Military necessity, Scottish wars, French wars, Welsh or Irish wars had a similar effect, and so had, to a degree, nowadays incredible, the kings’ passion for hawking. They did not want to be stopped when following their birds by a broken bridge, and they would order the commonalty, whether or not it was bound to do so, to make prompt repairs in view of their coming. Hence Article 23 in the Great Charter, meant to check this {84} propensity: “Let no community or man be constrained to make bridges on rivers except those who were legally bound from old to do so.” As late, however, as October 6, 1373, we find that Edward III commanded “the sheriff of Oxfordshire to declare that all bridges should be repaired and all fords marked out with stakes for the crossing of the King ‘with his falcons’ during the approaching winter season.”[75]
In the same way the monks, those vast-landed husbandmen, were much interested in the proper maintenance of the roads. Their agricultural undertakings were of considerable extent; an abbey such as that of Meaux, near Beverley, had in the middle of the fourteenth century, 2,638 sheep, 515 oxen, and 98 horses, with land in proportion.[76] Besides, as we have seen, the care of watching over the good condition of the roads was more incumbent on the clergy than on any other class, because it was a pious and meritorious work.
All these motives combined were enough to provide roads sufficient for the usual needs, but in those days people were content with little. Carts and even carriages were heavy, lumbering, solid machines, which stood the hardest jolts. People of any worth journeyed on horseback, the use of a carriage being exceptional. As to those who travelled on foot, they were used to all sorts of misery. Little then sufficed; and if other proofs were wanting of the state into which the roads were liable to fall, even in the most frequented places, we should find them in a patent of Edward III of November 20, 1353, which orders the paving of the highroad, alta via, running from Temple Bar to Westminster. This road, being almost a street, had been paved, but, the king explains, it is “so full of holes and bogs . . . and the pavement is so damaged {85} and broken,” that the traffic has become very dangerous for men and carts. He orders, in consequence, each landowner on both sides of the road to remake, at his own expense, a footway of seven feet up to the ditch, usque canellum. The middle of the road—inter canellos—the width of which is unfortunately not given, is to be paved, and the expense covered by means of a tax laid on all the merchandise going to the staple at Westminster.[77]
Three years later a general tax was laid by the City of London on all carts and horses bringing merchandise or materials of any kind to the town. The regulation which imposed it, of the thirtieth year of Edward III, first states that all the roads in the immediate environs of London are in such bad condition that the carriers, merchants, etc., “are oftentimes in peril of losing what they bring.” Henceforth, to help the reparations, a due will be levied on all vehicles and all laden beasts coming to or going from the city; a penny per cart and a farthing per horse each way; reductions were granted in case of constant traffic: a cart bringing sand, gravel, or clay, paid only threepence a week. By an article the unfairness of which had nothing exceptional, the richer were made to pay less than the poorer: “But for the carts and horses of great people and other folks that bring their own victuals and other goods for the use and consumption of their own hostels, nothing shall be taken.”[78]
The environs of Paris about the same time presented roads and bridges quite as badly kept as those in the neighbourhood of London. Charles VI, in one of his ordinances, states that the hedges and brambles have greatly encroached on the roads, and that there are even some in the midst of which trees have shot up: {86}
“Outside the said town of Paris, in several parts of the suburbs, prévosté and vicomté of the same, there are many notable and ancient highways, bridges, lanes, and roads, which are much injured, damaged, or decayed and otherwise hindered, by ravines of water and great stones, by hedges, brambles, and many other trees which have grown there, and by many other supervening hindrances, because they have not been maintained and provided for in time past; and they are in such a bad state that they cannot be securely used on foot or horseback, nor by vehicles, without great perils and inconveniences; and some of them are entirely abandoned because men cannot resort there.” The Provost of Paris is ordered to cause the repairs to be made by all to whom it pertained; and, if necessary, to compel by force “all” the inhabitants of the towns in the neighbourhood of the bridges and highways to help in the work.[79]
15. THE PARLIAMENT SITTING AT WESTMINSTER, OCT., 1399.
(From the Harl. MS. 1319, painted circa A.D. 1400.)
But what makes us understand better than ordinances the difficulty of journeys in bad weather, and enables us to picture to ourselves flooded roads resembling those of the East in the rainy season, is the impossibility sometimes acknowledged in official documents of responding to the most important royal summons, owing to the inclemency of the elements. Thus, for example, it might happen that the bulk of the members called to Parliament from all parts of England would fail at the appointed day, for no other reason than bad weather having, as the event showed, caused the roads to be impassable. The record of the sittings of the second Parliament of the thirteenth year of Edward III (1339) show that it was necessary to declare to the few representatives of the Commons and of the nobility who had been able to reach Westminster, “that because the prelates, earls, barons, and {89} other lords and knights of the shires, citizens and burgesses of cities and boroughs were so troubled by the bad weather that they could not arrive that day, it would be proper to await their coming.”[80]