Causeways, owing to the abundance of marshy ground, since drained, were scarcely less needed than bridges and were also considered a meritorious work. A passage in Leland well shows what they consisted of, how much wanted, and what a proper object they were, for generous minded, pious benefactors: “This cawsey by Skipbridge towards Yorke hathe a nineteen small bridges on it for avoydinge and overpassynge carres cuming out of the mores thereby. One Blackeburne, that was twys maior of Yorke, made this cawsey and a nothar without one of the suburbs of Yorke. This Blakeburn hathe a solemne obiit in the Minstar of Yorke and a cantuari at Richemond.”[14]
Municipal bodies, as well as gilds, those lay brotherhoods imbued with the religious spirit, took care also in many cases of roads and bridges. The Gild of the Holy Cross in Birmingham, founded under Richard II, did this, and their intervention was most valuable, as the {40} Commissioners of Edward VI remarked two centuries later. The gild then “mainteigned . . . and kept in good reparaciouns two greate stone bridges, and divers foule and daungerous high wayes, the charge whereof the towne of hitsellfe ys not hable to mainteign. So that the lacke thereof wilbe a greate noysaunce to the kinges maties subjectes passing to and from the marches of Wales and an vtter ruyne to the same towne, being one of the fayrest and most proffittuble townes to the kinges highnesse in all the shyre.”[15]
An example of municipal action can be found in the Ordinances of Worcester, prescribing that “the Brugge (bridge) may be overseyn at alle tymes for the surete of the cite. And that the reparacion of the saide Brugge be overloked by the chamberleyns every quarter.”[16]
Whether Queen Mathilda (twelfth century) got wetted or not, as is supposed, on passing the ford of the river at Stratford-atte-Bow—that same village where afterwards the French was spoken at which old Chaucer smiled—certain it is that she thought she was doing a meritorious work in constructing two bridges there.[17] Several times repaired, Bow Bridge was still standing in 1839. The queen endowed her foundation, granting land and a water-mill to the Abbess of Barking with a perpetual charge thereon for the maintenance of the bridge and the neighbouring roadway. When the queen died, an abbey for men was founded at the same Stratford, close to the bridges, and the abbess hastened to transfer to the new monastery the property in the mill and the charge of the reparations. The abbot had them done at first, {41} then wearied of it, and delegated the care of them to one Godfrey Pratt. He had built this man a house on the causeway beside the bridge, and paid him an annual grant. For a long time Pratt carried out the contract, “getting assistance,” says an inquiry of Edward I, “from some passers-by, but without often having recourse to their aid.” He also received alms from travellers, and his affairs prospered. They prospered so well that the abbot thought he would withdraw his pension; Pratt indemnified himself the best way he could. He set up iron bars across the bridge and made all pay who passed over, except the rich, for he prudently made exception “for nobility; he feared them and let them pass without molesting them.” The dispute only ended in the time of Edward II; the abbot acknowledged his fault; resumed the charge of the bridge, and suppressed the iron bars, the toll, and Godfrey Pratt himself.
7. BOW BRIDGE AS IT STOOD BEFORE ITS DEMOLITION IN 1839.
(From a print dated 1831.)
This bridge, over which no doubt Chaucer must have passed, was of stone, the arches were narrow and the piers thick; strong angular buttresses strengthened them and broke the force of the current; these formed at the upper part a triangle or siding which served as a refuge for foot-passengers, for the way was so narrow that a cart sufficed to fill it. When it was pulled down in 1839, it was found that the method of construction had been very simple. To ground the piers in the bed of the river the masons had simply thrown down stones and mortar till the level of the water had been reached. {42} It was remarked also that the ill-will of Pratt or the abbot or their successors must have rendered the bridge almost as dangerous at certain moments as the primitive ford. The wheels of the vehicles had hollowed such deep ruts in the stone and the horses’ shoes had so worn the pavement that an arch had been at one time pierced through.
No less striking as a case where pious motives caused the building of a bridge is the contract of the thirteenth century, by which Reginald de Rosels allowed Peter, Abbot of Whitby, to erect a permanent bridge on the river Esk, between his own and the convent’s lands. He pledged himself in that act to permit to all comers free access to the bridge through his own property. “For which concession the aforesaid Abbot and convent have absolved in chapter all the ancestors of the same Reginald of all fault and transgression they may have committed against the church of Whiteby and have made them participant of all the good works, alms, and prayers of the church of Whiteby.”[18] Numerous other examples of the same sort might be quoted; but it will be enough to add, as being perhaps more characteristic of the times than all the rest, the recommendations which Truth in the “Vision concerning Piers the Plowman” makes to the wealthy English merchants, the number of whom had so largely increased during the fourteenth century. Truth bids them to do several works of charity, which he considers of the highest importance for their salvation; they ought, among other things, to “amenden mesondieux,” that is, hospitals for sick people and for travellers; to repair “wikked wayes,” that is to say, bad roads; and also
“ . . . brygges to-broke · by the heye weyes