Following the departure of the Romans, not only road-making but even
road-repairing was for several centuries wholly neglected in this country.
The Roman roads continued to be used, but successive rulers in troublesome
times were too busily engaged in maintaining their own position or in
waging wars at home or abroad to attend to such prosaic details as the
repairing of roads, and they had, apparently, still less time or
opportunity for converting into roads hill-side tracks which the Romans had
not touched at all.
In proportion, too, as the roads were neglected, the bridges of the earlier
period got out of repair, fell in altogether, or were destroyed in the
social disorders of the time. So the mediæval ages found the means of
internal communication by land probably worse in Britain than in any other
country in western Europe.
The State having failed to acquit itself of its obligations, the Church
took up the work as a religious duty. The keeping of roads in repair came
to be considered, as Jusserand says in "English Wayfaring Life in the
Middle Ages," "a pious and meritorious work before God, of the same sort as
visiting the sick and caring for the poor." Travellers were regarded as
unfortunate people whose progress on their toilsome journeys it was
Christian charity to assist. In these circumstances the religious houses of
the period took over the task of making or repairing both roads and
bridges, the faithful being encouraged to assist in the good work, either
through gifts or with personal labour, by the concession to them of special
indulgencies. Jusserand tells, for instance, how Richard de Kellawe, Bishop
of Durham, 1311-1316, remitted part of the penalties on the sins of those
who did good work in helping to make smooth the way of the wanderer, his
episcopal register {12}containing frequent entries of 40-day indulgencies
granted to contributors to the road-repair funds. There were benefactors,
also, who left to the monasteries lands and houses the proceeds of which
were to be applied to the same public purpose; while in proportion as the
monasteries thus increased the extent of their own landed possessions they
became still more interested in the making and repairing of roads in the
neighbourhoods in which the lands they had acquired were situated.
In those days, in fact, people bequeathed not only land, or money, but even
live stock for the repair of roads just as they left gifts for
ecclesiastical purposes, or as people to-day make bequests to charitable
institutions. The practice continued until, at least, the middle of the
sixteenth century, since in the Sixth Report of the Historical Manuscripts
Commission there will be found (page 422) the last will and testament,
dated May 16, 1558, of John Davye, in which the testator says:--
"I leve and bequeithe a cowpell of oxson that I boughte the laste yere to
the building of Moulde Church where I dwell; And I bequieth a bullocke that
I boughte of the Royde unto the mendynge of the hye waie betwixte my howse
and the Molld."
Bequests of money or lands were also made for the construction or the
maintenance of bridges, or for the freeing of bridges from toll so that the
poor could cross without payment; and one of the duties of the bishops,
when making their visitations, was to enquire whether or not the funds thus
left were being applied to the purposes the donors intended.
On the Continent of Europe a religious order was founded, in the twelfth
century, for the building of bridges. It spread over several countries and
built some notable bridges--such, for instance, as that over the Rhone at
Avignon; though there is no trace, Jusserand tells us, of these Bridge
Friars having extended their operations to this country. It was, however,
from them that laymen learned the art of bridge-building, and in Britain,
as in Continental countries, bridges came to be considered as pious works,
to be put under the special charge of a patron saint. To this end it was
customary to build a chapel alongside an important bridge--as in the case
of the old London Bridge that replaced the original wooden structure by
Peter Colechurch, "priest and chaplain," itself {13}having had a chapel
dedicated to Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Sovereigns or great landowners
gave generous gifts for the endowment of such bridges. Although, too, there
was no special order of bridge-building friars in England, guilds and lay
brotherhoods, animated by the religious spirit, were formed in the reign of
Richard II. (1377-1399) for the repair of roads and bridges, just as, in
turn, the ordinary trading guilds which were the forerunners of the
corporate bodies set up in towns undertook to "maintain and keep in good
reparacion" bridges which had become "ruinous," and, also, to attend to the
"foul and dangerous highways, the charge whereof the town was not able to
maintain."[2]
It became customary, also, for hermits to take up their habitation in cells
along the main thoroughfares, and to occupy themselves with looking after
the roads, trusting to the alms of passers-by for a little worldly
recompense. In one instance, at least, a hermit was allowed to put up a
toll-bar--the first on record in this country--and collect compulsory
payments from persons using the roads he mended. This was in 1364, when
Edward III. made a decree authorising "our well-beloved William Phelippe
the hermit" to set up a toll-bar on the lower slope of Highgate Hill, on
the north side of London, and levy tolls for the repair of the "Hollow Way"
from "our people passing between Heghgate and Smethfelde."
Jusserand sums up the situation at this period by saying that "The roads in
England would have been entirely impassable ... if the nobility and the
clergy, that is to say, the whole of the landed proprietors, had not had an
immediate and daily interest in possessing passable roads."
There came, however, a period of decline in religious fervour. The laity
grew less disposed to give or to bequeath money, {14}land or cattle for
road-repair purposes, however much the offer of indulgences in return
therefor might be increased from days to months or even to years; and the
clergy, in turn, became more remiss in acquitting themselves of the
obligations they had assumed as road-repairers. They accepted the
benefactions, and they granted the indulgences; but they showed increasing
laxity in carrying out their responsibilities. The roadside hermits, also,
gathered in so much in the way of contributions, voluntary or compulsory,
from passers-by that they ate and drank more than hermits ought to do, grew
fat and lazy, and too often left the roads to look after themselves.
What, therefore, with neglected roads and dilapidated bridges, the general
conditions of travel went from bad to worse. Church Councils, says Denton,
were summoned and adjourned because bishops feared to encounter the danger
of travelling along such roads. Oratories were licensed in private houses,
and chapels of ease were built, because roads were so bad, especially in
winter, that the people could not get to their parish churches. The
charter, 47 Edward III., 1373, by which the city of Bristol was constituted
a county, states that this was done in order to save the burgesses from
travelling to Gloucester and Ilchester, "distant thirty miles of road,
deep, especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers." On many
different occasions, too, the members of the House of Commons, assembled
for a new session, could transact no business because the Peers had been
detained by the state of the roads and the difficulty of travelling, and
Parliament was, therefore, adjourned.
The general conditions grew still worse with the impoverishment of the
monasteries by which the main part of the work had--however
negligently--been done since the end of the Roman régime. As will be shown
later on, various statutes had gradually imposed more and more the care of
the roads on the laity, and it was upon them that the full responsibility
fell with the eventual dissolution, first of the lesser, and next of the
greater, monasteries by Henry VIII.
{15}CHAPTER IV