of the soil, or the selection of the material 
that will bind with it to form a hard exterior crust " (Cresy's Encyclopedia 
of Civil Engineering, 1847). 

Page 207. See The Public Health Acts 18 48 and 1849, by T. W. Saunders, 
1849, and The Laws relating to Public Health, by Thomas Baker, 1865. 
For the history of Public Health legislation, see English Sanitary Institu- 
tions, by Sir John Simon, 1897 ; The Public Health Agitation 1838-1848, 
by B. L. Hutchins, 1909 ; The State and the Doctor, by S. and B. Webb, 
1910. 

Page 208. For the Act of 1862, together with that of 1864, and a vast 
amount of legal information, see The Law of Highways, by W. Cunningham 
Glen, in the edition of 1865. 

Page 209. By 1865, three years after the passage of the Bill into law, 
only one county in Wales (Denbigh) had formed any Highway Districts ; 
only one such district had been formed in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, 
Middlesex, Norfolk, or Staffordshire ; whilst none at all had been formed 
for Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Rutland, West- 
morland, or the North or East Ridings of Yorkshire. On the other 
hand, nearly the whole area of the following counties had, by the 
same date, already been formed into Highway Districts : Bedfordshire, 
Cheshire, Cornwall, Dorset, Durham, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, except 
the Isle of Wight, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Leicestershire, 
Monmouthshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, 
Oxfordshire, and Wiltshire. Most of the southern counties grouped 
between 20 and 40 parishes together. Northumberland was exceptional 
in making only four Highway Districts having respectively 136, 125, 161, 
and 213 parishes, and governing 454, 394, 823, and 642 miles of highway. 

The above statistics are from the official statement given in The Law 
of Highways, by W. Cunningham Glen, 1865, pp. 718-28. 

Page 210. For statistics as to Highway Districts and Highway Parishes 
from 1871, down to their final supersession at the close of the century, 
see especially the Third and Fourth Annual Reports of the Local Govern- 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 235 

ment Board, C-1071 of 1874 and C-1328 of 1875 ; and the subsequent 
Reports. The only powers relating to highways now (1913) left to the 
parish (and exercised by the Parish Council or Parish Meeting) are (a), that 
of repairing and maintaining footpaths other than those alongside public 
roads ; (6), that of veto on the stopping up or diversion of any public 
right of way ; (c), that of refusing its consent to a declaration that any 
public highway is unnecessary ; and (d), that of making a representation 
to the District or Parish Council as to obstructions of highways. Never- 
theless, so difficult is it in England to abolish anything, that the parish 
is still nominally liable to be indicted at Common Law, at the suit of any 
person, for failure to keep its highways in repair ! 

Page 215. For the Act of 1822 (3 George IV. c. 126), see The General 
Turnpike Road Act, by J. Bateman, 1823. 

Page 215. The heavy burden of the tolls, and the instantaneous 
collapse of the stage coach as soon as a railway was opened, are described 
in Old Coaching Days, by Stanley Harris, 1882, pp. 141, 192, 193 ; and in 
Forty Years at the Post Office, by F. E. Baines, 1895, pp. 22-7. 

Page 217. For the Act of 1841 (4 & 5 Vic. c. 59), which was amended 
in 1863 (26 & 27 Vic. c. 94, sec. 1), and continued by successive Acts (see, 
for instance, 28 & 29 Vic. c. 119), the student may consult The Law of 
Highways, by W. Cunningham Glen, edition of 1865, pp. 218-24. 

Page 217. For the Rebecca riots see the extensive Report and evidence 
of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into South Wales, 1844. (The Com- 
missioners were Sir T. Frankland Lewis, R. H. Clive and W. Cripps ; and 
their Secretary was G. K. (afterwards Sir G. K.) Rickards.) There had 
been a single outrage at the end of 1839, but no more until the winter of 
1 842-43. Though Sir James Graham as Home Secretary played a creditable 
part, the episode is not even alluded to in his Life, by W. McCullagh 
Torrens, 1863, nor in his Letters, by C. S. Parker, 1909. Nor is it easy to 
make good this omission. By far the best account is that given in the 
Pictorial History of England, by Craik and Macfarlane, edition of 1855, 
vol. vii. pp. 636-8. We may refer the reader also to the article " Rebecca " 
in Quarterly Review for June 1844 ; The History of England, by W. N. 
Molesworth, 1875, vol. ii. pp. 131-3 ; " Rebeccaism," by R. D. G. Price, 
in Nineteenth Century, 1880 ; " Rebecca and her Daughters," in LittelVs 
Living Age, 1891 ; a mention in On the Track of the Mail Coach, by F. E. 
Baines, 1895, p. 161; and (in fiction) The Gate Openers, by K. L. 
Montgomery, 1912. The principal rioters among those whom the police 
succeeded in arresting were tried at Cardiff by a Special Commission under 
Baron Gurney in October 1843, as it was thought that no ordinary 
tribunal or local jury would convict. They were ably defended by Matthew 
Davenport Hill, and, as he thought, on the whole leniently dealt with 
(see The Recorder of Birmingham : a Memoir of M. D. Hill, by R. and F. 
Davenport Hill, 1878, p. 223). The uprising had been stained by at least 
one murder. A woman pikekeeper, who was rash enough to declare that 
she recognised the assailants of her gate, was deliberately shot dead. The 
state of feeling may be gauged from the fact that the Coroner's jury 
returned a verdict that she had died " from the effusion of blood into the 
chest, which occasioned suffocation. But from what cause is to this 



236 ROAD LEGISLATION OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 

jury unknown " (Pictorial History of England, by Craik and Macfarlane, 
edition of 1855, pp. 636-8). 

The County Roads Boards of South Wales lasted until 1888, when 
they were abolished by the Local Government Act. 

Page 221. George Clive (1806-86), who was Parliamentary Under 
Secretary for Home Affairs from 18th June 1859 to 14th November 1862 
(under Sir George Grey as Home Secretary), brought a long official and 
legal experience to bear on his Parliamentary duties. He was, from 1836 
to 1839, Assistant Commissioner under the Poor Law Commissioners ; 
from 1840 to 1847, a Metropolitan Police Magistrate ; and from 1847 to 
1857, a County Court Judge and also Recorder of Wokingham. He 
edited an edition of Steer's Parish Law. In 1857 he was elected M.P. for 
Hereford, which Borough he represented (except for a break between 
1869 and 1874) until 1880. He was Chairman of the Herefordshire Quarter 
Sessions from 1871 until his death in 1880. He was described as " a 
Liberal, in favour of Parliamentary Reform, Vote by Ballot, and the 
Abolition of Church Rates." 

Page 221. William Battie Wrightson, M.P. (1789-1879), sat for 
East Retford 1820-30; for Hull 1830-33, and then continuously for 
Northallerton from 1835 to 1865. 

See Report of Select Committee on the expediency and practicability 
of abolishing Turnpike Trusts, House of Commons, No. 383 of 1864. 

Page 222. George, afterwards Lord George Cavendish, M.P. (1810-80), 
sat continuously for Derbyshire from 1834 to 1880 as a Whig. He was 
raised to the rank of an earl's son in 1837, and of a duke's son in 1858. 

Page 222. Ireland had abolished its last turnpike toll by 1858. The 
Metropolitan area was freed in 1872. Scotland had freed itself (under 
Act of 1878) by 1883. The Isle of Wight (see below) got rid of them in 
1888. 

The Isle of Wight, which had no turnpikes until 1813, then had its 
roads placed under a body of " Commissioners of Highways of the Isle 
of Wight," for the purpose of " widening, repairing, maintaining, and 
supporting " all the highways of the Island (the Isle of Wight Highway 
Act, 53 George III. c. 92). These Commissioners had power to levy tolls, 
and also to obtain rates by precepts to the Overseers of the parishes. The 
General Highways Acts of 1835, 1862, and 1864 did not apply to the Island. 
Places within the Island (such as East Cowes, Sandown, and Shanklin), 
which adopted the Public Health Act of 1848 or the Local Government 
Acts of 1858 or 1863, or the Public Health Acts of 1872 or 1875, managed 
their own roads as such Urban Sanitary Authorities did in England ; 
whilst all rural highways, however small, were under the Commissioners 
(The Law of Highways, by W. Cunningham Glen, edition of 1865, pp. 
56-8). The Commissioners' powers were extended in 1883 by 46 & 47 Vic. 
c. 226. By the Local Government Act of 1888 (51 & 52 Vic. c. 41, sec. 12), 
which created a County Council for the Isle of Wight, turnpike tolls in the 
Island were abolished ; but the Isle of Wight Highway Commissioners 
were continued in existence as the Highway Authority, with the right to 
receive an annual grant from the Island County Council in respect of 
main roads. The Local Government Act of 1894 (56 & 57 Vic. c. 73) did 






APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX 237 

not mention the Island ; and it was held in 1895 (In re the Isle of Wight 
Highway Commissioners, 78 L.T. (N.S.) 569 : 59 J.P. 438) that the Com- 
missioners had been abolished by this Act ; which had the perhaps un- 
foreseen effect of making all their rural highways, however small, into 
main roads, repairable by the County Council of the Island. 

It must be noted that, even since the last turnpike toll under statutory 
authority on an English road was ended in 1895, we still continue to pay 
(a) tolls on bridges, even on pedestrians, either under Local or Private 
Acts (as at Newcastle-on-Tyne) ; or merely as private property (e.g. Lord 
St. Levan's extremely valuable toll bridge between Plymouth and Devon- 
port) ; and (6) in a few cases, tolls on roads constructed and owned by 
individuals (as in certain highways near Harlech, near Eobin Hood Bay, 
between Folkestone and Hythe, and near Blackpool). No statistics of 
these private imposts exist. 

So far as we are aware, the Isle of Man, Sweden, and Norway alone 
stand out among all countries as never having been subjected to road 
tolls (noted in Road Reform, by William Pagan, 1st edition 1845, 3rd 
edition 1857, p. 134). 



CHAPTER X 

THE NEW USERS OP THE ROADS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

IN the course of three centuries the horse-drawn vehicle, on two 
or four wheels, originally regarded as an intruder, had come to 
possess almost a monopoly of the King's Highway. During the 
nineteenth century, in particular, those who had once been 
denounced as new users of the roads were more and more left 
in sole possession of them. The tramping herds of cattle, sheep 
and pigs, together with the myriads of geese and turkeys, were 
carried by railway train ; the packhorses passed silently away ; 
gentlemen and commercial travellers alike ceased to travel on 
horseback ; the ox-team died out and the dog-drawn vehicle 
was prohibited by law. Even the foot-passenger found himself 
increasingly relegated to side pavements or footpaths. The 
principal users of the roads who habitually assumed that their 
own requirements were to set the standard of road maintenance 
were all virtually shod with iron ; they never touched the road 
surface otherwise than by the narrow tyres of their wheels or 
the sharp-edged shoes of their horses. This fact tacitly con- 
trolled the ideal of road maintenance. Macadam had prophetic- 
ally declared, in words that read strangely appropriate to-day, 
that " a road ought to be considered as an artificial flooring 
forming a strong, smooth, solid surface, which should be at once 
capable of carrying great weights, and over which carriages may 
pass without meeting any impediment." But Macadam for the 
moment forgot that such a surface an example of which may 
be found in a sheet of ice would suit neither the iron-shod hoof 
nor the iron-tyred narrow wheel. And thus, instead of this 
" strong, smooth, solid surface," our road administrators, down 
to the last decade of the nineteenth century, were content 

238 



BICYCLE AND MOTOR CAR 239 

(outside the asphalt, wood, or smooth stone pavement of the 
streets of large towns) with a more or less rough or irregular, 
a more or less yielding or gravelly surface, formed of imperfectly 
consolidated broken stone, in which the horse's hoof could find, 
alike in wet weather and dry, in summer heat and winter's frost, 
a firm foothold. And so apt are we to complacency that we 
might easily have remained content with such uneconomical 
and unpleasant traction surfaces, but for the advent of new 
users of the roads, having new needs, and setting up a new ideal 
as to what a road should be. These new users of the roads 
required no rugosities for foothold : they were shod, not with 
iron but with air-inflated india-rubber. In the story of the 
King's Highway their advent has opened up an entirely 
new era. 

These new users of the roads appeared first as riders of bicycles 
and tricycles. We need not here trace the history of this in- 
vention, from the " velocipede " or " dandy-horse " of the 
eighteenth century to the first bicycle proper in 1867 ; nor 
attempt to estimate the further progress from the rubber- tyred, 
high " ordinary " to the low, pneumatically-cushioned " safety " 
in 1888. It was not until about 1895 that the world at large 
took to bicycling, and began seriously to demand the adaptation 
of road surfaces to the new traffic. 

But the bicycle was a comparatively cheap vehicle ; its 
users were mostly the young people, and, to a great extent, 
the poorer sections of the community. Those who sat in the 
places of authority despised the people who " rode ironmongery " 
instead of horses. Even when, by the end of the nineteenth 
century, the bicycle was to be found in every country house, 
and many a highway had more bicyclists than horse-drawn 
vehicles, the new users of the roads had still only the smallest 
possible influence on their administration. 

Presently, however, the bicycle was reinforced by the auto- 
mobile. Here, too, we must pass rapidly over the history of 
the invention, from Cugnot's first steam carriage in 1769, and 
Trevithick's actually running cars in 1801 ; over the swarm of 
practicable steam-cars placed upon the roads in 1826-35, by 
Hancock, Gurney, Dance, Summers and Ogle, Maceroni and 
Squire, and the rest of them a promising enterprise so curiously 
strangled by high turnpike tolls, the hostility of the agricultural 



2 4 o USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

interest, and the popular disbelief in anything but railways ; over 
the slow development of the road traction engine, protected 
against excessive tolls in 1861 (24 & 25 Vic. c. 70), but limited 
by the precursing " man and flag " imposed by the Act of 1865 
(28 & 29 Vic. c. 83) ; over the epoch-making construction of the 
light internal combustion engine about 1885 by Daimler and 
Benz and Butler ; and the introduction to England about 1894 
of the first petrol motor cars. The " man and flag " Act of 
1865 (28 & 29 Vic. c. 83) was repealed in 1896 (61 & 62 Vic. 
c. 29), and the motor cars and motor bicycles in use now (1913) 
number close upon a couple of hundred thousand. They are, 
however, still expensive ; their owners and users include practic- 
ally the whole governing class, in town and country alike ; and 
their effect on road administration has, within little more than 
a decade, been almost revolutionary. 

The first outcome of this new invasion of the roads was a 
storm of opposition, a persistent wail of complaint, from all 
who did not happen to use the new vehicles. It is amusing, at 
this point in the controversy, to look back at the abuse with 
which the poor bicyclist was received, for his presumption in 
daring to use the roads at all, seeing that he was usually " not 
even a ratepayer " ; for his crime in being the cause of alarm 
to horses and to timid pedestrians ; for the dust that he raised 
and the mud that he scattered ; and for the recklessness of his 
excessive speed (of ten or twelve miles an hour !) It is as recent 
as the close of the nineteenth century, but it is difficult, in the 
beginning of the twentieth, to believe that it can ever have 
happened ! Amid this storm of criticism and complaint, the 
bicyclist found it far from easy to get accorded equal rights 
with horse-drawn vehicles. It was a gain, in 1888, to get it 
statutorily declared that a bicycle was a carriage, even if the 
bicyclist was himself required to carry a bell. It must be 
accounted an advance that his advent brought about a universal 
obligation (51 & 52 Vic. c. 41, sec. 85) on all vehicles to carry 
lights an hour after sunset. But the bicyclist, though he suffered 
more than anybody from the gravelly surfaces, had no direct 
or very obvious effect in improving them. What the bicyclist 
did for the roads, between 1888 and 1900, was to rehabilitate 
through traffic, and accustom us all to the idea of our highways 
being used by other than local residents. It was the bicyclist 



DESTROYING THE ROADS 241 

who brought the road once more into popular use for pleasure 
riding ; who made people aware both of the charm of the English 
highway and of the extraordinary local differences in the standards 
of road maintenance ; and who caused us all to realise that the 
administration, even of local byways, was not a matter that 
concerned each locality only, but one in which the whole nation 
had an abiding interest. 

By the end of the century, however, the offences of the humble 
bicyclist, so far as the road controversy was concerned, were 
forgotten in the much more important issues raised by the advent 
of the automobile. It must be admitted that the motor car, 
which habitually travelled at three or four times the speed of the 
bicycle, with a load ten or fifteen times as great, and with fifty 
times the momentum, came as a serious menace both to the 
highways and to their frequenters. At first, at any rate, the 
turning loose on our roads of tens of thousands of heavy vehicles, 
often travelling with the speed of an express train, amounted to a 
real aggression on the safety and comfort of all the other users 
of the roads. Horses were "frightened, foot-passengers were 
startled and sometimes terrified, the King's Highway ceased to 
be a place in which people could saunter, or children play, with 
any degree of safety. The advantages of the new traffic were 
paid for by a heavy toll of accidents, nearly all suffered, un- 
fortunately, by those who had no share in the advantages. In 
dry weather the flying cars raised clouds of dust, and in wet 
weather they scattered mud, to such a degree as to cause not 
only discomfort but also extensive pecuniary damage. Gardens 
adjoining the road were sometimes greatly depreciated in value, 
and cottages rendered almost uninhabitable by these incidents 
of the new traffic. But the roads suffered as well as their fre- 
quenters. The momentum with which the wheels of a rapidly 
moving car struck the road surface, in its leaping and bounding 
motion, was many times as great as that of the leg of a horse or 
that of the wheels that he drew. Whether or not the pneumatic 
tyres really drew out the stones by a kind of suction, as was 
often suggested, it is clear that the armoured tyres, which were 
quickly adopted to prevent " side-slipping," drove their iron 
studs into the fragile and unconsolidated road surface with 
destructive effect. The amount of the dust created from the 
road materials was itself proof of the excessive wear and tear of 



242 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

the road crust. Moreover, the additional burden of road main- 
tenance actually caused by the new traffic was quickly aggravated 
_by the immediate rise in the standard of road administration 
that was set up. So great a departure from the vehicular traffic 
to which we had become accustomed revealed to us a whole set 
of unsuspected shortcomings in our highways. The narrowness 
of the roads, their unnecessary windings, their occasionally steep 
gradients, the constant irregularities in their surface, our road 
administrators might before have noticed, although they had 
seldom done so. The motor car brought home to them in 
clouds of dust ! the extent to which even the best kept roads 
fell short of Macadam's standard of " a strong, smooth solid 
surface, which should be at once capable of carrying great 
weights, and over which carriages may pass without meeting 
any impediment." 

At this point the public feeling against the " new users of the 
roads " was strong and bitter ; and there can be no doubt that 
many people would have rejoiced had they been excluded from 
the public highway. The parents whose children had been run 
over, the cottagers who found their roadside gardens ruined, 
the pedestrians deprived of all enjoyment in their Sunday 
promenade, the administrators responsible for the rapidly 
rising cost of road maintenance, all cursed the swarms of rushing 
motor cars that infested the great arteries of traffic. The 
question raised by the new traffic was, in effect, the old issue 
which had troubled the eighteenth century, whether the traffic 
was to be constrained to suit the road, or the road constructed 
to accommodate the traffic. 

It was, we think, fortunate that calming counsels prevailed ; 
'or, as we might more accurately put it, that those who owned 
motor cars were influential enough to stave off repressive legisla- 
tion. By the Motor Car Act of 1903 (3 Edward VII. c. 36; 
since 1906 continued by the Expiring Laws Continuance Acts) 
the new vehicles were required to be registered and licensed ; 
to carry conspicuous identification numbers back and front ; to 
be driven by a licensed driver ; to sound an alarm when required ; 
and to be provided with lights. They were forbidden, under 
penalties which might be made severe, to go at more than twenty 
miles an hour or, where a lower speed limit had been lawfully 
set, at anything above that lower limit. Subject to these limita- 



DIVIDED AUTHORITY 243 

tions, the new users of the roads were, so far as the law was 
concerned, admitted to the fraternity of the highway. 

The problem then arose of how our ancient highways could 
be made to accommodate the new traffic. Owing to the powerful 
influence of the owners of motor cars, brought to bear by an 
energetic " Koads Improvement Association," which had arisen 
originally among the bicyclists, the Government conceded, in 
1902-3, an official enquiry into highway administration, through 
the medium of a Departmental Committee, over which Mr. 
Grant Lawson, M.P., the Parliamentary Secretary of the Local 
Government Board, presided. This enquiry brought out the 
fact, which remains true to this day (1913), that notwithstanding 
all the consolidation that had gone on since 1835, English highway 
administration was still split up among nearly 1900 separate 
Local Authorities 132 County or County Borough Councils, 
279 Non-County and Metropolitan Borough Councils, 812 Urban 
District Councils and 661 Rural District Councils these separate 
bodies actually increasing every year in number, as new urban 
areas are taken out of Rural Districts ; exercising jurisdiction 
over areas having no relation to the character or extent of the 
highways included in them ; without any organisation for 
common or concerted action ; without anything that could be 
called a national policy ; without outside inspection or super- 
intendence, and without any central control. It was shown 
by Mr. Rees Jeffreys that even the most important main thorough- 
fares are still maintained and repaired along their whole length 
by different Local Authorities, each dealing with scraps of a few 
miles only. The first eighteen miles of the main road out of 
London westward, extending to Uxbridge, is looked after by no 
fewer than twelve different Authorities. The Great North Road 
from London to Carlisle is in the hands of seventy-two separate 
Authorities, including every one of the six species of Authorities, 
varying from the tiny Rural District Council, administering a 
total annual expenditure of a few hundred pounds, up to the 
Council of one of the largest and most important of our Boroughs, 
wielding the revenues of a Kingdom. Yet no one of these 
Authorities has power to construct a new road, however sorely 
the growing traffic might need it. The majority of the 661 Rural 
District Councils, and not a few among the smaller of the 812 
Urban District Councils, are unable to afford the salary of a 



244 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

qualified road surveyor or engineer. In many cases his duties 
are combined with others, and undertaken by officers of inferior 
professional status. In other Councils, we are told, they " ap- 
point their own members ; they appoint sons of members ; they 
appoint gardeners, artisans, clerks of works, and all sorts of 
people who know nothing about roads " ; and to them they 
often pay salaries of no more than 40, 80, or 100 a year. A 
very frequent figure is 150 a year, which does not allow the 
selection of a technically qualified officer. And the doings of 
Councils such as these, served by such officers, are not illuminated 
by any guidance from higher authorities. The County Council, 
which may employ the Rural District Council to maintain some 
of the main roads, has no authority over the highways chargeable 
to the Rural District Council itself, with the quite nominal 
exception that the County Council, on complaint, may hold an 
enquiry into the alleged neglect of the District Council to maintain 
a road ; and, if the neglect is proved, may issue an Order for the 
work to be done ; and, in default, may carry out the work 
itself, and charge the District Council with the cost. This 
illusory provision has, we believe, never been put effectively 
into operation. Moreover, the County Councils themselves are 
under no supervision. It is a strange anomaly that the important 
public service of highways, which costs us out of public funds 
practically as much as the whole of our payments, private and 
public, for medical attendance, or as much as the whole cost of 
our relief of the poor, and not far short of what we spend on 
public education, is the only public service which may never be 
mentioned in the House of Commons ! No Minister of the 
Crown, and no Government Department, has any responsibility 
for the management of even the most important national 
thoroughfares. It follows, apparently, that the House of 
Commons has no opportunity of criticising the state of the roads, 
or of remedying any grievance connected with them. Except 
now (1913) to the limited extent of the duties of the Road Board, 
no item on the Estimates permits a discussion ; and no question 
as to the state of the roads is even allowed to be put to the 
Government in the House of Commons. This is not due merely 
to the fact that road maintenance is one of the functions of Local 
Government. With regard to practically every other branch of 
local administration police, education, poor relief, sanitation, 



DIVERSITY OF POLICY 245 

lunacy, or liquor licensing any malfeasance or non-feasance can 
at any rate be made the subject of a question in the House 
of Commons, so that any administrative scandal or public 
grievance may be brought to light. With regard to the main- 
tenance of roads, and it seems with regard to this subject alone, 
the House of Commons, the " Grand Inquest " of the nation, is, 
inadvertently, by the unforeseen effect of past neglect, and its 
own red tape, even to this day blind and deaf ! 

In the absence of any national policy or central control, the 
1900 Local Authorities were found to be, in 1903, as they still 
are in 1913, pursuing the most diverse policies as to the roads 
committed to their charge. Some County Councils (such, for 
instance, as Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Gloucestershire) have 
cordially accepted their function of road maintenance, and have 
made practically every highway of any importance into a " main " 
road, repairable by the County Council itself. Other County 
Councils (such as Surrey and Glamorganshire) have chosen to 
take the opposite view, and have restricted to the minimum the 
roads to be " mained," largely, it seems, out of a curious reluctance 
to bring the cost of maintaining the minor bridges and culverts 
upon the County, instead of on the several District Councils. 
The important Council of Lancashire has pursued a middle 
course, declaring to be " main " roads those leading to any town 
of 25,000 (now 20,000) inhabitants. Sometimes the County 
Council keeps the administration of the main roads in its own 
hands. In other cases (as in Devonshire) the County Council 
" contracts " for all its 1134 miles of main roads with the Rural 
District Councils, leaving them to perform the service in their 
several ways sometimes even by the long-since condemned 
device of " farming " out the road to a little contractor for a 
lump sum the Devon County Council contenting itself with 
paying the bill. In many cases the County Council agrees to 
make a contribution to the Rural District Councils towards the 
cost of maintaining certain arbitrarily selected roads, which 
have not been " mained " : this is done to a great extent in 
Buckinghamshire and in Lancashire. In other Counties no such 
class of " secondary," or " contributory," or " Grant in Aid " 
roads is recognised. From the decision of the County Council 
upon roads, whether as to general policy, or as to the classi- 
fication of a particular highway, there is even if the highway 



246 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

forms part of a great national thoroughfare absolutely no 
appeal. 

. The Departmental Committee of 1903, like every such en- 
quiring tribunal for the preceding > hundred years, shrank from 
the " nationalisation " of even the most important roads. Nor 
could its members bring themselves even to the recommendation 
of any effective central superintendence of local highways. 
They proposed merely that, following the old precedent of 
France, there should be a systematic official classification of 
roads into national and local ; that the roads declared to be 
of national importance should be, not, as in France, administered 
by a national department of roads, but made the subject of 
specific new Grants in Aid from the National Exchequer to the 
County Councils, with whom their administration was to remain ; 
and that the maintenance of these, as well as all the minor 
highways, should be entrusted by the various Councils to a 
County Roads Board, acting for the whole of a " geographical " 
County (thus once more including the " County Boroughs " 
with the rest of the County). If these recommendations had 
been carried out, we should have had the roads of England and 
Wales administered by about sixty Local Authorities, instead 
of by nearly 1900. But we should still have been without a 
central expert department to enforce, on the backward Counties, 
either uniformity of method or anything like a " National 
Minimum " of road maintenance, even for thoroughfares of 
national importance ; and there would have been no leverage 
on the County Roads Boards to ensure any decent administration 
of the lanes and byways, which have an aggregate mileage 
four or five times as great as that of the main roads. 

The decade which followed the recommendations of the 
Departmental Committee on Highways did not find, at the 
Local Government Board, either the statesmanship which 
solves national problems, or the resourceful energy which turns 
to account the opportunities afforded by current administration. 
In this branch of this work, as in others, the Local Government 
Board, in the twentieth century, has proved as much a failure 
as we have described the Home Office to have been between 
1835 and 1872. Neither the recommendations of the Depart- 
mental Committee of 1903 nor any other plans of reform were 
embodied in legislation, or even made the subject of any Govern- 



THE SOMNOLENT L.G.B. 247 

ment proposal for legislation. None of the obviously required 
re-organisation of local road administration was even attempted. 
In short, it is not too much to say that, in the decade which has 
ensued since the Departmental Committee reported, the Local 
Government Board has done nothing has never even discovered 
that there is any way of doing anything to improve or to 
standardise local road administration. It is, in fact, apparently 
as unconscious as was the Home Office that it has any function 
or any duty in the matter. Its officers audit the accounts of 
four-fifths of the 1900 highway authorities ; and, to those 
among them which are concerned with the main roads, it dis- 
tributes annually large subventions which were originally granted, 
in part, explicitly in aid of road maintenance. But it collects 
no information as to the condition even of the main roads, 
towards which, in effect, it pays though there is practically 
no other way by which the nation can learn these facts ; it has 
never troubled to equip itself with any staff of inspectors of 
roads by which it could inform itself of their condition ; it 
makes no report to Parliament on roads ; it publishes no such 
comparative annual description of the highway work of the 
various Local Authorities as would, in itself, be a potent instru- 
ment of standardisation ; it conducts no scientific investigations 
into unsettled problems of road administration similar to those 
all too few in number and scope that it conducts into the 
analogous problems of Public Health administration ; it never 
communicates, either to all the Local Authorities or to the 
most backward among them, any information as to what is 
being done elsewhere, or the particulars of any improvement 
that might be adopted ; it fails, accordingly, to fulfil that 
function of central government on which John Stuart Mill laid 
so much stress, namely, the dissemination among the Local 
Authorities of scientific knowledge and expert criticism superior 
to that which they can individually command ; with regard 
to roads, indeed, it does not even address to the Local Authorities 
so much as a circular of enquiry ! It is fair to say that all this 
comes only to the one point that the Local Government Board, 
having no power itself to make roads, or even to order them to 
be made, regards it as no part of its duty to lift a finger to secure 
either the efficiency or the improvement of this particular branch 
of Local Government. But this is no more than a bad habit 



2 4 B USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

of the office. There is nothing in law or in the British Con- 
stitution to prevent the Local Government Board from equipping 
itself with a competent road staff, and efficiently exercising 
as much with regard to roads as with regard to sanitation, the 
normal functions of a central department. In consequence of 
its inaction, the Local Government Board has, as we presently 
see, been, in respect of the great and growing public service of 
roads, virtually superseded. 

Baffled in their desire for legislation or for a wisely active 
use of the existing central administration, the road reformers 
had, perforce, to fall back on the influence they could exercise on 
the 1900 Local Authorities. In particular they endeavoured to 
encourage and influence them to deal with the problem of dust 
on country roads. The trials organised by the Roads Improve- 
ment Association at Farnborough in 1902 gave the start, and the 
tests of tar-spreading machines and preparations of tar held 
in Middlesex and Berkshire in 1907 by the same organisation 
gave the impetus, to a movement which, in spite of the imperfec- 
tions of our national road organisation, has given England 
to-day (1913) a larger mileage of dustless roads than any other 
country. These and other improvements of the roads, and the 
corresponding increase in their cost, are not all to be ascribed to 
the coming of the automobile. The mere increase in the amount 
of traffic on the roads, especially in the neighbourhood of great 
centres of population, inevitably involved a steady rise in the 
cost of maintenance. Moreover, the new County Councils, 
finding themselves, from their establishment in 1888, fully 
responsible for the main roads, adopted, from the outset, a 
higher standard of efficiency in road administration than had 
usually prevailed. We see, in fact, the cost going rapidly up, 
long before the motor cars began to appear on the roads. Thus, 
in the twelve years between 1890 and 1902, when the traffic was 
still almost wholly made up of horse-drawn vehicles and pedal 
bicycles, the total expenditure on main roads in rural districts 
was nearly doubled, the mileage being greatly increased and the 
annual cost per mile rising from 43 to 65. The total expendi- 
ture in these years on main roads in urban districts was more 
than quadrupled, the annual cost per mile rising from 49 to 
207. The increase in the aggregate road expenditure in England 
and Wales, between 1890 and 1902, outside London and the 



ROAD IMPROVEMENT 249 

County Boroughs, was no less than 85 per cent, or two and a half 
millions sterling per annum, the cost rising on an average by 
more than 7 per cent a year, even before the pressure of 
the motor cars began to be seriously felt. There was, in fact, 
between 1888 and 1902, a great amount of neglect to be made 
good, as well as an increase of wear and tear to be provided for. 
A large proportion of the roads were found to have " no bottom," 
and needed entire reconstruction. These improvements, rendered 
still more imperative by the rapid transformation of the traffic 
since 1902, have steadily continued, but, down to 1910 at any 
rate, with slackening speed. The County Councils largely 
influenced by their powerful members who are motor car owners 
or users have usually been willing to effect improvements on 
the main roads, in so far as their sympathy with the ratepayers 
has permitted. Everywhere the standard of maintenance has 
risen, in such a way as to give us, on all the principal through 
routes, many miles of continuously well-made and usually fairly 
solid road, which is nowadays seldom allowed to become scored 
into ruts. The greatest advance has been that of seeking to 
render the surface both smooth and watertight, and practically 
dustless, by covering it with preparations of tar. We see now 
that " the English road of the immediate future must be a solid, 
coherent, waterproof, convex-surfaced, decently side and subsoil 
drained mass, secured against elemental disturbances under 
suitably proportioned working loads." But the adoption of this 
new ideal has involved a steady increase in the burden on the 
County Rate. The minor roads, under the administration of 
the Rural District Councils ; and the roads and streets managed 
by Urban District and Non-County Borough Councils, have also 
felt the influence of this rising standard, to an extent varying 
greatly from locality to locality. Altogether, the amount spent 
on the English highways in 1912, outside London and the County 
Boroughs, which was more than double the amount spent in 
1890, was probably four times the corresponding expenditure of 
fifty years ago. The total expenditure on the administration 
of highways, by the 1900 separate Local Authorities of England 
and Wales, during the current year (1913), probably reaches 
nearly fifteen million pounds, and that for the United Kingdom 
nearly eighteen million pounds, a sum which is apparently far 
in excess of the total road expenditure of any other country. 



250 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

The steadily increasing cost of the roads, which the " new 
users of the roads " were insisting on though the actual annual 
increase between 1902 and 1910 was less than between 1890 
and 1902 naturally caused some discontent, especially among 
those who did not themselves have motor cars ; and the Govern- 
ment was pressed to afford some relief to the ratepayer. It was 
felt on all hands that some contribution must be made by the 
users of motor cars towards the increased burden, which, even 
if they had not wholly necessitated, they were the most clamorous 
in demanding. There was, however, no convenient way by which 
the all-pervading motor car traffic could be taxed locally, in any 
definite relation to its use of the road. No one suggested a 
return to the toll-gate. The tax had therefore to be a national 
one. Accordingly, in 1909, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
brought forward the Budget by which financial equilibrium was 
to be secured, increased licence duties on the cars, and a new tax 
of threepence per gallon on petrol, were both included. But 
how were the proceeds of this tax to reach the roads ? Mr. 
Lloyd George declined to set up a national road department 
which should itself maintain the great thoroughfares. The Local 
Government Board, with the characteristically British reluctance 
to " amplify jurisdiction," shrank even from the responsibility 
of superintending the road administration of the Local Authorities 
by means of the device of a Grant in Ajd, which had, in police 
and education, proved so successful. What Mr. Lloyd George 
proposed, and what he eventually carried, was the allocation of 
his new road revenue, amounting normally to more than a million 
pounds annually, to a new " Road Board," empowered to sub- 
sidise, not the ordinary road maintenance at all, however onerous 
it might be, but exclusively the execution of new and specific 
road improvements, whether the construction of new roads, 
or the widening, levelling or straightening of those already 
existing, or the prevention of dust upon them. 

The Road Board, thus appointed in May 1910, under the 
Chairmanship of Sir George Gibb, has gone energetically to work ; 
devoting itself, for the present, to making grants and loans to 
Local Authorities in all parts of the United Kingdom almost 
exclusively to County Councils to enable them, either (a) to 
strengthen or create the solid " crust " of crushed granite, basalt, 
or other hard stone, which is the leading feature of the modern 









THE ROAD BOARD 251 

road ; or (b) to make this crust smooth, watertight, and dustless, 
not only by careful steam-rolling, but also by the application of 
tar ; or else (c) to widen, straighten, or level particular stretches 
of road where the nature of the traffic demanded it. In other 
cases curves or corners or gradients have been improved ; bridges 
and their approaches have been reconstructed, and footways 
have been provided. 

In the course of its first two years' existence as our national 
Road Authority, the Road Board inevitably created some 
disappointment among Local Authorities by its prudent financial 
administration. It steadfastly refused (as, indeed, the Act 
directs) to make any grant in aid of the ordinary maintenance 
of the roads, however expensive this might be proving ; and it 
also adopted the rule of contributing, towards any proposed 
improvement, only to the extent of a proportion of the cost, thus 
in all cases leaving a portion of the expense, even of a distinctly 
new improvement, to be met from local funds. Hence, whilst 
a vast amount of improvement, distributed all over the Kingdom, 
has been effected in the main roads, there has been perhaps 
rightly enough no reduction of the burden on the local rates. / 
The Board also created some disappointment among motorists 
by not at once taking steps, as the Act empowers it to do, for 
the construction of new trunk roads. This hesitation, however, 
is fully justified, not only by the difficulty of doing everything at 
once, but also by the explicit directions of the Act to the effect 
that, as regards any work employing a considerable amount of 
labour, regard is to be had to the state of the Labour Market. 
Since the Board has been at work, trade has been good, and the 
percentage of labourers out of employment has been almost 
unprecedentedly low. It has, accordingly, been a time when, 
according to the policy now officially adopted, with the approval 
of the economists, the Government should restrict rather than 
augment the volume of employment which it can influence. 
In 1914 or 1915, when trade may be expected to fall off, and the 
percentage of unemployed workmen will probably begin to rise, 
it will plainly be the duty of the Road Board to set going works 
on a large scale not in order to employ the particular men 
who are unemployed, but with a view to maintain the aggregate 
national demand for labour approximately at a level, in bad years 
as in good, and thus actually to prevent unemployment from 



252 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

occurring. In preparation for such a time, the Board has got 
ready plans, and accumulated funds, for new trunk roads, such 
as that from London to Hounslow, which are urgently required 
for the relief of the present overcrowded highways. These 
plans, it may be expected, will be, at the first sign of depression 
of trade, rapidly and relentlessly carried out, irrespective of the 
co-operation of the Local Authorities. 

Meanwhile, it is to be noted that, although the Act of 1909 
(9 Edward VII. c. 47) makes no distinction between main roads 
and other highways, the Board, in its first two years, did next 
to nothing for the improvement of the 95,143 miles of roads, in 
England and Wales alone, maintained by and at the expense of 
the Rural District Councils. Its assistance was given almost 
exclusively to the 23,549 miles of more important thoroughfares 
in England and Wales, maintained by or at the cost of the 
County Councils ; and to the corresponding roads in Scotland 
and Ireland. Thus, whilst the establishment of the Board has 
to some extent met the need, so far as the County Councils are 
concerned, of an expert central department collecting and 
supplying information ; furnishing skilled criticism and advice ; 
promoting uniformity or, at least, consistency of policy ; and 
applying incentive and stimulus it has, up to now (1913), 
failed altogether in this respect so far as the more numerous and 
more necessitous Rural District Councils are concerned. Again, 
so long as its financial assistance is statutorily confined to specific 
new improvements, and cannot legally be extended, in the form 
of Grants in Aid, to ordinary maintenance, its beneficent influence 
on the smaller and most backward Local Authorities, who stand 
most in need of it, cannot be of any great effect or utility. 

Moreover, the Road Board has chosen, up to the present, to 
adopt, as its policy, an almost complete exclusion from any 
participation in its grants, of the highways maintained by the 
Metropolis and all the County Boroughs ; and even (except in 
so far as these form part of main roads) of all those maintained 
by the Urban District Councils. These Local Authorities provide 
for a far greater volume of road traffic than do the County and 
Rural District Councils ; they maintain, in the aggregate, 24,747 
miles of sorely tried highways throughout England and Wales ; 
and they expended on them in 1908-9 no less than 8,164,139, 
being nearly twice as much as was spent on their 125,945 miles 



THE MOTOR OMNIBUS 253 

of road by all the other Local Authorities put together. These 
urban highways stand often as much in need of improvement 
as the somewhat arbitrarily selected main roads of the rural 
County Councils. They often need widening in places, if not 
also straightening. Above all, they are many of them in serious 
need of a strengthening of the road crust, if not also of their 
wood or stone pavements, to enable them to withstand the new 
traffic. It does not seem equitable that they should be excluded 
from the benefits of a fund raised by taxation that is national 
in its character. 

The failure of the Road Board to fulfil all the functions of a 
central Road Department a failure due, as we have shown, 
partly to its statutory limitation to distinctly new improvements, 
apart from maintenance, and partly to its policy in excluding 
from its purview all the roads maintained at the cost of the rate- 
payers in London and the County Boroughs and all but those 
called main roads in the Urban Districts will, we think, lead 
shortly to fresh developments. What is to-day (1913) bringing 
the question to a head is the rapid multiplication of the motor 
omnibuses, which have been almost suddenly introduced to our 
roads, chiefly in and around London. These latest of the " new 
users of the roads " are proving terribly destructive, not only to 
life and limb, but also to the road surfaces. During the year 
1912 the 2500 motor omnibuses killed a foot-passenger in the 
London streets every other day ! Such ponderous conveyances, 
weighing, when loaded, between six and seven tons each, and 
travelling at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, charge 
down the suburban roads with a momentum for which road 
administrators have made no adequate preparation. These 
motor omnibuses now contribute largely, in licences and petrol 
tax, towards the Road Fund ; but the Local Authorities, whose 
highways they are destroying, receive no aid from this fund 
towards the heavy burden thrown on the ratepayers. The 
Local Authorities are slow to move, and backward in discerning 
exactly what to ask for. But the pressure that they can exercise, 
coupled with the justice of their case, will, in our judgment, 
soon compel the Government to redress their grievances. 



254 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

Looking back on the three centuries of struggle since the 
wheeled vehicle began to swarm on the roads, we cannot doubt 
that whatever precautions may be imposed for the protection 
of foot-passengers, and whatever constitutional and financial 
re-adjustments may be necessary as between tramways, 
omnibuses, and the public revenues the roads have once more 
got to be made to accommodate the traffic, even the motor 
omnibus traffic, not the traffic constrained to suit the roads. 
This does not mean that we need submit to be put in peril of our 
lives. We may fairly insist on such precautions as to speed, 
stopping places, skilful driving, and even the segregation of 
particular kinds of traffic to particular thoroughfares, as will 
protect us from an undue frequency of accidents. We ought 
to insist on full pecuniary compensation being payable by the 
owner of the vehicle for every accident, irrespective of a proof 
of negligence which is nearly always impossible. If, as seems 
only too probable, accidents are a necessary consequence of motor 
omnibuses, there is no reason why the owners should be allowed 
to reap a pecuniary profit from their use of the roads, without 
fully indemnifying the sufferers and the public. Moreover, 
even apart from the compensation for accidents now payable by 
other forms of capital, we may properly, in accordance with the 
principle of obtaining repayment of the cost of the damage caused 
by extraordinary traffic, levy on the owners of vehicles of excep- 
tionally destructive character an exceptional contribution towards 
the highway maintenance. Further, we ought certainly to 
unite under public ownership and control all the public service 
vehicles primarily concerned with Metropolitan traffic, so as 
to get the utmost public advantage and convenience, irrespective 
of considerations of maximum capitalist profits, out of an in- 
telligent combination of omnibus, tramway, and " tube " railway. 
But, assuming these conditions to be fulfilled, history lends no 
support to the idea that we can, merely to save ourselves the cost 
of reconstructing our roads, advantageously set a limit to the 
size, or the weight, or the character of the vehicles that lawfully 
use the King's Highway. Nor can we afford to let the vested 
interest of any one form of locomotion stand in the way. The 
motor omnibus, whether or not it is destined to be joined by the 
" trackless trolley car," has come itself to stay. Its murderous 
invasion of our streets and its specially destructive career along 



A ROAD PROGRAMME 255 

our suburban thoroughfares, which at present get little protection 
from the law and no benefit from the motor licences and the petrol 
tax, can hardly fail to quicken the evolution of the Road Board 
into an Authority of wider scope. 

What is to-day required, in the organisation of our highways, 
we venture to suggest, is (a) such an amendment of the Act of 
1909 as will permit the Road Board to make Grants in Aid, 
under appropriate conditions (but only to Local Authorities of 
sufficient magnitude say, County or County Borough Councils, 
and to Borough and Urban District Councils having more than 
20,000 population), for the maintenance of their highways as 
well as for their improvement ; (6) such an amendment of the 
Acts of 1875, 1888, and 1894 as will enable all the Rural District 
Councils, and such of the Urban District Councils and Borough 
Councils as have fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, voluntarily to 
cede their road administration to the County Councils, as a means 
of relieving their own local rates, which would not otherwise 
receive any benefit from the Grants in Aid ; and (c) the allocation 
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Road Fund a step 
perhaps to be facilitated by a reasonable increase in the taxation 
on carriages, on motor cars and on petrol of a sum which would 
enable the Road Board to make its Grants in Aid of highway 
maintenance substantial enough to give its influence weight 
perhaps equal to 20 per cent of the actual annual expenditure 
of the Local Authorities on this service (now nearly 18,000,000 
per annum) in addition to the present special grants for 
road improvements, which would, of course, have to be made 
available for all the highways of the Kingdom, urban as well 
as rural. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 
NOTES AND REFERENCES 

Page 238. The period immediately preceding the present day is always 
that which has least history ! The materials for the history of the coming 
on the roads of the bicycle and the motor car exist in abundance, but it is 
difficult to refer the reader to any convenient summary. The files of such 
journals as The Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette, The Autocar (from November 



256 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

1895), and The Motor Union Journal (from April 1909), representing the 
new vehicles ; and The Surveyor or The Municipal Journal, representing the 
road administrators, are the best sources. See also the Report of the First 
International Road Congress (at Paris, 1908), by G. Montagu Harris and 
H. T. Wakelam, 1909 ; Report of the Road Conference of the County Councils 
Association of England and Wales, 1909 ; Report of the Conference of Irish 
Road Authorities, 1910 ; and the First and Second Annual Reports of the 
Road Board. 

A Bibliography of Roadmaking and Maintenance in Great Britain, by 
S. and B. Webb, 34 pp., 1905, is about to be superseded by a more exhaustive 
list, running to no fewer than 6000 items, to be published in the London 
School of Economics Series in 1913. 

Page 238. The quotation ascribed to Macadam is given in The Roads 
and Railroads, Vehicles and Modes of Travelling of Ancient and Modern 
Countries, an anonymous compilation of 1839. 

Page 239. For the bicycle and tricycle, see the convenient summary 
on " The Cycle Industry " by G. R. Carter, in Seasonal Trades, edited by 
Sidney Webb and Arnold Freeman, 1912 ; Cycles and Cycling, by H. H. 
Griffin, new edition, 1903 ; The Life and Inventions of James Starley, 1902 ; 
Histoire de la Velocipedie, by L. Baudry de Saunier, 1891 ; Cycling, by the 
Earl of Albemarle, 1895 ; The Complete Cyclist, by A. C. Pemberton, 1897. 

Page 239. For the history of the motor car, see Motor Vehicles and 
Motors, by W. Worby Beaumont, 1st edition, 1900, 2nd edition, 1902 ; 
The Motor Car, by Rhys Jenkins, 1902 ; The Automobile, by Paul N. 
Hasluck, 1902 (translation of Manuel TMoretique et Pratique de V Automobile 
en Route, by Gerard Lavergne) ; The Motor Car in the First Decade of the 
Twentieth Century, by W. E. Hooper, 1908 ; Motors and Motor Driving, 
by Lord Northcliffe, 1st edition, 1902, 4th edition, 1906 ; and the following 
older works of historical interest : Narrative of Experiments with Steam 
Carriages, by Walter Hancock, 1829 ; Treatise on Elemental Locomotion by 
means of Steam Carriages on Common Roads, by Alexander Gordon, 1832 ; 
Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages, with Minutes of 
Evidence and an Appendix, 1834 ; Steam Power applied on Common Roads, 
by Colonel Maceroni, 1835 ; Description of Cugnofs Locomotive, by E. A. 
Cowper, 1853 ; On Steam Carriages, by A. F. Yarrow, 1863 ; Report from 
Select Committee on Locomotive Engines on Roads, 1873 ; The Rise and 
Progress of Steam Locomotion on Roads, by J. Head, 1873 ; and History 
of Steam Locomotion on Common Roads, by W. Fletcher, 1891. See also 
A Comprehensive Bibliography of Power Locomotion on Highways, by Rhys 
Jenkins, 1896. 

Page 239. For the controversy caused by the advent of the bicyclist 
on the roads, and his complaints about the low standard of road main- 
tenance, the best single source is the file of The Cyclists' Touring Club 
Gazette. 

It is often forgotten that dust on the roads is no new phenomenon. The 
old stage waggon of the eighteenth century, we are told, " in a light soil, 
and when the weather was very dry, . . . kicked up a wonderful dust ; 
eight or ten heavy horses, with the large broad wheels . . . would raise a 
considerable cloud " (Old Coaching Days, by Stanley Harris, 1882, p. 113). 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 257 

It is one more interesting parallel between the new users of the roads, at 
the opening of the twentieth century, and the new users of the roads two 
hundred years before, that we find exactly the same complaints against the 
horse-drawn carriage under Queen Anne as against the automobile under 
King Edward. In The Tatler, an indignant correspondent complains that 
the vehicles " of the rich take up the whole street ; while we Peripatetics are 
very glad to watch an opportunity in which to cross a passage, very thank- 
ful that we are not run over for interrupting the machine that carries in it 
a person neither more handsome, wise, or valiant than the meanest of us. 
It is to me most miraculous, so unreasonable an usurpation as this I am 
speaking of should so long have been tolerated. We hang a poor fellow 
for taking any trifle from us on the road, and bear with the rich for robbing 
us of the road itself " (The Toiler, No. 144 ; see letter to The Times, 7th 
September 1912). 

Page 243. See the publications of the Roads Improvement Association, 
especially the papers by Mr. W. Rees Jeffreys, entitled The Motor Problem 
a Road Problem, 1903 ; Programme of Dust Prevention Experiments, 1907 ; 
Systems of Highway Administration Compared, 1908 ; and Diist Problem 
Statistics, 1909 ; together with The Development of the British Road System, 
by W. Ballin Hinde, 1908. 

Page 243. Report and Evidence of the Departmental Committee on 
Highways, Cd. 1973 of 1903. 

Page 244. On their establishment in 1888, the County Councils were 
prone to " contract " with the Rural District Councils for the maintenance 
of the local main roads. Gradually the advantages of direct administration 
under the County Surveyor made themselves apparent. In 1902, however, 
there were still only 38 Councils directly managing their main roads. By 
1908 there were no fewer than 51 out of 61 so doing ; and by now (1913) 
the number still " contracting " is very small. 

The Urban District Councils are, under the Local Government Act of 
1888, entitled to manage their several lengths of main road, and to be 
reimbursed by the County Council the exact cost thereof. This strangely 
improvident arrangement, where one authority spends the money and 
another pays the bill, has only been made to work decently by the practical 
good sense of the officials and councillors concerned. Only those Councils 
that were in existence at the time of the passing of the Act are entitled to 
claim to maintain the main roads. Most of the County Councils make 
contracts beforehand with the Urban District Council, as to the amount 
to be spent on this service. 

With reference to the expenditure on roads, it should be noted that 
(except for new streets and expensive repaving in large cities) it is practical 1 y 
all charged to current revenue ; and rarely raised by way of loan. 

Page 249. The enthusiastic quotation as to the ideal road is from 
an article on " County Councils and Highways," by John' Morrison, in 
The Autocar for 1902, p. 666. 

So completely has opinion come round, from the time, a quarter of a 
century ago, when every consideration gave way before the suitability of 
the road to the horse's feet, that we now have it calmly suggested that the 
horse's feet must be changed to suit the new road surface ! " The whole 



258 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

tendency of modern road maintenance," we find the Surrey County 
Surveyor declaring in 1912, "is towards surfaces less suitable for horse 
traffic as at present shod. Everything else has changed, but the horse 
shoe has not." 

Page 249. We give the following instructive statistics from the Second 
Annual Report of the Road Board, H.C. 290, 1912. 



[TABLE 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 



259 



H 



pasipjB 

-pUBlg 



il 

rt 






pasipin 



-putns 



II 



pgsipJB 



p9SIp.lt? 



puwjg 



pasipJB 



p9SIpIB 






o 
" " 






as s 






II I 

Ss s 



s 



8 S 



oo" co 



|| 1 1 



800 W 
t^ OJ 






as s s 






Is 2 



en * *" 



^ 



tfj 



8 S 



1 is 



fe 2 

r-l rl (N 






9 9 



8 



I S S IIS 



r-T r-T 

00 O 



i-T r-T 



05 <o o 



9 <2 

3 a 



260 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 



ENGLAND AND WALES. 

EXPENDITURE ON ROADS, YEAR ENDING 31st MARCH 1909. 
(Compiled from Local Taxation Returns.} 





Mileage. 


Mainten- 
ance. 


II 


Other 
Items. 


Loan 
Charges. 


Total. 


.s 








6 S 








^ 




1. 


2. 


8. 


4. 


5. 


6. 


7. 


Urban Roads- 






















Main roads in Urban Dis- 
















tricts and Non-County 
















Boroughs maintained by 
















or at cost of County 
















Councils .... 


4,353 


877,946 


51,869 


2,553 


139,145 


1,071,518 


206 


Other roads in Urban 
















Districts .... 
Other roads in Non-County 


11,692 


919,164 


94,992 


192,678 


221,950 


1,428,784 


79 


Boroughs 


4,776 


515,549 


42,932 


226,571 


253,052 


1,038,104 


108 


Total Urban in Adminis- 
















trative Counties outside 
















London .... 
County Boroughs . 


20,721 
9,106 


2,812,659 
1,235,906 


189,793 
90,562 


421,802 
829,375 


614,147 
1,553,252 


3,538,401 
3,709,095 


112 
136 


London Authorities (ex- 
















cluding London County 
















Council) .... 


2,173 


727,048 


52,512 


752,884 


455,712 


1,988,156 


335 


Total Urban .... 


32,000 


4,275,613 


832,867 


2,004,961 


2,623,111 


9,235,652 


184 


Rural Roads- 
















Maintained by or at cost 
















of County Councils 
Maintained by Rural 


23,549 


1,765,098 


11,293 


80,832 


16,747 


1,823,970 


75 


District Councils . 


95,143 


2,160,492 


52,067 


103,006 


23,346 


2,388,911 


23 


Total Rural .... 


118,692 


3,925,590 


63,360 


133,938 


40,093 


4,162,881 


33 


Total Urban and Rural 


150,692 


8,201,203 


396,227 


2,137,899 


2,663,204 


13,398,533 


54 


Total Main Roads included 
















above . . 


27,802 


2,643,044 


63,162 


33,385 


155,892 


2,895,488 


95 



















SCOTLAND. 

EXPENDITURE ON ROADS, YEAR ENDING 16TH MAY 1909. 
(Compiled from Local Taxation Returns (Scotland).) 



Authority. 


Mileage. 


Maintenance, 
Improvements, 
etc., including 
Loan Charges. 


Average 
Mile. 


County Councils 
Burgh Councils 
Parish Councils 

Total t. 


22,668 
2,108 



695,584 
503,148 
2,404 



31 


24,771 








* The average per mile for Burgh Councils is not filled in, because it is obvious that a large par )< 
the expenditure must refer to improvements and not to maintenance. 

t The above figures must not be compared with the maintenance figures on the table for England d 
Wales. The Returns do not state the maintenance cost separately. 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 



261 



IRELAND. 

EXPENDITURE ON ROADS, YEAR ENDING 31sT MARCH 1909. 



County Councils . 
Non-County Boroughs 
Urban Districts . 
Towns, not Urban Districts 
County Boroughs 



Totals 





794,101 

8,413 

86,449 

795 

189,978 



1,079,736 



These figures include all expenditure (excluding loan charges). 

The returns do not state the maintenance cost separately, and no mileage figures are 
stated. In a paper read by Mr. P. C. Cowan, Chief Engineering Inspector, Local Government 
Board, Ireland, at the second Irish Road Congress, it was stated that the total mileage of 
roads in Ireland was 55,562 miles. 

The number of Motor Cars and Motor Cycles, excluding Hackney 
Carriages, in respect of which licence duty was paid during 1911-12 in 
England and Wales was 144,328. The number of Hackney Motors (cabs 
and omnibuses) was 31,260, making a total of 175,588 motor vehicles, 
irrespective of Scotland and Ireland. 

Page 250. For the Road Board, see The Development and Road Im- 
provement Funds Act, 1909 (9 Edward VII. c. 47) ; the series of memoranda 
and circulars issued by the Board ; the First Annual Report of the Road 
Board, H.C. 292 of 1911 ; and the Second Annual Report of the Road Board, 
H.C. 290 of 1912. 

Page 253. For the controversy caused by the motor omnibuses, the 
student should consult the London newspapers during 1912 (see the Index 
to The Times) ; the " Questions " to Ministers in the House of Commons 
during the session of 1912 ; and the reports of the action of Local 
Authorities in such papers as The Municipal Journal, or The Surveyor, 
for 1912. 

The rapid increase in motor omnibuses in and around London in 1911 
and 1912 was due to the facts (a) that it was found possible to work them, 
even paying the new taxes, at about 7d. per mile run, as compared with 
lid. and 12d. per mile run on the tramways ; and (b) that their develop- 
ment was not, as it has been in some other large cities, interfered with by 
a Town Council jealous for its tramway receipts. In London, almost 
alone among British cities, the tramway authority (the London County 
Council) is not the omnibus licensing authority (this being the Commis- 
sioner of Metropolitan Police). Motor omnibuses now (1913) run as far 
out as to Windsor, Barnet, Epping, etc. The capital invested in motor 
omnibuses in the Metropolis is (1913) about four million pounds; the 
total cost of the tramways has been about twenty million pounds. Yet 
the number of passengers carried by, and the gross receipts of the motor 
omnibuses, are in the aggregate not far short of those of all the tramcars, 
whilst the net profits in 1912 were apparently larger, and the percentage 



262 USERS OF ROADS IN TWENTIETH CENTURY 

of profit enormously larger. See, on the whole subject, the interesting 
Reports of the London Traffic Department of the Board of Trade. 

The number of persons killed in London by motor omnibuses, in 1904 
and 1905 only two and three respectively, rose in 1906 to 25, in 1907 to 
35, in 1908 to 62, in 1909 to 52, in 1910 to 61, in 1911 to 95, and in the 
first ten months of 1912 to no fewer than 143, or more than three per week ! 
In practically none of these cases (six-sevenths of them caused by the 
vehicles of the principal company) was any compensation paid. It is 
suggested that the precedent of the Workmen's Compensation Act should 
be followed, and the owner of the motor omnibus made liable for all damage 
done to passengers and pedestrians, as he is to his workpeople, irrespective 
of negligence by himself or his agents. At least, this might be done for 
all cases except those in which definite proof of wilful negligence by the 
injured person could be given. The omnibus companies would easily 
do what to the mass of poor people is practically impossible, namely, cover 
the risk by an annual insurance premium, which would amount to an 
insignificant deduction from their profits. At the end of 1912 a depart- 
mental committee was appointed to enquire into the subject of motor- 
omnibus traffic in the Metropolis. 

Page 254. For the law and practice as to " extraordinary traffic," 
see Report of the Road Conference of the County Councils (County Councils 
Association, 1909), pp. 118-138 ; The Practical Guide to the Administration 
of Highway Law, by H. Hampton Copnall, 1912 ; Digest of Highway Cases, 
by J. E. R. Stephens, 1903 ; A Digest of Motorcar Cases (Motor Union of 
Great Britain and Ireland), 1908 ; The Law of Extraordinary Traffic on 
Highways, by Barnard Lailey, 1912 ; " Theory and Practice of Special 
Assessments," by J. L. Van Ornum, in Transactions of the American Society 
of Civil Engineers, vol. xxxviii. 

" Extraordinary traffic " was first dealt with by way of prohibition. 
By the Locomotive Act of 1861 (24 & 25 Vic. c. 70) power was given to the 
Secretary of State to prohibit the use of any particular kind of locomotive 
traction engine which was found to cause excessive wear and tear of the 
roads. This was repealed by the Locomotive Act of 1865 (28 & 29.Vic. 
c. 83). Parliament then sought to deal with the problem by what are, 
technically, " special assessments." The Local Authority was empowered, 
by the Highways and Locomotives Act of 1878 (41 & 42 Vic. c. 77, sec. 23), 
to require repayment, from any one responsible for extraordinary traffic 
causing additional repairs, of the additional expense to which it has been 
put. This Act, as slightly amended by the Locomotives Act of 1898 
(61 & 62 Vic. c. 29, sec. 12), has given rise to much litigation ; and it has 
been so narrowly hedged round in the judicial decisions that it can seldom 
be adequately put in force by Local Authorities. 

It may here be noted that opportunity ought to be taken to define, by 
statute, not only the rights and duties, of pedestrians and drivers respect- 
ively, but also the " rule of the road." It is extraordinary that even the 
latter should rest on no legal authority, and be mainly a matter of custom 
and convention (see Finegan v. London and North -Western Railway 
Company, 53 J.P. 663, of the year 1889, and the authorities therein cited) ; 
except for a general injunction that the driver shall keep to the left side 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X 263 

of the road in passing other vehicles, under penalty, which was imposed 
by sec. 78 of the Highways Act of 1835 (5 & 6 William IV. c. 50). 
It is, of course, well known that the custom of the United Kingdom, of 
keeping to the left side in meeting other vehicles, and on the right side in 
overtaking and passing them, is the reverse of that followed in other 
European countries (except, we believe, Bohemia and some parts of Italy). 
It is, perhaps, not so well known that the English custom is only of late 
growth. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sir Roger de Coverley 
speaks of " the right we had of taking place, as going to London, of all 
vehicles coming from thence " (chap. xx. in The Spectator). The very 
phrase, " the rule of the road," seems to be quite modern. The Oxford 
Dictionary gives for it no earlier quotation than 1871. 

Page 255. It is difficult to estimate boldly enough the increase in 
wealth production, the reduction in the cost of living, and the growth of 
freedom and amenity that would be promoted by further improvements 
in locomotion. A century ago the House of Commons Committee of 1811 
ventured on the modest prediction that " the expense of five millions would 
be annually saved to the public," by an energetic policy of road improve- 
ment (The General Turnpike Road Act, by Joseph Bateman, 1822, p. iii). 
We might to-day safely put it at many times that sum (see, for instance, 
the suggestive presidential address to the Society of Engineers in February 
1898, by W. Worby Beaumont). 



INDEX 



Lbercromby, 165 

Abram, Dr. Annie, 10 

Accidents, 241, 253-4, 261-3 

Acts of Parliament 

Magna Charta (1215), 85, 95, 105 
9 Henry III. c. 15 (1224), 105 

13 Edward I. st. II. c. 5 (1285), 12 
15 Edward I. c. 12 (1287), 105 

14 & 15 Henry VIII. c. 6 (1623), 13 
22 Henry VIH. c. 5 (1530), 89, 91, 

108 

24 Henry VIII. c. 11 (1532), 13 

25 Henry VIII. c. 7 (1533), 13 

26 Henry VIII. c. 7 (1634), 13 
32 Henry VIII. c. 17 (1540), 13 

2 & 3 Philip and Mary, c. 8 (1555), 
14, 19, 24, 26 

5 Elizabeth, c. 13 (1563), 19, 24, 45, 

51, 109 

18 Elizabeth, c. 10 (1576), 24 
11 James I. (1614), 43 
Ordinances of 1654, 20 

14 Car. II. c. 6 (1662), 24, 26, 48, 81 

15 Car. II. c. 1 (1663), 147, 148, 149, 
151 

22 Car. II. c. 12 (1670), 19, 22, 45, 

81, 109 
26 Car. II. (1674), 147 

3 & 4 William and Mary, c. 12 
(1691), 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 45, 49, 
77 

4 & 5 William and Mary, c. 12 (1692), 

147 
7 & 8 William and Mary, c. 9 (1695), 

147, 148, 149 
7 & 8 William and Mary, c. 26 

(1695), 147, 148 

7 & 8 William and Mary, c. 29 
(1695), 24, 82 

8 & 9 William III. c. 16 (1697), 147, 
151 

8 & 9 William III. c. 16 (1697), 23, 
24, 25, 26, 157 



Acts of Parliament, contd. 

9 & 10 William III. c. 18 (1698), 

148, 151 

12 & 13 William III. c. 9 (1701), 148 
1 Anne, s. 2, c. 10 (1702), 148 
4 Anne, c. 9 (1705), 148 
6 Anne, c. 10 (1706), 61, 148, 151 
6 Anne, c. 26 (1706), 148 
6 Anne, c. 1 (1707), 147-9 

6 Anne, c. 29 (1707), 81, 82 

7 Anne, c. 4 (1708), 147 

7 Anne, c. 19 (1708), 148 

8 Anne, c. 15(1709), 148 

9 Anne, c. 7 (1710), 148 
9 Anne, c. 8 (1710), 148 

9 Anne, c. 18 (1710), 81 

10 Anne, c. 34 (1711), 148 

12 Anne, st. I. o. 1 (1714), 150 
1 George I. o. 2 (1714), 45, 81 
1 George I. ss. 2, c. 25 (1714), 149 

I George I. ss. 2, c. 52 (1714), 37, 
46,81 

3 George I. c. 4 (1716), 149, 161 

3 George I. c. 15 (1716), 148 

4 George I. c. 4 (1717), 149 

4 George I. c. 5 (1717), 149 

5 George I. c. 6 (1718), 46, 83 

5 George I. c. 12 (1718), 81 

6 George I. c. 6 (1719), 81, 83 

6 George I. c. 25 (1719), 149 

7 George I. c. 9 (1720), 81 

7 George I. c. 18 (1720), 149 
9 George I. c. 11 (1722), 151 

9 George I. c. 31 (1722), 147 

10 George I. c. 9 (1724), 148 

II George I. c. 7 (1725), 148 
12 George I. c. 22 (1729), 147 
1 George II. c. 19 (1727), 151 
1 George II. c. 33 (1727), 149 
5 George II. c. 33 (1731), 151 
7 George II. c. 9 (1733), 81 

7 George II. c. 13 (1733), 149 
7 George II. c. 42 (1733), 46, 81 



265 



266 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Acts of Parliament, contd. 

8 George II. c. 20 (1734), 151 

9 George II. c. 18 (1735), 37, 81 

10 George II. c. 21 (1736), 46, 148 

11 George II. c. 33 (1737), 150 

13 George II. c. 9 (1739), 97, 149 

14 George II. c. 42 (1740), 81, 151, 
161 

15 George II. c. 2 (1741), 46 

16 George II. c. 21 (1742), 148, 
149 

16 George II. c. 29 (1742), 46, 81 

17 George II. c. 4 (1743), 156 

17 George II. c. 9 (1743), 46, 148, 

149 

17 George II. c. 13 (1743), 158 
17 George II. c. 29 (1743), 149 

17 George II. c. 41 (1743), 150 

18 George II. c. 33 (1744), 81 

19 George H. c. 19 (1745), 46, 149 

20 George II. c. 6 (1746), 168, 
159 

20 George II. c. 7 (1746), 158, 159 
20 George II. c. 11 (1746), 161 

20 George II. c. 42 (1746), 154 

21 George II. o. 28 (1747), 151 

22 George II. c. 20 (1748), 83 

23 George II. c. 37 (1749), 154 

24 George II. c. 11 (1750), 158 
24 George II. c. 13 (1750), 159 
24 George II. c. 29 (1750), 158 

24 George II. c. 43 (1750), 81, 151, 
159 

25 George II. c. 11 (1751), 46 

26 George II. c. 28 (1753), 81, 149, 
151 

26 George II. c. 30 (1753), 151 

27 George II. c. 8 (1754), 46 

28 George II. c. 17 (1755), 46, 151 
30 George II. c. 22 (1757), 81 

30 George II. c. 25 (1757), 46 
30 George II. c. 27 (1757), 151 
30 George II. c. 43 (1757), 151 
3 George III. c. 8 (1762), 43 
5 George III. c. 14 (1765), 43 

5 George III. c. 38 (1765), 81 

6 George III. c. 34 (1765), 83 

6 George III. c. 43 (1765), 46, 81 

7 George III. c. 40 (1766), 73, 81, 
121, 151, 156, 161 

7 George III. c. 42 (1766), 24, 35, 
41, 46, 49, 81 

8 George III. c. 5 (1767), 46, 81 
10 George III. c. 54 (1770), 148 

13 George III. c. 24 (1773), 109, 
111 



Acts of Parliament, contd. 

13 George III. c. 78 (1773), 35, 41, 
46, 49, 50, 73, 81, 121, 151, 191, 
232 

13 George III. c. 84 (1773), 82, 166, 
159, 160, 161, 162, 232 

14 George III. c. 14 (1774), 151 

16 George III. c. 39 (1776), 151 

17 George III. c. 20 (1777), 151, 156 

18 George III. c. 63 (1778), 151, 159 

20 George III. c. 71 (1780), 149 

21 George III. c. 20 (1781), 151 

25 George III. c. 57 (1785), 151, 159 
28 George III. c. 57 (1788), 161 
30 George III. c. 36 (1790), 161, 162 
34 George III. c. 74 (1794), 46 
39 & 40 George III. c. 3 (1800), 149 
39 & 40 George III. c. 70 (1800), 159 

42 George III. c. 90 (1802), 46 

43 George III. c. 59 (1803), 101, 109 
112 

43 George III. c. 80 (1803), 180 
46 George III. c. 136 (1806), 162 

52 George III. c. 145 (1812), 151, 
158 

53 George III. c. 82 (1813), 158 

53 George III. c. 92 (1813), 108, 

229, 236 

65 George III. o. 47 (1815), 225 
55 George III. c. 52 (1815), 182 

55 George III. c. 68 (1815), 161, 230, 
231 

56 George III. c. 83 (1816), 181 

57 George III. c. 37 (1817), 151, 229 
59 George III. c. 30 (1819), 184 

3 George IV. c. 126 (1822), 122, 151, 

176, 187, 215, 235 

4 George IV. c. 16 (1823), 187 

5 George IV. c. 69 (1824), 187 

7 George IV. c. 142 (1826), 178, 190 
7 & 8 George IV. c. 24 (1827), 187 

9 George IV. c. 77 (1828), 187 

10 George IV. c. 59 (1829), 190 

1 & 2 William IV. c. 6 (1831), 187 
1 & 2 William IV. c. 25 (1831), 187 

3 & 4 William IV. c. 78 (1833), 182, 
187 

4 & 5 William IV. c. 81 (1834), 187 

5 & 6 William IV. c. 50 (1835), 201- 
205, 211, 217, 229, 231, 232, 236, 
263 

4 & 5 Victoria c. 59 (1841), 217, 235 
7 & 8 Victoria, c. 91 (1844), 219 

11 & 12 Victoria, c. 66 (1848), 207, 
213, 234, 236 

12 & 13 Victoria, c. 35 (1849), 234 



INDEX 



267 



Acts of Parliament, contd. 

21 & 22 Victoria, c. 98 (1858), 207, 
209, 210, 213, 236 

23 & 24 Victoria, c. 68 (1860), 206- 
207, 236 

24 & 25 Victoria, c. 70 (1861), 240, 
262 

25 & 26 Victoria, c. 61 (1862), 208, 
209, 210, 213, 220, 233, 234, 236 

26 & 27 Victoria, c. 17 (1863), 210, 
213, 236 

26 & 27 Victoria, c. 78 (1863), 191 

26 & 27 Victoria, c. 94 (1863), 221, 
235 

27 & 28 Victoria, c. 101 (1864), 210, 
213, 234, 236 

28 & 29 Victoria, c. 37 (1865), 108 
28 & 29 Victoria, c. 83 (1865), 240, 

262 
28 & 29 Victoria, c. 119 (1865), 235 

33 & 34 Victoria, c. 73 (1870), 112, 
222 

34 & 35 Victoria, c. 115 (1871), 191, 
222 

35 & 36 Victoria, c. 79 (1872), 212- 
213, 236 

38 & 39 Victoria, c. 55 (1875), 213, 

236, 255 

38 & 39 Victoria, c. 194 (1875), 107 
41 & 42 Victoria, c. 77 (1878), 100, 

112, 212, 213, 222, 262 
46 & 47 Victoria, c. 226 (1883), 236 
51 & 52 Victoria, c. 21 (1888), 85 
61 & 52 Victoria, c. 41 (1888), 108, 

112,223,236,240,255 
54 & 55 Victoria, c. 63 (1891), 112 
56 & 57 Victoria, c. 73 (1894), 214, 

231, 232, 236, 255 
61 & 62 Victoria, c. 29 (1898), 240 
61 & 62 Victoria, c. 77 (1898), 262 
3 Edward VII. c. 36 (1903), 242 
9 Edward VII. c. 47 (1909), 250, 
252, 255, 261 

Adams, William Bridges, 79 

Aitken, Thomas, 154, 182, 185, 186 

Akeman Street, 4 

Albemarle, Earl of, 256 

Alehousekeepers disqualified, 160 

Alexander, B. M., 78, 81 

Allen, 105 

Alston, 209 

America, roadwork in, 28, 43 

Amersham, 127 

Amwell, 44, 226 

Anderson, A., 81, 147 

Anderson, Dr. R., 45 



Andrews, W., 80 
Anglesey, 222 
Anstice, Robert, 83 
Area, unit of, 202 
Armoured tyres, 241 
Ashley, Percy, 43 
Ashmole, Elias, 77 
Ashworth, P., 47 
Auckland, Lord, 187, 188 
Auctions of tolls, 138-9, 160 
Audit of road accounts, 211 
Autocar, 255 
Automobiles, 239-43 
Avignon Bridge, 105 
Axe, R., 67, 78 
Axholme, 77 
Axminster, 67 
Axon, Ernest, 153 
Axon, W. E. A., 47 

Babeau, A., 43 

Bailey, John, 45, 152, 163 

Baines, F. E., 224, 235 

Baker, Ira Osborn, 12, 43, 44 

Baker, Thomas, 234 

Banffshire, 80 

Bannatyne, Dr., 152 

Baring-Gould, Rev. S., 10 

Barking, 86 

Barnet, 261 

Basalegg Bridge, 109 

Bateman, Joseph, 152, 187, 229, 235, 

263 

Bath, 65, 131, 163 
Bathurst, Rt. Hon. C. B., 162, 188 
Bayldon, Richard, 189, 191, 233 
Bayley, Thomas Butterworth, 56, 59, 

101, 141, 152, 162, 230 
Beaumont, G., 80 
Beaumont, W. Worby, 256, 263 
Becher, Rev. T. J., 196 
Bedford, 128, 216 
Bedfordshire, 24, 61, 115, 148, 151, 

234 

Bell, requirement of a, 240 
Belloc, Hilaire, 10 
Benz, 240 

Bergier, Nicholas, 11 
Berkshire, 48, 86, 136, 227, 248 
Berwick Bridge, 103, 113 
Berwick-on-Tweed, 66, 77, 103, 113, 

224 

Beverley, 20 
Bicycle, 239, 240 
Birch, Col, 82 
Birmingham, 87, 215, 224 



268 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Bishopwearmouth Bridge, 129, 154 

Blackfriars Bridge, 103 

Blackpool, 237 

Blakemore, Richard, 162, 188 

Blamire, W., 11 

Blew, W. C. A., 224 

" Blind Jack of Knaresborough," 154 

Blithborough Bridge, 93 

Board of Agriculture, 170-71, 174, 

176 

" Board of Surveyors," 233 
Board, the Eoad, 244, 250-55, 258- 

261 

Boase, 190 
Bohun, Edmund, 26 
Boonmasters, 27, 43 
Boston, 77 

Boulnois, H. Percy, 185 
Bourn, Daniel, 83, 231 
Bowdler, John, 188 
Boyes, J., 163 
Boys, John, 77 
Bradford, 65, 205, 233 
Bray, William, 106 
Brecknockshire, 49, 78 
Bredon Hill, 195 
Brentford Bridge, 91 
Brewster, Sir David, 183 
Bridgemaster, 91-2 
" Bridge Money," 89-91 
Bridge rate, 89-90 
Bridges, 85-113 ; tolls on, 129, 154 
Bristol, 60, 71, 83, 123, 129, 152, 163, 

189, 215 

British highways, 3 
Brome, Rev. James, 77 
" Brothers of the Bridge," 86, 105 
Brown, Thomas, 13 
Brown, Rev. Thomas, 80 
Buckingham, John Silk, 80 
Buckingham, W., 146 
Buckinghamshire, 36, 103, 211, 234 
Bund, J. C. Willis, 46 
Burden, Charles, 77 
Burmester, A. C., 10, 11 
Burn, Rev. R., 38, 49, 51, 59, 74, 76, 

81, 91, 108, 145, 230 
Burnard, R., 10 
Burton, Thomas, 25 
Butler, 240 
Buxton, 32, 45, 128 
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney, 182 

Calowe, 20 

Cam River, 86, 105 

Camberwell, 134 



Cambridge, 86, 105 
Cambridgeshire, 86, 105, 115, 234 
Cannan, Edwin, 25, 105, 233 
Canterbury, 25, 71 
Canterbury, Archbishop of, 87 
Caravan, 79 
Cardiff, 235 
Cardiganshire, 218 
Carlisle, 67, 78, 243 
Carlisle, Earl of, 196 
Carmarthenshire, 217 
Carter, G. R., 256 
Cases 

R. v. Inhabitants of the County of 
Southampton (1886-87), 108, 112 

R. v. St. Benedict (1821), 111 

Arnold v. Blaker, 231-2 

In re the Isle of Wight Highway 
Commissioners, 237 

Finegan v. L. & N.W. Railway Co., 
262 

R. v. Bucks (1799), 110 

R. v. Kent (1814), 110 

R. v. West Riding (1802), 110 

R. v. West Riding (1780), 110 

R. v. Salop, 109 

R. v. Brecon, 109 

R. v. Inhabitants of Charl., 107 

R. v. Inhabitants of Oswestry, 107 

R. v. Southampton, 106 

R. v. Norwich, 106 

R. v. Sir John Bucknall (1702), 106 

Baker v. Greenhill (1842), 106 

R. v. Inhabitants of Glamorgan 
(1788), 106 

R. v. United Kingdom Telegraph 
Co., 12 

Hickman v. Matsey (1900), 11 

Harrison v. Duke of Rutland (1893), 
11 

R. v. Pratt (1855), 11 
Catterick Bridge, 87, 105 
Cattle, trade in, 67 
Causeways, 65-6, 77, 232 
Cavendish, Lord George, 222, 236 
Cawsey. See Causeway 
Caxton, 115 

Chadwick, Sir Edwin, 174, 207 
Chalfont St. Peter, 36, 47 
Chapel by roadside, 13 
Chapels on bridges, 85, 105 
Chaucer, 8, 78 
Chelmsford, 72, 134 
Chertsey Bridge, 91 
Cheshire, 39, 49, 65, 71-2, 108, 115, 
148, 234 



INDEX 



269 



Chester, 79, 179 

Chesterfield, 52 

Children stone-gathering, 29, 33 

Chorlton, 55 

Cinque Ports, 108 

Cirencester, 128 

Clapham, 134 

Clark, D. Kinnear, 185 

Clark, John, 39, 45, 49, 60, 152 

Clarke, James, 154 

Classification of roads, 246 

Cleland, J., 76 

Cleveland, 37, 225 

Clifford, F., 105, 146, 147, 148, 153 

Clifford, H., 230 

Clive, George, 221, 236 

Clive, R. H., 235 

Clode, C. M., 159 

Coalbrookdale Bridge, 103 

Coal carts, 70 

Cobham, Sir John de, 87 

Codrington, T., 11 

Coke, Lord, 106, 231 

Coldharbour, 71 

Collier, James, 78, 105 

" Colossus of Roads," 183 

Commonwealth, coaches under, 79 ; 

roads under, 20-21, 24-5 
Commutation of Statute Labour, 33-6 
Commutations of toll, 137, 159 
Compensation for accidents, 254, 

261-3 
Congleton, Lord. See Parnell, Sir 

Henry 

Congresses, road, 256 
" Contracting " with District Council, 

245 

Contributory roads, 223, 245 
Conway River, 103 
Cook, John, 83 
Copnall, H. Hampton, 262 
Cornwall, 47, 67, 80, 225, 234 
Corvee, 28, 43 

Cost of roads, 248-9, 259-61 
Cost of road traction, 8, 12, 13 
Coulson, H. J. W., 104, 112 
Counter's Bridge, 100 
County Bridges, 89-91, 98-102 
County Councils, work of, 244-5, 

248-9, 252-3, 255, 257-8 
County Roads Boards, 236 
County Roads Boards in South Wales, 

219, 220 

County Surveyor, 227 
Court Leet, 1, 5, 7, 86, 88 
Courtney, J. S., 80 



Courtney, W., 190 

Coventry, 60, 79 

Coverley, Sir Roger de, 263 

Cowes, 236 

Cowper, E. A., 256 

Cox, J. C., 24, 48, 59, 60, 105, 109 

Cradock, T., 105 

Craik, G. L., 13, 235-6 

Cresey, 11, 234 

Cripps, J., 187 

Cromwell, 70 

Crosford Bridge, 153 

Croydon, 233 

Croyland Abbey, 86 

Crust, the road, 250-51, 253 

Cudworth, William, 233 

Cugnot, 239, 256 

Culley, G., 45, 152, 164 

Cumberland, 6, 12, 55, 59, 65, 70, 76, 

80, 209, 225 

Cumming, Alexander, 83 
Cunningham, Ven. Archdeacon W., 

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 24, 43, 105-6 
Cycle. See Bicycle, Motor Cycle 
Cyclists' Touring Club Gazette, 255, 

256 

Daer, Lord, 165 

Daimler, 240 

Dance, 239 

Dandyhorse, 239 

Dargenson, Comte, 151 

Darlington, 215 

Dartford, 134 

Dartmoor, 3, 10, 86 

Datchet Bridge, 110 

Davies, W. M., 104 

Decay of roads in fifteenth century, 

8-9 
Defoe, 36, 47, 63, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 

76, 78, 80, 81, 91, 107, 108, 156 
Delane, W. F. A., 229 
Denbighshire, 234 
Dent, R. K., 164 
Denton, W., 10 
De Quincey, 67, 78, 81, 111 
Derby, 60, 128, 216 
Derby Bridge, 105 
Derbyshire, 32, 45, 48, 52, 53, 59, 60, 

94, 109, 225, 234 
Deritend Bridge, 129, 154 
Derwent, 94 
Devizes, 71 
Devonport, 72, 154 
Devonshire, 3, 67, 79, 225, 245 
Dickens, Charles, 175 



270 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Dickins, F., 161 

Dickson, W. P., 10 

Disney, H., 80 

" Disturnpiked roads," 222, 223 

Dogs in traction, 238 

Domesday Survey, 86 

Dorking, 71 

Dorsetshire, 66, 67, 234 

Dowell, Stephen, 81, 191 

Ducks, 70 

Duffield, 52 

Dumas, 186 

Dundas, 157 

Dunstan, 20 

Dupin, Baron Charles, 146, 181, 182, 

232 

Durham, 39, 108, 234 
Dust, 241, 248, 256 

Eden, Sir F. M., 48 

Edgeworth, R. L., 80, 83, 143, 163, 

165, 180, 185, 186, 188 
Edinburgh, 72, 178, 192 
Edinburgh Review, 142, 183, 224 
Edwards, William, 103, 113 
Elton, Sir C. I., 10 
Ely, Bishop of, 87 
Epping, 261 
Ermin Street, 4, 87 
Erskine, T. F., 181 
Essex, 36-7, 48, 50, 53, 60, 92, 93, 94, 

108, 116, 129, 148, 153, 156, 177, 

189, 225 

Estra, Roger de, 86 
Evesham, 136, 227 
Exemptions from toll, 136-8, 157-8 
Exeter, 65, 68, 79, 125, 163, 189, 

192 

Exmoor, 3, 86 
" Extraordinary traffic," 254, 262 

Falmouth, 125, 163, 224 

" Farming the roads," 132, 155, 245 

Farnborough, 248 

Fidler, T. C., 104 

Fielding, Henry, 80 

Fiennes, Celia, 76, 156 

Firth, C. H., 25 

Fish trade, 66-7, 77-8, 

Fletcher, J. S., 106 

Fletcher, W., 256 

Folkestone, 66, 77 

Footpaths, 203, 230-32, 235 

Foots Cray Bridge, 110 

Forbes, Urquhart, 10, 11, 104 

Forbes, W. A., 112 



Fornhill, 116 

Fossway, 4 

Fowler, J. K., 160 

Fratres pontifices, 105 

Freeman, Arnold, 256 

Frost, 186 

Fry, Danby P., 233 

Fry, F. A., 229 

Fry, Joseph Storrs, 81, 83 

Fulham, 32, 45 

Fuller, John, 77 

Furnivall, F. J., 44 

Gammon's Act, 162 

" Garbling the Parish," 35 

Gamier, R. M., 78 

Garrett, Edmund W., 104 

Geese, 68, 78 

Gemmell, T. M., 233 

Gentleman's Magazine, 30, 34, 35, 44, 

47, 50, 55, 59, 60, 80, 95, 124, 

126, 130, 134, 152, 156, 157, 163, 

184, 191 

George, Rt. Hon. Lloyd, 250 
Gibb, Sir George, 250 
Gilbert, Davies, 83, 177, 189 
Gilbert, Thomas, 73, 121 
Gilbey, Sir William, 79 
Gild of Holy Cross, 87, 105 
Gillespie, W. M., 44 
Gillingham, 87 
Glamorganshire, 245 
Glasburn Bridge, 98-9 
Glasgow, 66, 76, 125 
Glassworks, 70 
Glen, W. C. and A., 104, 108, 152, 

234-6 

Gloucester, 128 
Gloucestershire, 54, 65, 83, 109, 115, 

122, 123, 128, 234, 245 
Gneist, Rudolf von, 47 
Godschall, W., 12, 49 
Gomme, Sir G. L., 80 
Gordon, Alexander, 256 
Graham, Sir Jas., 219, 235 
Grampound, 163 
Grand Jury, 51-61, 80 
Grantham, 66, 125 
Grant in Aid for roads, 222, 223, 250- 

253 

" Gratuity Bridges," 95-6 
Great Am well, 195, 226 
Great North Road, 67, 115, 116, 125, 

147, 148, 149, 153, 178-9, 191, 

225, 243 
Great Western Road, 125, 128, 152 



INDEX 



271 



Gregoire, Bishop, 105 

Gressot, John, 77 

Greville, Henry, 182 

Grey, Earl, 182, 188 

Grey, Hon. Anchitell, 79, 82 

Grey, Sir George, 207, 208, 210, 221, 

236 

Griffin, H. H., 256 
Griffiths, Hon. Mrs., 76, 157 
Guest, Dr., 11 
Gurney, Baron, 219, 235, 239 

Hackney, 48, 150 

Hale, Sir Matthew, 106 

Halesworth Bridge, 94 

Hammersmith, 161 

Hampshire, 48-9, 58, 82, 107-8, 234 

Hampton Court Bridge, 129, 154 

Hancock, Walter, 239, 256 

Hanwell Bridge, 91 

Harleian Miscellany, 79 

Harlow, 50 

Harper, C. G., 59, 76, 80, 81, 160, 182, 

224 

Harris, G. Montagu, 256 
Harris, Stanley, 79, 160, 224, 233, 

235, 256 

Harrison, William, 28, 44 
Hasluck, Paul N., 256 
Hassal, Charles, 48 
Hastings, 108 
Haverfield, 11 
Hawkins, Sir John, 30, 35, 37, 44, 46, 

47, 56, 59, 60, 145 
Hawkins, W., 11 
Head, J., 256 

Health, General Board of, 207 
Health Authority as Road Authority, 

256 

Hedges, J. K., 105 
Henley on Thames, 77 
Hentzner, Paul, 156 
Hereford, 152 
Herefordshire, 21, 31, 45, 49, 60, 68, 

152, 225, 226, 234, 245 
Hertfordshire, 32, 44, 45, 47, 114, 115, 

116, 123, 134, 147, 156, 195 
Hervey, Lord, 72, 80 
Highgate Hill, 59 
Highland Roads, Commissioners of, 

168, 180-81 

Highway Boards, 205, 209, 211 
"Highway District," 204-5, 209-11, 

234 

" Highwaymen, the King's," 29 
" Highway Parish," 204, 213-14 



Highway Rate, beginning of, 19 ; 

under Commonwealth, 20-21, 25 ; 

under Charles II., 21-2, 256; 

under William and Mary, 22-3, 

25-6 

Highway Sessions, 15, 16, 17 
High Wycombe, 127 
Hill, Matthew Davenport, 235 
Hill, R. and F. D., 235 
Hills, extra horses on, 82 
Hinde, J. H., 147 
Hinde, W. Ballin, 257 
Hippesley, Sir T. C., 162, 163 
Hirst, F. W., 233 
Hoare, Sir Richard Colt, 10 
Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Henry, 233 
Holinshed's Chronicle, 44 
Hollow way, 133, 143, 156 
Holt, John, 125, 152, 164 
Holyhead Road, 59, 64, 76, 125, 160, 

192, 222 
Home Office, 205-6, 208-9, 210, 219- 

221, 224 
Homer, Rev. Henry, 59, 147, 153, 155, 

156, 163 
Hoole, 45 

Hooper, W. E., 256 
Horseback, travelling on, 63 
Horsham, 71 
Horsley, J., 11 
Hounslow, 252 
Hudson, Rev. W., 45 
Hueffer, Ford Madox, 78 
Hughes, Thomas, 228, 233 
Hull, 77, 178 

" Hundred Bridges," 91, 107-8 
Hunt, Rowland, 60 
Hunter, Sir Robert, 232 
Huntingdonshire, 115, 116, 225, 234 
Hutchins, B. L., 234 
Hythe, 237 

Icknield Way, 4 ** 

Ilbert, Sir C. P., 148 

Ilford Bridge, 92 

Illingworth, W., 105 

Inderwick, F. C., 24-5 

Indictment as device for mainten- 
ance, 51-61, 235; of bridges, 
97-8 

Inquest Jury, 93 

Internal combustion engine, 240 

Interregnum, the, 20, 21, 24, 25 

Ipswich, 37, 47, 48, 68, 107 

Ireland, tolls in, 236 

Islington, 59 



272 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Jacob, J., 83, 84 
James, W., 155 

Jeaffreson, J. C., 25, 45, 79, 112 
Jeffreys, Kees, 243, 257 
Jenkins, Rhys, 256 
Jenks, Edward, 233 
Jenks, Jeremiah W., 44 
Jesse, John, 59 
Jones, Inigo, 103 
Jusserand, J. J., 10, 12, 104-5 
Justice of the Peace, duties of, 14-26 ; 
remissness of, 40-42 

Kendal, 65 

Kensington, 71 

Kent, 25, 49, 77, 82, 107-8, 115, 

134, 148, 160, 163, 177, 234 
King, Colonel Cooper, 10 
Kingston, Alfred, 76 
Kingston Bridge, 106 
Kingswood, 152 
Knight's Pictorial History, 13, 235, 

236 

" Knock Outs," 160 
Knollys, Sir Robert, 87 

Lailey, Barnard, 262 

Lambard, William, 43 

Lambeth Marsh, 3 

Lancashire, 54, 65, 76, 97, 100, 107, 

110, 127, 129, 153, 156, 164, 209, 

245 

Langford, J. A,, 154 
Lathkil River, 94 
Latimer, John, 152, 184 
Lavergne, Gerald, 256 
Law, Henry, 185 
Lawson, J. Grant, 243 
Laycock Bridge, 110 
Layer, John, 43 
Leach, T., 11 
Leahey, Edmund, 233 
Ledbury, 152 
Leeds, 123, 152, 189, 226 
Leicestershire, 128, 234 
Le Marchant, Sir Denis, 182 
Lenche's Trust, 105 
Lennox, Lord William, 224 
Leominster, 21 
Letting of tolls, 159 
Levan, Lord St., 154, 237 
Levy (toll farmer), 160 
Lewins, W., 162 
Lewis, Sir Frankland, 176, 187 
Lewis, Sir George Cornwall, 206-7, 233 
Lewis, Sir T. Frankland, 235 



Licence duties on cars, 242, 250 

Licensing of cars and drivers, 242 

Lights, requirement of, 240 

Lincolnshire, 60, 225, 234 

Little Amwell, 226 

Littleton, E., 25,30, 44, 59, 80, 114,147 

Littleton (Glos.), 147 

Liverpool, 72, 127, 179 

Liversedge, 225 

Llanrwst, 103 

Lloyd, John, 78 

Local Boards of Health, 205 

Local Government Board, 212-14, 

224, 243, 246-8 
Loftie, Rev. W. J., 105 
" Loiterers, the King's," 29 
London, City of, 82-3, 129 
London, food supply of, 66-8, 77, 

78, 80 ; roads in, 175, 177-8, 181 ; 

end of tolls in, 222, 236 
London Bridge, 86, 105 
London County Council, 261 
London Magazine, 224 
Long, H. L., 11 
Longford (Middlesex), 128 
Long Marsham, 32 
Lonsdale, Earl of. See Lowther, 

Viscount 

Lord Ellenborough's Act, 101 
Lowe, R., 163 
Lowestoft, 70 
Lowther, Sir James, 70 
Lowther, Viscount, 178, 190-91 (life), 

193 

Lyme Regis, 67, 77 
Lynn, 77 
Lyons Bridge, 105 



Macadam, John Loudon, 135, 167 
176, 184-5 (life of), 186, 189, 
192-3, 194, 198, 202, 225, 228, 
230, 238, 242, 257 

Macadam, Sir James, 47, 190-91, 141, 
200, 215 

" Macadam the Magician," 165 

Macadam, William, 190 

Macaulay, Lord, 72, 73, 80 

Macclesfield, 128 

M'Culloch, J. R., 146 

Mace, Thomas, 72, 80, 230 

Maceroni, Colonel, 239, 256 

Macfarlane, 235-6 

Macfarlane, C., 13 

Mackay, T., 47 

Mackenzie, W. W., 11, 104, 112, 225 

Maidenhead, 48 






INDEX 



273 



Mails, exemption of, 159 

" Main " roads, 223, 225, 245 

Maitland, F. W., 10 

Malcolm, Jacob, 155 

Malet, Captain, 224 

Malt horses, 94 

Man, Isle of, 237 

" Man and flag," 240 

Manchester, 34-5, 47, 54-5, 60, 72, 
150, 153, 215-6 

Manning, Owen, 106 

Manorial administration, 2, 5, 7, 
8,9 

Manure carts, 157 

Markland, John, 79 

Marlow, 127 

Marshall, William, 72, 81 
Marylebone, 45 

Mather, E., 44 

Mathews, J., 65, 76 

Matilda, Queen, 86, 105 

Maudslay, Athol, 160, 181, 185 

Medway River, 87, 105 

Menai Strait, 170 

Meriton, G., 25, 59, 80 

Metcalf, John, 154 

Meteyard, Eliza, 76, 81 

Metropolis, growth of, 66 

Michael Angelo Taylor's Act, 

229 
Middlesex, 25, 32, 48, 59, 79, 102, 112, 

177, 225, 234, 248 
Mile End Road, 72 
Milestones, 156 
" Mileway Tax," 13 
Mill, John Stuart, 247 
Milton, Rev. W., 162 
Minchinhampton, 198 
Misson, 105 
Mitcham, 134 
Mitford, Miss, 187 
Moffat, 184 
Mogg, E., 191 
Molesworth, W. N., 235 
Mommsen, 10 
Money, Walter, 13, 29 
Monmouthshire, 109, 225, 234 
Montgomery, K. L., 235 
Morison, Fynes, 79 
Moritz, C. H., 81 
Morrison, John, 257 
Mosley, Sir Oswald, 228 
Motor bicycle, 240 
Motor cars, 239-43, 261 
Motor cycles, 261 
Motor omnibuses, 253-4, 261-3 



Motor Union Journal, 256 
Municipal Journal, 256 

Newball, Joseph, 77, 79 

Newbold, 20 

Newbury, 13, 79 

Newcastle, 66, 178, 237 

" Newcastle Salmon," 66 

Newcastle Toll Bridge, 237 

Newcastle-under-Lyme, 128 

Newmarket, 68 

Nicholls, Sir George, 228 

Nicholson, J., 76 

Nicholson, J. S., 12 

Nineteenth Century, 11, 43 

Norfolk, 67, 68, 112, 115, 197, 211, 

225, 227, 234, 245 

North Road. See Great North Road 
Northallerton, 221 
Northamptonshire, 234 
Northcliffe, Lord, 256 
Northumberland, 26, 45, 54, 97-8, 

102, 111, 163, 209, 234 
Norway, 237 

Norwich, 71, 107, 129, 154, 158 
Nottinghamshire, 112, 163, 196, 227, 

234 

Nuisances, 2 
Numbering of cars, 242 

Octroi, 147 

Odgers, W. Blake, 11, 233 

Ogden, James, 47 

Ogilvy, 191 

Ogle, 239 

Oldmixon, 152 

Ongar, 50 

Orr, 9, 188 

" Overseers of Highways," 27, 43 

Owen, 191 

Oxfordshire, 13, 234 

Ozell, 105 

Pace Gate Bridge, 110 

Pack and Prime Way, 61, 231-2 

Pack-horse bridges, 103, 111 

Pack-horses, 64-5, 238 

Pagan, William, 47, 147, 237 

Page, J. W. L., 10 

Paley, W. B., 11 

Palgrave, Sir R. H. Inglis, 233 

Palmer's mail coaches, 72 

Parish, obligations of, 14-26 ; road 

administration by, 27-50, 211 
Parish Bridges, 91 
Parish Council, 235 



274 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Parish meeting, 235 

Parker, C. 8., 235 

Parliament, questions as to roads 

disallowed, 244-5 
Parliamentary Committees and Royal 

Commissions, reports of 
Departmental Committee on 
Highways, 1902-3, 243, 246-7, 
257 
House of Commons Committee of 

1763, 159 
House of Commons Committee of 

1765, 157, 159 
House of Commons Committee of 

1786, 161 
House of Commons Committee of 

1806, 162, 162 
House of Commons Committee of 

1808 (Highways), 140, 141, 152, 
158, 160, 163, 166, 181, 188, 
230 

House of Commons Committee of 

1809 (Broad Wheels and Turn- 
pikes), 60, 143, 156, 161, 163, 181, 
182, 188, 230 

House of Commons Committee of 

1810, 162, 167, 172 
House of Commons Committee of 

1811 (Highways), 166, 181, 184, 

263 
House of Commons Committee of 

1817, 182, 183 
House of Commons Committee of 

1819, 172, 175, 177, 185, 188, 

189 
House of Commons Committee of 

1820 (Turnpikes and Highways), 

176, 184 
House of Commons Committee of 

1821, 176, 177, 224 
House of Commons Committee of 

1827 (Turnpike Trust Renewal 

Bills), 187, 189 
House of Commons Committee 

of 1828 (Whetstone and St. 

Albans Trusts), 184 
House of Commons Committee of 

1830, 184 
House of Commons Committee of 

1834 (County Rate), 225, 227, 

237 
House of Commons Committee of 

1834 (Steam Locomotion on 

Roads), 256 
House of Commons Committee of 

1854 (Metropolitan Bridges), 154 



Parliamentary Committees and Royal 

Commissions, reports of, contd. 
House of Commons Committee of 

1864, 221, 236 
House of Commons Committee 

of 1873 (Locomotives on Roads), 

256 
House of Commons Committee of 

1871-83 (Turnpike Renewals), 

222 
House of Commons Committee of 

1876, 1877, 1881 (Metropolitan 

Bridges), 154 
House of Commons Committee of 

1817 (Holyhead Road), 162, 167- 

170, 176, 178-9, 182-4 
House of Lords Committee of 

1833 (Turnpike Trusts), 160, 

161, 189, 190, 224 
House of Lords Committee of 

1881 (Highways Act), 212, 

233 
Poor Law Commissioners Report 

on Local Taxation, 1843, 233 
Royal Commission of Enquiry 

into Poor Laws, 1834, 227, 

228 
Royal Commission of Enquiry 

into Turnpike Trusts, 1840, 

225 
Royal Commission of Enquiry 

into South Wales, 1844, 217, 

235 
Parnell, Sir Henry, 81, 145, 146, 147, 

154, 164, 168-70, 181, 182, 183, 

184, 186, 188, 193, 202, 229, 

230 
Parochial road administration, 27-50, 

211 

Passage, highway as, 5 
Paterson, 191 

Pauper Labour, 198-201, 227-8 
Pavage, 114, 147 
Peace, the King's, 10 
Peel, Albert, 32, 33, 47 
Peel, Sir Robert, 126, 152 
Pemberton, A. C., 256 
Pembrokeshire, 37, 48, 218 
Penfold, Charles, 228, 233 
Penzance, 80 
Peter, Thurstan, 47 
Peterborough, 70 
Petrol engine, 240 
Petrol tax, 250 
Petty Sessional Division as road area, 

209 



INDEX 



275 



Pevensey, 32, 45 

Phelps, William, 10 

Phene, Dr., 10 

Philanglus, 77, 79 

Phillips, Robert, 132, 155 

Piers Plowman, 8 

Pigs, 67-8 

Pikemen, 138, 160, 216 

Pilson Bridge, 109 

" Pious Uses Trustees " of Leeds, 226 

Pitt, William, 157 

Place MSS., 152 

Ploughland, 16, 26 

Plymouth, 67, 125, 154, 216, 237 

Pollock, Sir F., 10 

Pomeroy, W. T., 227 

Pontage, 114, 129, 153 

"Pontifex Maximus Telford," 165, 

168 

Pontypridd Bridge, 103 
Poor Law Union as road area, 209 
Portman, Hon. E. B., 45, 203, 225, 

228 

Portsmouth, 72, 224 
Post Office, 162, 167, 176, 178, 227 
Potters Bridge, 109 
Pratt, J. Tidd, 104 
Presentment, the device of, 51-61 ; 

of bridges, 97-8 
Prestations, 43 
Preston, 76-7, 79 
Preston Bridge, 129, 154 
Price, R. D. G., 235 
Pringle, A., 163 
Private tolls, 237 
Proclamation of 1621, 74, 81 ; ditto 

of 1629, 81 

Proctor, Thomas, 11, 44 
Pryme, George, 228, 232 
Pulman, G. P. R., 78 
Purleigh, 37, 47 
Pusey, 48 
Pusey, Mrs., 80 
Putney Bridge, 129, 154 

Quarterly Review, 183, 224, 227, 232, 
235 

Radwell, 114 

Railways, the " calamity of," 215-16 

Rainhill, 179 

Rait, R. S., 25 

Batione tenurae, 7, 11, 86, 88, 106 

Reading, 22, 34, 47, 127 

Rebecca Riots, 217-20, 235-6 

Redlich, Josef, 233 



Reformation, effect of, 9 
Registration of cars, 242 
Rennie, 104, 185 
Ricardo, David, 189, 233 
Richards, Sir G. K., 235 
Rickman, John, 146, 182, 183 
Riots, turnpike, 120, 123, 152, 217- 

220, 235-6 

Road, derivations of, 6, 12 
Road Board, the, 244, 250-55, 258- 

261 

Road Fund, the, 250-55 
Road plough, 32, 47 
Roads Improvement Association, 243, 

248, 257 

Roadwork in Ireland, 28, 42 
Roberson, Rev. Hammond, 226 
Roberts, George, 77 
Rochdale Road, 34, 47 
Rochester, Bishop of, 87 
Rochester Bridge, 87, 105 
Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 8, 10, 12, 

13, 65 
Rolle, 11 

Roman bridges, 86, 105 
Roman roads, 3, 4 
Rowe, Samuel, 10, 76 
" Rule of the road," 262-3 
Rural District Councils, 213, 243-5, 

252, 255 
Rural Sanitary Authority, 213, 243-5, 

252, 255 

Rutland, 210, 234 
Rutt, J. T., 25 
Ryves, Reginald, 185 

St. Albans, 127 

St. Columb, 33, 47 

St. Giles in the Fields, 25, 147 

St. Ives, 70 

St. Mary's, Reading, 22, 25, 34, 47 

Safety bicycle, 239 

Salmon, trade in, 66-7 

Salt Way, 4 

Sandown, 236 

Sauchrie, 171 

Saunders, T. W., 1834 

Saunier, L. B. de, 256 

Scarth, H. W., 11 

Scobell, Henry, 25 

Scotch cattle, 68, 78 

Scotland, tolls in, 236 

Scott, John (of Amwell), 30, 44-6, 
49-50, 59, 68, 78, 81, 82, 83, 111, 
120, 121, 122, 127, 132, 145, 146, 
151, 153, 155, 157, 158 



276 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Scott, John (of Berwick-on-Tweed), 

113 

" Secondary roads," 223, 245 
Sedan chair, 80 
Selkirk, Earl of, 165 
Sevenoaks, 116 
Severn River, 103 
Shanklin, 236 
Shapleigh, John, 29, 41, 44, 45, 52, 

58, 59, 60 
Shaw-Lefevre, 228 
Sheep, 68 
Sheffield, 128 
Sheldon, Frederick, 77 
Shelford, Leonard, 229 
Shelley Bridge, 92 
Sheppard, Thomas, 233 
Sheppard, William, 43 
Shields, 66 
Shooters Hill, 163 
Shoreditch, 25 
Shrewsbury, 168 
Shropshire, 103, 107, 168, 225 
Sibthorp, Colonel, 186 
Side-slipping, 241 
Signposts, 156-7 
Simon, Sir John, 234 
Sinclair, Sir John, 38, 78, 156, 161, 

162, 163, 170-71, 174, 176, 181, 

188, 193, 230 
Sinclair, Rev. J. S., 184 
Slide-car, 80 
Smiles, Samuel, 10, 72, 76, 80, 103, 

104, 113, 154, 181, 182, 183, 185, 

191 

Smith, Adam, 157 
Smith, Dr. Southwood, 207 
Smith, Joshua Toulmin, 105, 233 
Smith, Lucy Toulmin, 10, 12, 104-5 
Smith, William, 154 
Smithfield, 67, 68, 80 
Soldiers, exemption of, 159 
Somerset, 54, 69, 60, 65, 83, 115, 122, 

148 

Southampton, 60 
Southey, R., 168, 183 
Southwell, 196-7, 227, 228 
Spearman, R. H., 11 
Speed limit, 242 
Speen, 48 

Spencer, F. H., 148, 187 
Spencer, Herbert, 105 
Spilsby, 37, 48 
Spital, 26 
Squire, 239 
Stafford, William, 106 



Staffordshire, 64, 100, 211, 225, 234 

Stage coaches, 72, 215 

Standish, 128 

Stapleton, Mrs., 13 

Starley, James, 256 

Statistics of road expenditure, 259- 

261 
Statute Labour, 14-26, 28-48, 117, 

129, 225, 228 

Statute of Bridges, 1531, 89, 91 
Statute of Winchester, 7, 12 
Steam carriages, 239 
Stephens, J. E. R., 262 
Stiles, 231 
Stilton, 115 
Stockton, 215 
Stonehouse, 128 
Stonehouse, Rev. W. B., 77 
Stonemen, 27 
Stonewardens, 27 
Stony Stratford, 116 
Stopping up roads, 235 
Stour River, 68, 107 
Stow, John, 69, 105 
Stratford, 72 
Stratford-at-Bow, 86, 106 
Stratford Bridge, 68 
Stratton, Ezra M., 79 
Strauss, R., 79 
Stroud, 128, 189 
Stubbs, Dr. W., 12 
Sudbury, 68 
Sudbury Bridge, 107 
Suffolk, 48, 53, 60, 68, 92, 94, 95, 107, 

108, 110, 140, 211, 225 
Summers and Ogle, 239 
Sunday tolls, 137, 150 
Sunderland, 129, 154 
" Supervisors of Highways," 27 
Surrey, 71, 80, 115, 131, 245 
Surveyor, 256 
Surveyor of Highways, 14-26, 117, 

211, 221, 244 

Sussex, 32, 45, 68, 77, 107-8 
Swale River, 87 
Sweden, 237 
Swynfen, 79 

Taff River, 103 

Tamworth, 126, 152-3 

Tar on roads, 248, 249 

Tatler, The, 257 

Taunton, 163 

Taxes, new, in 1909, 250 

Taylor, John, 69, 78 

Team Duty, 31, 33, 117, 225, 228-9 



INDEX 



277 



Teign River, 86, 105 
Telford, Thomas, 103, 104, 113, 146, 
165-71, 178-9, 182-3 (life), 185, 
186, 190, 192-3, 202 
Teynham, Lord, 188 
Thames River, 86, 103, 105 
Thirsk, 48, 153 
" Thomason Tracts," 25 
Thomson, Richard, 105 
Thonnerton, 147 
" Through Toll," 147 
Thurlow, Lord, 157 
Thurso, 224 
Times, letters to, 126, 152, 161, 162, 

181, 191, 257, 261 
Tires, 75-6, 238-9, 241 
Toll farmers, 138-9, 160 
Tollgates, number of, 216 
Toll revenue hi 1837, 215; in 1850, 216 
Tolls, private, 237 
Porrens, W. McCullagh, 235 
" Towns Corporate," 89, 106 

rackless trolley car, 254 
Tramways, 261 

Travelling in Middle Ages, 7-9 
Tre"sagnet, Pierre, 185 

irers of Turnpike Trusts, 131 
it, 91, 108 
Trevithick, 239 
Tring, 32, 45 

Trinoda necessitas, 5, 14, 86 
Tristram, W. 0., 224 
Truro, 163 

Tuckwell, Rev. W., 81 
Tuke, J., 47, 227 
Tunbridge, 66, 78 
Turgot, 28, 42, 185 
Turkeys, 68, 78 

Turnpike, 114-237; Acts, 115-21, 
147-60; statistics of, 224, 225; 
Trusts, 215-22 
Turnpike Roads and Trusts, names of 

those specially mentioned 
Hockley and Woburn, 61 
Stamford Hill, 161 
Hammersmith and Brentford, 161, 

162 

Surrey, 161, 192 
Whetstone, 169, 184 
St. Albans, 169, 184 
Bristol District, 174, 179, 184, 189, 

192 
Epping and Ongar Highway Trust, 

161, 191 

Kensington and Hyde Park Turn- 
pike Trust, 178 



Turnpike Roads and Trusts, contd. 

Surrey and Sussex, 179, 192 

Middlesex and Essex, 179 

New Cross, 179 

Worcester, 180, 192 

Hereford, 180, 192 

Alston, 180 

Manchester and Buxton, 180 

Exeter, 189, 192 

Bath, 179 

Metropolitan, 178, 190-91, 192 

Isleworth, 190 

Oxbridge, 190 

Lea Bridge, 190 

Edmonton, 190 

Epping and Ongar, 156, 160 

London and Harwich, 149 

Hackney Road, 155 

Maidenhead and Reading, 128, 
153 

Macclesfield and Buxton, 128, 153 

Newcastle -under-Lyme and Maccles- 
field, 128 

Cirencester and Stroud, 128 

Gloucester and Stroud, 128 

Sevenoaks and Woodgate Road, 
116 

Fornhill and Stony Stratford, 116 

Kensington Turnpike, 100, 110 

Epping and Ongar, 82 

Norwich Road, 80 

Sevenoaks and Tunbridge, 78 

Ludlow Turnpike, 158 

Whetstone Trust, 160 

Reading and Puntfield, 158, 159 

Lancaster and Richmond, 158 

Stretford and Hulme, 159 

Old District of Brentford, 160 

Surrey New Roads, 160 

Old Street Road Trust, 160 

Mountnessing Road, 159 

Marylebone Turnpike, 159, 160 

Lincoln and Peterborough, 169 

Evesham Turnpike, 158 

Kensington Trust, 157 

Chatham and Canterbury, 156 

Three Commotts Trust, 218 

Kidwelly Trust, 218 

Whitechapel, 155 

Domsey Road, 155 

Hammersmith and Brentford, 155 

Horsley and Dudbridge, 128, 153 

Thirsk and Yarm, 153 

Loughborough and Derby, 150 

Reigate and Crawley, 150 

Oldham Turnpike, 150 



278 



THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY 



Turnpike Roads and Trusts, contd. 
Kingsland Road, 150 
Liverpool and Preston, 149 
Southwark and East Greenwich, 

149 

London and East Grinstead, 149 
Highgate and Hampstead, 149 
Harlow and Stump Cross, 149 
Bath and Kingsdown Hill, 149 
Stevenage and Biggleswade, 149 
Leicester and Hinckley, 149 
Norwich and Block Hill, 149 
Tyburn and Uxbridge, 149 
Hockliffe and Stony Stratford, 149 
Highgate and Barnet, 149 
Gravesend and Rochester, 148 
Portsmouth Road, 148 
Bath Road, 148 

Sheppard's Shord and Devizes, 148 
Hockley and Woburn, 148 
Barnhill and Hatton Heath, 148 
Woodford Road, 148 
Minehead Road, 148 
Birdlip and Gloucester, 147 
Reigate and Crawley, 147 
Wymondham and Attleborough, 

147 

Harwich Road, 147 
Dursley and Berkeley, 146 
Oldham Trust, 146 
Epping and Ongar, 135, 137, 146 
Exeter Trust, 146 
Whetstone Trust, 146 

Tweed River, 108 

Tweedmouth, 26 

Twentieth Century, new users in, 238, 
263 

Tyburn Ticket, 38, 49 

Tylor, Dr. Alfred, 10 

Tyne River, 86, 105 

Tynemouth, 64 

Unemployment, action against, 251 
Urban District Councils, 209-10, 213, 

243, 252, 253, 255, 257 
Usk Bridge, 109 
Uxbridge, 243 

Vale of Evesham Road Club, 195, 

227 

Van Ornum, J. L., 262 
Velocipede, 239 

Waddington, S., 43 
Wade, General, 180, 188 



Wadesmill, 115, ,134 

Waggons, 69, 79 

Wakefield Bridge, 105 

Wales, South, Highways Act of 1860 

for, 206-7 ; riots in, 217-30 
Walker, A., 76 
Walker, N., 105 
Wallingford, 86, 105 
Walpole, Rt. Hon. Spencer, 221 
Walpole, Sir Spencer, 183, 227 
Waltham, 50 
Walton Bridge, 129, 154 
Ward, C. M-, 156, 161, 181 
Ware, 115, 134 
Warne, Charles, 10 
Warrington, 72 
Warrington, Earl of, 47 
Warwickshire, 64, 84, 136 
" Washway," 156 
Watermen, London, 69 
Water-splashes, 133 
Watford, 127 
Watling Street, 4 
Watson, Richard, 158 
" Wavy roads," 133, 155 
Waymen, 27 
Waywardens, 27, 208 
Weald, the, 77 
Wedge, Thomas, 49 
Wedgwood, Josiah, 64, 76, 81 
Weighing machines, 139-41, 161 
Weir, J., 104 
Wellbeloved, Robert, 231 
Welsh cattle, 68, 78 
Western, Squire, 71 
Westminster Bridge, 103, 129, 154 
Westminster Review, 186 
Westmoreland, 65, 76, 80, 163, 211, 

234 

Wheel traffic, 63, 69, 79 
Wheels, regulation of, 74-5, 120 
Whellan, William, 80 
Whitaker, T. D., 65, 76, 143, 152, 

163 

Whitechapel, 72 
Whitehaven, 70, 80 
Whittle, P. A., 77 
Wickens, William, 152 
Wight, Isle of, 107-8, 225, 227-9, 

234, 236-7 
Wilberforce, W., 50 
Wiltshire, 3, 54, 59, 60, 82, 92, 108, 

110, 112, 115, 148, 234 
Windsor, 128, 129, 154, 261 
Winstone, Benjamin, 82, 146, 156, 

160, 161, 191 



INDEX 



279 



Wisbech, 67, 87, 105 
Wwbech Bridge, 105 
Winchester, 60 
Withington, L., 44 
Woodbridge, 140 
Worcestershire, 32, 45, 195, 226-7 
Workington, 67, 78 
Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel, 157 
Wright, Sir R. S., 233 
Wright, Thomas, 10, 11, 105 
Wrightson, W. B., 221, 236 



Yarm, 48, 153 

Yarmouth, 70 

Yarrow, A. F., 256 

Yonge, Walter, 77 

York, 79, 115, 178 

Yorkshire, 3, 24, 47, 98-9, 108, 178, 

196, 209, 211, 227, 237 
Young, Arthur, 38, 72, 142, 145, 165, 

170, 180 

Zouch, 50 



THE END 



Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh. 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION 

Demy 8vo (1911). Price 6s. net 



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IN this volume the authors propound a constructive policy, 
worked out in considerable detail, by the adoption of which 
they believe that the nation could, within a very few years, 
progressively get rid of the great bulk of the involuntary 
destitution in which so large a proportion of our population is 
now plunged. They analyse the several causes of this destitu- 
tion, and show how these can severally be arrested in their 
operation. The extensive ravages of preventible sickness are 
shown to be productive, directly and indirectly, of probably half 
the whole mass of destitution ; and the authors give us the 
outlines of a national campaign against sickness. The evil 
effects of child neglect, from infancy to adolescence, are traced 
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The dependence of destitution on feeble-mindedness and mental 
deficiency leads to an examination of the bearing, upon the 
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The Prevention of Destitution contd. 

actually preventing the great bulk of unemployment, and for 
maintaining under training those whose unemployment cannot 
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" overlapping " and duplication of relief at present resulting from 
the multiplicity of unco-ordinated authorities and agencies is 
described at some length ; and proposals are made for preventing 
it by a Common Eegister. Finally, an elaborate chapter is 
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of the direct and indirect effects on personal character and 
on family life, both of the present system of dealing with those \ 
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"The universal maintenance of a definite standard of civilised 1 
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In order to keep the page free from footnotes and references 
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The Prevention of Destitution contd. 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE 

CHAP. 

I. DESTITUTION AS A DISEASE OF SOCIETY. 

II. HOW TO PREVENT THE DESTITUTION THAT ARISES FROM SlCKNEHS. 

III. DESTITUTION AND EUGENICS. 

IV. HOW TO PREVENT THE DESTITUTION ARISING FROM CHILD NEGLECT 

V. SWEATING AND UNEMPLOYMENT AS CAUSES OF DESTITUTION. 

VI. HOW TO PREVENT UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT. 

VIL INSURANCE. 

VIII. THE ENLARGED SPHERE OF VOLUNTARY AGENCIES IN A PREVEN- 
TIVE CAMPAIGN AGAINST DESTITUTION. 
IX. THE NEED FOR A COMMON REGISTER AND A REGISTRAR OP 

PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. 
X. THE MORAL FACTOR. 

INDEX. 



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GRANTS IN AID: 

A CRITICISM AND A PROPOSAL 

BY SIDNEY WEBB 
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THIS is the first volume dealing with Grants in Aid as an instru- 
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time, a sum of about thirty millions sterling is annually paid by 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the various Local Governing 
Authorities of the Kingdom. This large subvention has 
important effects on Local Government which have never 
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in the Grant in Aid we have unconsciously devised an instru- 
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its gradual adoption during the past three-quarters of a century 
has created a hierarchy of local government far superior to that 
of France and Germany on the one hand (termed by the author 
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Grants in Aid contd. 



The book forms No. 24 of the Studies in Economics and 
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CONTENTS 

PREFACE. 

CHAP. 

I. WHAT THE GRANTS IN AID SEEM TO BE AND WHAT THEY REALUX 

ARE. 

II. WHY HAVE GRANTS IN AID AT ALL? 

III. HOW WE DISTRIBUTE THIRTY MILLIONS A YEAR IN GRANTS IN AlD. 

IV. THE GRANTS IN AID OF THE POOR LAW AUTHORITIES. 

V. THE GRANTS IN AID OF THE LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES. 
VI. THE LINES OF REFORM. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
INDEX. 



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ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY 

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ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

(THE PARISH AND THE COUNTY) 

FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT 

THIS work, the result of eight years' research into the manuscript 
records of the Parish and the County all over England and Wales 
from Northumberland to Cornwall, from Cardigan to Kent combines 
history and description in a continuous narrative of extraordinary 
interest. Avoiding the questions of the origin of English local institu- 
tions, and even of their mediaeval development, the authors plunge 
at once into a vivid description of the Parish Officers and the Vestry, 
Quarter Sessions and the Justices of the Peace, the Lord-Lieutenant 
and the High Sheriff, together with all the other authorities by which 
the internal administration was actually carried on. An entirely new 
view is presented of the social and political development of Parish 
Vestry and Quarter Sessions, of their relations to the Squire and the 
Incumbent, and of their attitude towards Parliament and the problems 
of their age. But the book is more than a contribution to history 
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English Local Government contd. 



CONTENTS 

THE PARISH 

INTRODUCTION. 

THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE PARISH. 

(a) THE AREA AND MEMBERSHIP OF THE PARISH ; (6) THE OFFICERS 
OF THE PARISH ; (c) THE SERVANTS OF THE PARISH ; (d) THE IN- 
CUMBENT ; (e) THE PARISH VESTRY ; (/) THE PARISH AS A UNIT OF 
OBLIGATION. 

UNORGANISED PARISH GOVERNMENT. 

(a) THE PARISH OLIGARCHY ; (&) GOVERNMENT BY CONSENT ; (c) THE 
UNCONTROLLED PARISH OFFICERS ; (d} THE RULE OF THE Boss ; 
() THE TURBULENT OPEN VESTRY. 

AN EXTRA-LEGAL DEMOCRACY. 

(a) THE ORGANISATION OF THE PUBLIC MEETING ; (b) THE CONTROL 
OVER THE UNPAID OFFICERS ; (c) A SALARIED STAFF ; (d) THE PARISH 
COMMITTEE ; (e) AN ORGANISED DEMOCRACY ; (/) THE RECALCITRANT 
MINORITY. 

THE STRANGLING OF THE PARISH. 

(a) EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LEGISLATION ; (6) THE STURGES BOURNE 
ACTS ; (c) THE STURGES BOURNE SELECT VESTRIES ; (d) THE SALARIED 
OVERSEER ; (e) THE REFERENDUM ; (/) THE DEATH OF THE PARISH. 

THE LEGALITY OF THE CLOSE VESTRY. 

(a) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY IMMEMORIAL CUSTOM ; (ft) THE CLOSE 
VESTRY BY BISHOP'S FACULTY ; (c) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY CHURCH 
BUILDING ACT ; (d) THE CLOSE VESTRY BY LOCAL ACT ; (e) THE 
CONSTITUTIONS OF CLOSE VESTRIES. 

CLOSE VESTRY ADMINISTRATION. 

(a) PROVINCIAL CLOSE VESTRIES ; (&) METROPOLITAN CLOSE 
VESTRIES ; (c) CLOSE VESTRY EXCLUSIVENESS ; (d) THE WORST AND 
THE BEST. 

THE REFORM OF THE CLOSE VESTRY. 

(a) THE ASSAULTS THAT FAILED ; (&) A LONDON MOVEMENT ; 
(c) OPENING THE CLOSE VESTRY. 



THE COUNTY 

INTRODUCTION. 

THE LEGAL CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNTY. 

(a) THE AREA AND DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTY; (&) THE CUSTOS 
ROTULORUM ; (c) THE SHERIFF AND HIS COURT ; (d) THE HIGH CON- 
STABLE ; (e) THE CORONER ; (/) THE COMMISSION OF THE PEACE ; 
(g) COUNTY SERVICE ; (h) AN ORGAN OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. 

8 



English Local Government contd. 



ON SOME ANOMALOUS COUNTY JURISDICTIONS, INCLUDING THE COUNTIES 
PALATINE. 

THE RULERS OF THE COUNTY. 

(a) NUMBER AND DISTRIBUTION OF JUSTICES; (b) THE JUSTICE OF 
MEAN DEGREE ; (c) THE TRADING JUSTICE ; (d) THE COURT JUSTICE ; 
(e) THE SYCOPHANT JUSTICE AND RURAL TYRANT ; (/) THE MOUTH- 
PIECE OF THE CLERK ; (g) THE CLERICAL JUSTICE ; (A) THE LEADER 
OF THE PARISH ; (i) LEADERS OF THE COUNTY ; (/) THE LORD- 
LIEUTENANT AND THE HIGH SHERIFF ; (fc) CLASS EXCLUSIVENESS. 

COUNTY ADMINISTRATION BY JUSTICES OUT OF SESSIONS. 

(a) THE "SINGLE JUSTICE"; (b) THE "DOUBLE JUSTICE"; (c) THE 
SPECIAL SESSIONS ; (d) PETTY SESSIONS ; (e) THE SERVANTS OF THE 
JUSTICES; (/) THE SPHERE OF JUSTICES "OUT OF SESSIONS." 

THE COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS. 

(a) THE TIME AND PLACE OF MEETING ; (b) THE CHAIRMAN OF THE 
COURT; (c) THE PROCEDURE OF THE COURT; (d) ADMINISTRATION BY 
JUDICIAL PROCESS ; (e) THE GRAND JURY ; (/) THE HUNDRED JURY ; 
(g) PRESENTMENTS BY CONSTABLES ; (h) PRESENTMENTS BY JUSTICES. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXTRA-LEGAL CONSTITUTION. 
I. THE COUNTY EXECUTIVE. 

(a) THE HIGH SHERIFF AND HIS BAILIFFS ; (6) THE HIGH CON- 
STABLE ; (c) THE CLERK OF THE PEACE ; (d) THE COUNTY TREASURER ; 
(e) THE COUNTY SURVEYOR; (/) EXECUTIVE MAKESHIFTS; (g) COM- 
MITTEES OF JUSTICES. 

II. AN INCHOATE PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE. 
III. AN EXTRA-LEGAL COUNTY OLIGARCHY. 

THE REACTION AGAINST THE RULERS OF THE COUNTY. 

(a) THE BREAKDOWN OF THE MIDDLESEX BENCH ; (b) THE LACK OF 
JUSTICES ; (c) THE RESTRICTION OF PUBLIC HOUSES ; (d) THE JUSTICES' 
POOR LAW ; (e) THE GROWTH OF COUNTY EXPENDITURE ; (/) THE 
SEVERITY OF THE GAME LAWS ; (g} THE STOPPING UP OF FOOTPATHS ; 
(h) THE STRIPPING OF THE OLIGARCHY; (i) WHY THE JUSTICES 
SURVIVED. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

9 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 858, in 2 volumes (1908). Price 26s. net. 

ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

(THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH) 

FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT 



IN this second instalment of their English Local Government 
the authors apply their method of combined history and analysis 
to the fascinating story of the towns and the manorial com- 
munities, of which several hundreds find mention, belonging to 
all the counties of England and Wales. An interesting new 
account is given, from unpublished materials, of the organisation 
and development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of 
the Manor and its several Courts, with picturesque glimpses of 
the hitherto undescribed part played by the Jury in the common- 
field agriculture. But the Manor is shown to be also the 
starting-point for a whole series of constitutional developments, 
passing through grade after grade of Manorial Borough, hitherto 
undescribed, into the complete Municipal Corporation. This, 
too, is analysed and described in a way never before attempted, 
so as to make the strangely interesting life of the towns live j 
before us. A special chapter is devoted to the Boroughs of . 
Wales, in which their national peculiarities are brought out. 
Their extensive study of the manuscript records enable the 
authors to set forth the inner working of the " Municipal 
Democracies" that existed alongside the chartered oligarchies, 

10 



English Local Government contd. 



with their many analogies to modern American cities ; and to 
bring vividly to notice the conditions and limitations of succes- 
sive Democratic government. There is an interesting sketch of 
English hierarchies of town government, chief among them being 
the Cinque Ports, the constitutional position of which is 
presented in a new light. The anomalous history of the City 
of Westminster is explored by the light of the unpublished 
archives of its peculiar municipal organisation. An altogether 
novel view is presented of the constitutional development of the 
greatest municipality of all, the Corporation of the City of 
London, to which no fewer than 124 pages are devoted. The 
work concludes with a picturesque account of the "Municipal 
Kevolution" of 1835, and the Homeric combat of Brougham 
and Lyndhurst which ended in the Municipal Eeform Act 
of 1835. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION. 

THE LORI/H COURT 

(a) THE LAWYER'S VIEW OF THE LORD'S COURT. 
(6) THE COURT BARON. 
(c) THE COURT LEET. 

THE COURT IN RUINS 

(a) THE HIERARCHY OF COURTS. 
(6) THE COURT OF THE HUNDRED. 
(c) THE COURT OF THE MANOR : 
(i.) THE BAMBURGH COURTS. 
(ii.) THE COURT LEET OF THE SAVOY. 
(iii.) THE COURT LEET AND COURT BARON OF MANCHESTER. 
(() THE PREVALENCE AND DECAY OF THE LORD'S COURT. 
11 



English Local Government contd. 

THE MANORIAL BOROUGH 

(a) THE VILLAGE MEETING. 
(6) THE CHARTERED TOWNSHIP. 

(c) THE LORDLESS COURT. 

(d) THE LORD'S BOROUGH. 

(e) THE ENFRANCHISED MANORIAL BOROUGH. 
(/) MANOR AND GILD. 

(gr) ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND DECA*. 

THE CITY AND BOROUGH OF WESTMINSTER 

(a) BURLEIGH'S CONSTITUTION. 

(b) MUNICIPAL ATROPHY. 

TIIE BOROUGHS OF WALES 

(a) INCIPIENT AUTONOMY. 

(b) THE WELSH MANORIAL BOROUGH. 

(c) THE WELSH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION. 

THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION 

(a) THE INSTRUMENT OF INCORPORATION. 
(6) CORPORATE JURISDICTIONS. 

(c) CORPORATE OBLIGATIONS. 

(d) THE AREA OF THE CORPORATION. 

(0) THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION. 
(/) THE SERVANTS OF THE CORPORATION. 

(g) THE CHIEF OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION. 
(A) THE HEAD OF THE CORPORATION. 

(1) THE BAILIFFS. 

(j) THE HIGH STEWARD AND THE RECORDER. 
(k) THE CHAMBERLAIN AND THE TOWN CLERK. 
(I) THE COUNTY OFFICERS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATION. 
(m) THE MAYOR'S BRETHREN AND THE MAYOR'S COUNSELLORS. 
(n) THE COURTS OF THE CORPORATION. 
(0) COURTS OF CIVIL JURISDICTION. 
(p) THE COURT LEET. 

(q) THE BOROUGH COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS. 
(r) COURTS OF SPECIALISED JURISDICTION. 
(*) THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURTS OF THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIOI 
(t) THE MUNICIPAL CONSTITUTIONS OF 1689. 

MUNICIPAL DISINTEGRATION 

(a) THE RISE OF THE CORPORATE MAGISTRACY. 
(6) THE DECLINE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL. 
' (c) THE ESTABLISHMENT OF NEW STATUTORY AUTHORITIES. 

(d) THE PASSING OF THE FREEMEN. 

(e) THE MINGLING OF GROWTH AND DECAY. 

12 



English Local Government contd. 



ADMINISTRATION BY CLOSE CORPORATIONS 

(PENZANCE, LEEDS, COVENTRY, BRISTOL, LEICESTER, AND LIVERPOOL.) 

ADMINISTRATION BY MUNICIPAL DEMOCRACIES 

(MORPETH, BERWICK-UPON-TWEED, NORWICH, AJTD IPSWICH.) 

THE CITY OF LONDON 

(a) THE LEGAL CONSTITUTION OF THE CITY. 

(6) THE SERVICE OF THE CITIZEN TO HIS WARD. 

(c) THE PRECINCT. 

(d) THE INQUEST OF THE WARD. 

(e) THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE WARD. 
(/) THE DECAY OF WARD GOVERNMENT. 
(g) THE COURT OF COMMON HALL. 

(h) THE COURT OF COMMON COUNCIL. 
(t) THE COURT OF ALDERMEN. 
(j) THE SHRIEVALTY. 
(&) THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD 
(I) THE OFFICERS OF THE CORPORATION. 
(m) A RATEPAYERS' DEMOCRACY. 

THE MUNICIPAL REVOLUTION 

(a) TOWARDS THE REVOLUTION. 
(6) INSTALMENTS OF REFORM. 

(c) THE ROYAL COMMISSION. 

(d) AN ALTERNATIVE JUDGMENT. 
() THE WHIG BILL. 

(/) THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT. 

INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND OTHER PERSONS. 

INDEX OF PLACES. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 



SOME PRESS NOTICES OF 

ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT 



"A book of the deepest, even of fascinating interest. Here for the first 
time we have a real study of local life in England, in village and town and 
country. . . . Everywhere we follow the gallant fights of humane and just 
men whose stories are scattered through these pages, along with the sharp 
dealings of the astute. Familiar names meet us a great-uncle of Cecil 
Rhodes making his ' Empire ' in St. Pancras ; the novelist Fielding cutting 
down the gains of the magistrate who preyed on the poor. . . . Noble figures 
stand out among the ignoble. As in the parish, the rulers of the county 
. . . found themselves left free ... to administer as they thought fit 
They used the power fully \ governed, legislated, silently transformed their 
constitution, and showed themselves capable of the same extremes aa the men 
of the parish, except that they never surrendered to the * boss.' . . . We 
have only touched here on the tale the authors give, so absorbing in interest 
to any Englishman. . . . The best tribute to the writers of this most valuable 
work is the difficulty of turning away for comment or criticism from the 
subjects they present in such a vigorous and human form. . . . They have 
opened a new chapter in English history." Mrs. J. K GREEN, in Westminster 
Gazette. 

" Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's monumental work on our local institutions 
must be a source at once of pride and of something a little like shame. Here 
at last we have a book which is more than worthy to be placed beside those 
of the great continental writers on the subject. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Sidney! 
Webb are as learned as the Prussian, as lucid as the Frenchman, and as 
scholarly and careful as the Austrian. ... If it is literature to present a ! 
singularly vivid picture of a past stage of society, to render it real and lifelike 
by a careful selection and skilful grouping of illustrative details, and tc 
explain its meaning with clearness, sound judgment, and not infrequent 
touches of quiet humour, then assuredly is this volume literary as well at; 
learned. . . . Packed as it is with quotations and references, it is full o; 
transcripts from life which one reader at least has found more fascinating 
than many of the efforts made to revivify the past through the medium o:! 
historical romance or romantic history. The story of the rise, the decline.' 
and the fall of the parish autonomy and the old county oligarchy is in itseL 

14 



English Local Government contd. 



a sort of epic not wanting in the elements of adventure, and even of tragedy. 
. . . Here and there a remarkable personality emerges." Mr. SIDNEY Low, 
in Standard. 

" Without exaggeration it may be said that this work will necessitate the 
rewriting of English history. . . . We are ushered into a new world, full of 
eager and heated interest. . . . The authors have contrived to make these 
dead bones live. Everywhere are peepholes into the lives of the people, and 
occasionally a connected story . . . throws a flood of light on English 
society. There is not a chapter which is not full of facts of general interest, 
while the whole volume . . . will be altogether indispensable to the serious 
student. . . . There is a fascinating tale of the ' boss ' of Bethnal Green. . . . 
A history of the English people, richer in local colour, more comprehensive 
in its survey of social affairs, and more truly human in its sympathies 
than any treatise hitherto given to the public." Mr. R A. BRAT, in 
Daily News. 

" Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb continue their laborious and luminous studies 
of English local institutions. In the last two volumes we find the same charac- 
teristics as those already published respecting the parish and the county a 
minute investigation conducted not in the spirit of the antiquary, but with 
an eye to realities which are of interest to the politician, the historian, and 
the economist ; an examination of the vast mass of printed matter on the 
subject, much of it practically inaccessible ; and exhaustive enquiry among 
unedited manuscript records, some of them probably never before read. A 
few lines in the text or in a footnote are the results of prolonged local in- 
vestigation ; a few unobtrusive words at the close of a sentence, or qualify- 
ing some general statement, are the fruits of a careful search among 
the muniments of some corporation. We cannot speak too highly of the 
industry and patience which these volumes attest. They possess even rarer 
merits. The whole subject is set in a new light. We get away from 
traditional formulae and conceptions. We see the local institutions at work, 
and they appear very different from what they are represented by lawyers to 
be." Times. 

" If it be true, as many deep thinkers maintain, that history affords the 
only sure key to a thorough knowledge of political institutions, then the 
work of which these two learned and elaborate volumes form a part is 

'5 



English Local Government ccntd. 



indispensable to every serious student of English Local Government, for the 
history of that subject has never yet been expounded with such completeness 
and so scientific an impartiality. ... A pioneer in a new way of writing 
the history of institutions. ... By the skill with which they present the 
general movement of institutional developments as the outgrowth of natural 
forces, and constantly illustrate it by particular points of actuality and human 
interest, these writers have given new life to a study too long neglected." 
Scotsman. 

" Closely packed tomes, crowded with detail, and exhibiting the result of 
a sum of research and investigation which leaves the indolent, irresponsible 
reviewer almost wordless with respectful admiration. . . . Such a collection 
of original material has been weighed and sifted as might move the envy of 
any German professor." Evening Standard. 

" For years to come they will still be sifting, amassing, arranging, but 
their reputation as the foremost investigators of fact now amongst us is likely 
to be confirmed rather than shaken. Their work is as minute in detail as 
it is imposing in mass. In their patience they possess their intellect, and 
they remind us of the scholar with a magnifying glass in a picture by Jan 
van Eyck." Observer. 



16 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE BREAK-UP OF THE POOR LAW 

BEING PART I. OF THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE POOR LAW 

COMMISSION 

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 

Demy 8vo, xx and 604 pp. 7s. 6d net. Uniform with 
"English Local Government" 



BLUEBOOKS, it has been said, are places of burial. The original edition 
of the Eeport of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law and the 
Agencies dealing with the Unemployed is a ponderous tome of seven 
pounds weight, crowded with references, footnotes, and appendices, 
impossible either to handle or to read. Mr. and Mrs. Webb have, 
therefore, rescued from this tomb the Minority Eeport signed by the 
Dean of Norwich, Messrs. Chandler and Lansbury, and Mrs. Webb 
herself. By omitting all the notes and references, and printing the 
text in clear type on a convenient octavo page, they present the reader 
with something which he can hold with comfort by his fireside. 

This Minority Report is a new departure in such documents. 
More than 20,000 copies have already been disposed of, and 
it is still selling like the last new novel. It is readable and even 
exciting. It is complete in itself. It presents, in ordered sequence, 
page by page, a masterly survey of what is actually going on in 
our workhouses and in the homes of those maintained on Outdoor 
Relief. It describes in precise detail from carefully authenticated 
evidence what is happening to the infants, to the children of school 
age, to the sick, to the mentally defective, to the widows with children 
struggling on their pittances of Outdoor Relief, to the aged and infirm 
inside the workhouse and outside. It sets forth the overlapping 
of the Poor Law with the newer work of the Education and Public 
Health Authorities, and the consequent waste and confusion. It gives 

17 



The Break- Up of the Poor Law contd. 

a graphic vision of the working of the whole Poor Law machinery in 
all parts of the United Kingdom, which is costing us nearly twenty 
millions sterling per annum. 

The volume concludes with a Scheme of Reform, of novel and far- 
reaching character, which is elaborately worked out in detail, involving 
the abolition of the workhouse, the complete disappearance of the 
Poor Law, and the transfer of the care of the children, the sick, the 
mentally defective, and the aged to the several committees of the 
Town and County Councils already administering analogous services, 
in order that we may now, in the twentieth century, set ourselves to 
prevent destitution, instead of waiting until it occurs. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

18 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE PUBLIC ORGANIZATION OF 
THE LABOUR MARKET 

BEING PART II. OF THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE POOR LAW 

COMMISSION 

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 

Demy 8vo, xvi and 332 pp. 6s. net Uniform with 
"English Local Government" 



THE Problem of the Unemployed, which the Eoyal Commission 
on the Poor Law was incidentally set to solve, is the question ot 
the day. Part II. of the Minority Keport deals with it in a 
manner at once comprehensive and complete. The whole of the 
experience of the Poor Law Authorities, and their bankruptcy 
as regards the destitute able-bodied, is surveyed in vivid and 
picturesque detail. There is a brief account of the work of 
Voluntary Agencies. A lucid description is then given, with 
much new information, of the movement started by Mr. Chamber- 
lain in 1886, which culminated in the Unemployed Workmen 
Act of 1905. The story is told of the various experiments and 
devices that have been tried during the past twenty years, the 
Eelief Works and the Farm Colonies, etc. This leads up to an 
altogether novel descriptive analysis of the Unemployed of to-day, 
who they actually are, and what they really need. The final 
chapter on Proposals for Keforin gives, in elaborate detail, the 
Minority's plan for solving the whole problem of Unemployment 
not by any vague and chimerical panacea, but by a series of 
administratively practicable reforms, based on the actual experi- 
ence of this and other countries, which are within the compass 
of the Cabinet, and could, if desired, be carried in a single session 
of Parliament. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY. AND CALCUTTA 

19 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE STATE AND THE DOCTOR 

Demy 8vo, pp. viii and 276 (1910). Price 6s. net. 



IN this work a great deal that will be new to the ordinary citizen 
is brought to light. The authors show that we do a great deal 
of State Doctoring in England more than is commonly realised 
and that our arrangements have got into a tangle, which 
urgently needs straightening out. Everywhere there is a dupli- 
cation of authorities, and more or less overlapping of work. We 
are spending out of the rates and taxes, in one way or another, 
directly on sickness and Public Health, a vast sum of money 
annually no man knows how much, but it certainly amounts 
to six or seven millions sterling. Meanwhile, as is now being 
revealed to us, a vast amount of sickness goes altogether un- 
treated, with the result of grave damage to our population, and 
unnecessary loss of productive capacity to the community as a 
whole. 

The authors suggest that we put up with this waste, and we 
allow our statesmen to postpone the task of straightening out 
the tangle, very largely because we are not aware of the facts. 
There has hitherto been no popular description of our State 
Doctoring. Many worthy people, thinking themselves educated, 
do not even know of its existence. There is not even an official 
report setting forth exactly what is being done and left undone 
for sickness and the Public Health in the different parts of the 
kingdom. 

But the authors do not content themselves with a picture of 
the costly and wasteful muddle that our responsible statesmen 
allow, session after session, to continue unreformed. The work 
concludes with a remarkable series of proposals for " straighten- 
ing out the tangle " proposals based on the very authoritative 
evidence received by the Koyal Commission on the Poor Law, 
supported not only by the administrators, but also by a large 
section of the medical profession, and rapidly commending them- 
selves to the unprejudiced enquirer. 



LONGMANS, GKEEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

20 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM 

Demy 8vo; Tenth Thousand; New Edition, with New Introductory 
Chapter ; Ivii and 558 pp. (1911). 

Price 7s. 6d. net. 



THIS work describes, not only the growth and development of the Trade 
Union Movement in the United Kingdom from 1700 down to the end of 
the nineteenth century, but also the structure and working of the present 
Trade Union organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded almost 
entirely on material hitherto unpublished, it is not a mere chronicle of 
Trade Union organisation or record of strikes, but gives, in effect, the 
political history of the English working class during the last one hundred 
and fifty years. The opening chapter describes the handicraftsman in 
the toils of the industrial revolution, striving vainly to retain the 
mediaeval regulation of his Standard of Life. In subsequent chapters 
the Place Manuscripts and the archives of the Priory Council and the 
Home Office enable the authors to picture the struggles of the early 
Trade Unionists against the Combination Laws, and the remarkable 
Parliamentary manipulation which led to their repeal. The private 
records of the various Societies, together with contemporary pamphlets 
and working-class newspapers, furnish a graphic account of the hitherto 
undescribed outburst of "New Unionism" of 1830-34, with its 
revolutionary aims and subsequent Chartist entanglements. In the 
course of the narrative we see the intervention in Trade Union history 
of Francis Place, Joseph Hume, J. R M'Culloch, Nassau Senior, 
William the Fourth, Lord Melbourne, Eobert Owen, Fergus O'Connor, 
Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, John Bright, the Christian Socialists, the 
Positivists, and many living politicians. The hidden influence of 
Trade Unionism on English politics is traced from point to point, new 
light being incidentally thrown upon the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's 
Government in 1874. A detailed analysis is given of the economic 
and political causes which have, since 1880, tended to divorce the 

21 



The History of Trade Unionism contd. 

Trade Union Movement from its alliance with " official Liberalism." 
A new introductory chapter brings the story down to the last few 
years. The final chapter describes the Trade Union world of to-day 
in all its varied features, including a realistic sketch of actual Trade 
Union life by a Trade Union Secretary, and a classified census founded 
on the authors' investigations into a thousand separate Unions in all parts 
of the country. A coloured map represents the percentage which the 
Trade Unionists bear to the population of each county. A bibliography 
of Trade Union literature is appended (which, together with that given 
in Industrial Democracy, affords a unique index of almost every available 
source of information). 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION. 
PEEFACE. 

CHAP. 

I. THE ORIGINS OF TRADE UNIONISM. 
II. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE (1799-1825). 

III. THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD (1829-1842). 

IV. THE NEW SPIRIT AND THE NEW MODEL (1843-1860). 
V. THE JUNTA AND THEIR ALLIES (1860-1875). 

VI. SECTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS (1863-1885). 
VII. THE OLD UNIONISM AND THE NEW (1875-1889). 
VIII. THE TRADE UNION WORLD. 



APPENDIX 

ON THE ASSUMED CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE GlLDS IK 
DUBLIN SLIDING SCALES THE SUMMONS TO THE FIRST TRADE UNION 
CONGRESS DISTRIBUTION OF TRADE UNIONISTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 
THE PROGRESS IN MEMBERSHIP OF PARTICULAR TRADE UNIONS Lisi 
OF PUBLICATIONS ON TRADE UNIONS AND COMBINATIONS OF WORKMEN. 

22 



The History of Trade Unionism contd. 

" A masterly piece of work." Times. 

" To the politician ... an invaluable guide." Observer. 

"An admirably lucid presentation of a great mass of complicated facts. 
Its very footnotes display a wealth of material such as would have amply 
sufficed to turn each note into an article of considerable length. In the 
learning they exhibit, and the concise and decisive way in which they settle 
important subsidiary questions and side-issues, they remind us of the notes 
in such monuments of German industry and erudition as Zeller's Griechische 
Philosophic. . . . The result is a full, clear, and condensed history such aa 
can have few parallels. ... We may fairly repeat that the book is a master- 
piece of lucidity of knowledge. Every page is of value, and nearly every 
sentence contains a fact." Speaker. 

" Keadable every word of it. There is plenty of excitement and plenty 
of romance in the book." Queen. 

" As fascinating reading as a well- written novel." Cotton Factory Times. 

" Infinitely painstaking, comprehensive, clear and acute, the first correct 
and scholarly history of Trade Unionism in England. .' . t Marked by 
immense research. . . . The book must find a permanent place upon the 
shelf of every student of Economics. . . . Undeniably marked by the 
qualities of true history fulness, accuracy, and clear connection in 
the presentation of facts." Newcastle Chronicle. 

" It would not be easy to overestimate the value and importance of their 
admirable and masterly work . . . not likely to be superseded for some 
time to come." Economic Review. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

23 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 

Demy 8vo ; Tenth Thousand ; New Edition in 1 vol., with New Introduc 
tory Chapter ; Ixi and 929 pp. (1907), with Two Diagrams. 

Price 12s. net. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

IN this work the authors of The History of Trade Unionism deal, not 
with the past, but with the present. They describe, with the 
systematic detail of the scientific observer, and in the same objective 
spirit, all the forms of Trade Unionism, Factory Legislation, and other 
regulation of industry to be found within the British Isles. The 
whole structure and function of Labour Organisations and Restrictive 
Legislation in every industry is analysed and criticised in a manner 
never before attempted. The employer in difficulties with his work- 
men, the Trade Unionist confronted with a new assault upon his 
Standard Rate, the politician troubled about a new project for Factory 
Legislation, the public-spirited citizen concerned as to the real issues 
of a labour dispute, will find elucidated in this work the very problems 
about which they are thinking. It is a storehouse of authenticated 
facts about every branch of " the Labour Question," gathered from six 
years' personal investigation into every industry in all parts of the 
Kingdom ; systematically classified ; and made accessible by an un- 
usually elaborate Index. But the book is more than an Encyclopedia 
on the Labour Question. Scientific examination of Trade Union 
structure reveals, in these thousand self governing republics, a remark- 

24 



Industrial Democracy contd. 



able evolution in Democratic constitutions, which throws light on 
political problems in a larger sphere. The century-long experience 
of these working-class organisations affords unique evidence as to the 
actual working of such expedients as the Referendum, the Initiative, 
Government by Mass Meeting, Annual Elections, Proportional Repre- 
sentation, Payment of Members, and, generally, the relation between 
the citizen-elector, the chosen representative, and the executive officer. 
The intricate relations of trade with trade have an interesting bearing 
upon such problems as Local Government, Federation, and Home Rule. 
Those who regard the participation of a working-class electorate in the 
affairs of Government as the distinctive, if not the dangerous feature 
in modern politics, will here find the phenomenon isolated, and may 
learn how the British workman actually deals with similar issues in 
his own sphere. The intricate constitutions and interesting political 
experiments of the thousand self-governing Trade Union republics are 
dissected and criticised by the authors in such a way as to make the 
work a contribution to Political Science, as to the scope and method 
of which the authors, in describing their investigations, propound a 
new view. 

The analysis of the working of Trade Unionism and Factory 
Legislation in the various industries of the United Kingdom has 
involved a reconsideration of the conclusions of Political Economy. 
The authors give a new and original description of the working of 
industrial competition in the business world of to-day ; and they are 
led to important modifications of the views currently held upon 
Capital, Interest, Profits, Wages, Women's Labour, the Population 
Question, Foreign Competition, Free Trade, etc. The latter part of 
the work is, in fact, a treatise upon Economics. 

A new Introductory Chapter deals at length with Compulsory 
Courts of Arbitration and Wages -Boards in New Zealand and 
Australia. 






Industrial Democracy contd. 



CONTENTS 

PREFACE. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION. 

PART I 
TRADE UNION STRUCTURE 

CHAP. 

I. PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY. 
II. REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS. 

III. THE UNIT OF GOVERNMENT. 

IV. INTERUNION RELATIONS. 

PART II 
TRADE UNION FUNCTION 

CHAP. 

I. THE METHOD OF MUTUAL INSURANCE. 
II. THE METHOD OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING. 

III. ARBITRATION. 

IV. THE METHOD OF LEGAL ENACTMENT. 
V. THE STANDARD RATE. 

VI. THE NORMAL DAY. 
VII. SANITATION AND SAFETY. 
VIII. NEW PROCESSES AND MACHINERY. 
IX. CONTINUITY OF EMPLOYMENT. 
X. THE ENTRANCE TO A TRADE. 
(a) APPRENTICESHIP. 
(&) THE LIMITATION OF BOY LABOUR. 

(c) PROGRESSION WITHIN THE TRADE. 

(d) THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN. 
XI. THE RIGHT TO A TRADE. 

XII. THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM. 
XIII. THE ASSUMPTIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM. 

PART III 
TRADE UNION THEORY 

CHAP. 

I. THE VERDICT OF THE ECONOMISTS. 
II. TIIE HIGGLING OF THE MARKET. 
26 



Industrial Democracy contd. 



CHAP. 

III. THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADE UNIONISM. 

(a) THE DEVICE OF RESTRICTION OF NUMBERS. 
(ft) THE DEVICE OF THE COMMON RULE. 

(c) THE EFFECT OF THE SECTIONAL APPLICATION OF THE COMMON RULE 

ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRY. 

(d) PARASITIC TRADES. 

(e) THE NATIONAL MINIMUM. 
(/) THE UNEMPLOYABLE. 

(g) SUMMARY OF THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DEVICE OF 

THE COMMON RULE. 
(h) TRADE UNION METHODS. 

IV. TRADE UNIONISM AND DEMOCRACY. 



APPENDICES 

THE LEGAL POSITION OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN ENGLAND THE BEARING 
OF INDUSTRIAL PARASITISM AND THE POLICY OF A NATIONAL MINIMUM 
ON THE FREE TRADE CONTROVERSY SOME STATISTICS BEARING ON THE 
RELATIVE MOVEMENTS OF THE MARRIAGE AND BIRTH-RATES, PAUPERISM, 
WAGES, AND THE PRICE OF WHEAT A SUPPLEMENT TO THE BIBLIO- 
GRAPHY OF TRADE UNIONISM. 



" A permanent and invaluable contribution to the sum of human knowledge. . . . 
We commend to the public a book which is a monument of research and full of 
candour. . . . Indispensable to every publicist and politician." Times (on day of 
publication). 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

27 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



PROBLEMS OF MODERN INDUSTRY 

Post 8vo ; Fourth Thousand ; New Edition, with New Introductory 
Chapter ; xx and 286 pp. (1907). 

Price 5s. net. 

CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION. 
PREFACE. 

CHAP. 

I. THE DIARY OP AN INVESTIGATOR. 
II. THE JEWS OF EAST LONDON. 

III. WOMEN'S WAGES. 

IV. WOMEN AND THE FACTORY ACTS. 

V. THE KEGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR. 

VI. HOW TO DO AWAY WITH THE SWEATING SYSTEM, 

VII. THE REFORM OF THE POOR LAW. 

VIII. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CO-OPERATION AND TRADE UNIONISM 
IX. THE NATIONAL DIVIDEND AND ITS DISTRIBUTION. 
X. THE DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM. 
XL SOCIALISM TRUE AND FALSE. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

28 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



1 THE HISTORY OF 

LIQUOR LICENSING IN ENGLAND 

Small 8vo ; Seventh Thousand ; viii and 162 pp. 
Price 2s. 6d. net. 

CONTENTS 

CHAP. 

I. THE FIRST CENTURY OF LICENSING. 
II. A PERIOD OP LAXNESS. 

III. REGULATION AND SUPPRESSION. 

IV. FREE TRADE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 
V. LEGISLATIVE REPENTANCE. 

APPENDIX THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS. 



" No book could be more opportune. The sale of alcoholic liquor has been undei 
statutory regulation by means of licences for 300 years ; but the period which Mr. 
and Mrs. Webb have taken as their special study deserves the very careful examina- 
tion they give to it, for within those 130 years we find periods of regulation and 
suppression, of laxness and neglect in regard to the control of the liquor traffic, 
equally instructive. There is during this period one brief six years wherein the 
magistrates, awaking to their responsibilities and compelled to a consciousness of the 
evil results of excessive gin-drinking, made a general effort to improve the condition 
of things through the one means in their power. To this remarkable episode the 
authors devote a valuable chapter. Strangely enough, it has hitherto not been 
noticed by historians, nor has it been mentioned in the voluminous literature of the 
temperance movement. Yet the effort of the magistrates during those six years was 
very far-sighted. It included 

"The deliberate and systematic adoption of such modern devices as early closing, Sunday closing, 
the refusal of new licences, the withdrawal of licences from badly conducted houses, the peremptory 
closing of a proportion of houses in a district over-supplied with licences, and, in some remarkable 
instances, even the establishment of a system of local option and local veto, both as regards the 
opening of new public-houses and the closing of those already in existence, all without the slightest 
idea of compensation. 

All this in the closing years of the eighteenth century ! But what a contrast to this 
spasm of local statesmanship the earlier years of that drink-sodden century display ! 
Then, and not really till then, were sown the seeds of drunkenness in England. 
Contrasted with that reign of orgy the action of the magistrates in 1787 seems all 
the brighter, and the disappearance of the fact from public memory the more remark- 
able. Mr. and Mrs. Webb bring their detailed story to an end with the Drink BUI 
of 1830, which led to another outbreak of the drinking habit." Guardian. 

" A valuable contribution to the history of the liquor traffic." Political Science 
Quarterly. 

"This little book, with its abundance of newly discovered facts, is highly 
opportune." Economic Review. 

" The book is of great interest, contains evidence of laborious investigation, and 
provides an admirably clear history of a matter of immediate practical importance." 
Speaker. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA - 
29 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



LONDON EDUCATION 

BY SIDNEY WEBB 

Small 8vo ; viii and 219 pp. (1903). 

Price 2s. 6d. net. 

A Description of the Educational Organisation of London, with a Survey of some of 
its Administrative Problems avoiding both politics and religion. 

CONTENTS 

CHAP. 

I. THE EVOLUTION OP AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 
II. THE ORGANISATION OF THE UNIVERSITY 

III. THE ORGANISATION OP COMMERCIAL EDUCATION. 

IV. THE ORGANISATION OP THE POLYTECHNICS. 

V. THE ORGANISATION OP THE LIBRARY SERVICE. 
VI. THE LION IN THE PATH. 



" This small but important volume. ... It is a noble ideal." Spectator. 

"Patiently and laboriously he has surveyed our educational equipment . . . 
and he presents a creditably clear and comprehensible picture of the whole field. 
It enables the administrator to see the various parts in their due proportion. It 
lays a much-needed emphasis ou higher education ; it suggests some administrative 
improvements, and forms an indispensable starting-point for the far -reaching 
schemes of co-ordination which it shows to be so sorely needed." Speaker. 

" In dealing with elementary education, Mr. Webb is most practical ; in dealing 
with the nascent London University he is most stimulating." Pilot. 

"A debt of gratitude is due to Mr. Sidney Webb. . . . The book contains at 
once ideal and practical proposals for the attainment of this ideal." Daily News. 



LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 

30 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN 
GREAT BRITAIN 

BY BEATRICE POTTER (Mrs. SIDNEY WEBB) 

Crown 8vo ; Second Edition (1893) ; Fifth Thousand ; xii and 260 pp., 
with Coloured Map, Appendices, and Index. 

Price 2s. 6d. 

CONTENTS 

CHAP. 

I. THE CO-OPERATIVE IDEA. 
II. THE SPIRIT OF ASSOCIATION. 

III. THE STORE. 

IV. FEDERATION. 

V. ASSOCIATION OF PRODUCERS. 
VI. A STATE WITHIN A STATE. 
VII. THE IDEAL AND THE FACT. 
VIII. CONCLUSION. 

APPENDIX 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION LIST OF PARLIAMENTARY 
PAPERS RELATING TO LABOUR QUESTION IN THIS CENTURY CLASSIFIED 
TABLES OF ASSOCIATIONS OF PRODUCERS EXTRACT FROM LETTER FROM 
MR. D. F. SCHLOSS TABLE OF PERCENTAGES OF CO-OPERATIVE SALES PEE 
HUNDRED OF POPULATION TABLE OF THE RELATIVE PROGRESS OF THE 
OO-OFERATIVE MOVEMENT. 



"Miss Beatrice Potter's luminous and suggestive volume is not a mere bald, 
historical outline, but a thoughtful and pregnant study of tendencies, causes, and 
effects." Times. 

" The whole volume is full of suggestion, both to co-operators and politicians. 
... It is without doubt the ablest and most philosophical analysis of the co-opera- 
tive movement which has yet been produced." Speaker. 



GEORGE ALLEN AND CO., LIMITED 
KATHBONE PLACE, LONDON 



WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 



PUBLISHED BY GEORGE ALLEN AND Co., LIMITED 

SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND 

BY SIDNEY WEBB 

Crown 8vo; Second Edition (1894), with New Introductory Chapter; 
xxii and 136 pp. 

Price 2s. 6d. 

" The best general view of the subject from the moderate Socialist side."- 
Athenceum. 



PUBLISHED BY GEORGE ALLEN AND Co., LIMITED 

THE LONDON PROGRAMME 

BY SIDNEY WEBB 

Crown 8vo; Second Edition (1894), with New Introductory Chapter; 
viii and 214 pp. 

Price 2s. 6d. 

" Brimful of excellent ideas." Anti-Jacobin. 



PUBLISHED BY WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED 

THE EIGHT HOURS' DAY 

BY SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B., AND HAROLD COX, B.A. 
Crown 8vo ; 280 pp. with Bibliography 

Price Is. 

** The unique value of this little book lies in its collection of facts. It 
is likely to hold the field as the handbook to one of the chief items in the 
social politics of the immediate future." Pall Mall Gazette. 



PUBLISHED BY VANDENHOEK UND RUPRECHT (GO"TTINGEN) 

DER SOGIALISMUS IN ENGLAND. Geschildei 
von englischen Socialisten. 

HERAUSGEGEBEN VON SIDNEY WEBB 

32 



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