Another perplexity not much alluded to in these papers arose from the fact that, though the bed of the stream was a highway for the people, the banks belonged to the owners of the adjoining lands; hence many struggles between the bargemen and landowners over the use of the towpaths. In 1605 (3 Jac. I, c. 20) it was decreed that the Lord Chancellor might appoint commissioners to clear the Thames so that it might carry barges to Oxford and beyond, cutting down the banks if necessary. In 21 Jac. I, c. 32, fuller powers were granted them. They were to make compensation to owners of land required, and to assess the University and city of Oxford for reasonable sums; and as the passage up against the stream made it necessary that the barges “should be haled up by the strength of men, horses, winches, engines, &c., that it should be lawful for them to use the banks” for this purpose, if they did no harm. The ancient right to tow on the Thames had been brought forward in a case heard before Lord Chief Justice Popham as to a similar right upon the river Lea, which was contested (State Papers, Domestic Series, 1594; see Calendar, pp. 499-501).
John Taylor, the self-styled “water poet,” a contemporary of Shakespeare, though writing a little after his date, published in 1632 “A description of the two famous Rivers of Thames and Isis ... with all the Flats, Shoales, Shelves, Sands, Weares, Stops, Rivers, Brooks, &c., as also a discovery of the Hindrances which doe impeach the passage of Boats and Barges between the famous University of Oxford and the City of London.” Taylor commences by regretting the death of Lord Dorchester, who had determined to make the river passable, and then enumerates the dangers and difficulties in verses and spirit somewhat resembling those of Bishop’s petition. He refers to “learned Camden, Speed and Holinshead, and Drayton’s painfull Poly Olbion,” and then describes his own journey down. At Sutton Lock they were nearly upset, the water fell with such violence; after Cullam they ran aground; at Clifden there were rocks and sands and flats; and everywhere were shoals and piles. More than once a sunken tree nearly cleft his barge. Near Goring the party was entertained by “Master Cotton,” and near Henley by “Judge Whitlocke.” The river did not want much repair below Staines Bridge, for that was under the power of the Mayor of London. To Taylor also Marlow Lock was the worst, though he anathematizes many others:
Shall Thames be barr’d its course with stops and locks,
With Mils and Hils, with gravell beds and rocks,
With weares and weedes, and forced Ilands made
To spoile a publike for a private Trade?
Shame fall the doers, and Almighty’s blessing
Be heaped upon their heads that seek redressing.
Thus John Taylor ends, like John Bishop.[30]
These old discussions are interesting, not only to the historian and antiquarian, but to engineers and boating men of to-day, as they have never been collected, and the Thames Conservancy have no papers of so old a date.