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BRIDGES, LAW AND POWER

IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

700 –1400



BRIDGES, L AW AND POWER



BRIDGES, L AW AND POWER

IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND,

700–1400

Alan Cooper

THE BOYDELL PRESS



To my parents Anthony and Mary Cooper

and my brother John,

with love, respect and gratitude



Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgements ix

List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Bridge-work, but No Bridges: St Boniface and the Origins of

the Common Burdens 8

Chapter 2 Viking Wars, Public Peace: The Evolution of Bridge-work 39

Chapter 3 ‘As Free as the King Could Grant’: The End of Communal

Bridge-work 66

Chapter 4 Three Solutions 80

Conclusion 149

Appendix 1 The Gumley Charter of 749 153

Appendix 2 Grants of Pontage up to 1400 155

Bibliography 169

Index 183



List of Figures

Map 1 Travelling from London to York 3

Map 2 Pontage and Pavage during the reign of Edward I(1272–1307) 138

Map 3 Pontage and Pavage during the reign of Richard II(1377–99) 139

Map 4 Pontage and Pavage around London in theFourteenth Century 146

Graph 1 Grants of Pontage and Pavage up to 1400 143



Acknowledgements

This book has been long – perhaps too long – in the writing. As a result, I have

incurred innumerable debts of gratitude along the way. The task of writing the

acknowledgements is therefore a daunting task in itself, as I am certain that I will

forget someone: that person will please forgive their omission.

The book has its origins in my Harvard doctoral thesis, so I should first of all

thank my advisor Thomas Bisson, who was the best of advisors and has remained

the best of mentors. One of his great gifts as an advisor is his concern that studentsshould find their own paths, and discover and fashion their own thesis topics; only

then quietly and – dare I say? – surreptitiously will he turn those topics in directions

that he knows will be fruitful. This project is certainly not one he would have handed

me had that been his method; yet, like all his students, I am aware of the influence of

his questions and teaching throughout the final product. Whispers from my other

readers at Harvard can also be heard in these pages. Michael McCormick’s energy,

rigour and endlessly fertile intellect and Charles Donahue’s wisdom and generosity

both helped transform my work in many ways. I do not believe that I could have had

a more challenging committee to satisfy: three scholars who do not believe in cutting

corners in any way and – moreover – three scholars who had completely different

visions of what the project was: Tom thought it was about power, Mike thought it

was about infrastructure, Charlie thought it was about law. That the book is about all

three and is stronger as a result, is to their credit.

Of course, I have also over the years been sustained and enriched by questions

and interest from very many colleagues and friends, including Adam Kosto, Bob

Berkhofer, Carol Symes, Claire Valente, Jenny Paxton, Bruce Venarde, Samantha

Herrick, Margaret Menninger, Phil Daileader, Dimiter Angelov, Robin Fleming, Paul

Hyams, Bruce O’Brien, Richard Sharpe, Nicholas Brooks, John Langdon, David

Harrison, David Roffe, Virginie Greene, Luis Giron, Nat Taylor, Jonathan Conant,

Greg Smith, Liz Mellyn, Jenny Davis, Janna Wasilewski, Paul Meyvaert, Richard

Mackenney, Ian Wei, the late Patrick Wormald, John Hudson, Robert Piggott, MarkShiner and David McCabe. My colleagues in the Colgate History Department and

Medieval and Renaissance Studies programme have been the best of colleagues over

the last five years. And my students at Colgate and Harvard over the years have

always helped with the most provocative questions (not least: ‘isn’t it finished yet?’).

My thanks are also due to Dave Baird of Colgate, Arlene Olivero of Harvard,

Phillip Judge of the University of East Anglia, and my father Anthony Cooper for

their help with the maps and graphs. The staff of the Public Record Office and

libraries at Harvard, Colgate, Hamilton College, Cornell University, and Cambridge

University have all been immensely helpful, but I would like particularly to thank



Bridges, Law and Power

x

Ann Ackerson, Colgate’s tireless Inter-Library Loan co-ordinator, for putting up with

my incessant requests.

The research behind this book was financed in part by a Harvard University

Graduate Society Fellowship, by the Colgate Research Council and by a PickerFellowship.

The staff at Boydell and Brewer have been marvellously conscientious at every

stage; special thanks, though, is due to the Editorial Director, Caroline Palmer,

without whose support this book would certainly never have been published, and

without whose skilful and dedicated eye it would have been a much worse book.

The support of the Bisson and Webb families has been an ever-present source of

strength over the years. In particular, I am indebted to the late Carroll Bisson, whose

friendship and counsel I miss so much. And thanks are due also to my daughters

Josie and Caroline and to my wife Noël; it is perhaps a little alarming that none of

them have known me when I have not been working on bridges.

My family back home in England deserve my gratitude too. Above all, my unclesRichard and Clive Rouse have always taken a keen and generous interest in my work.

This book is, however, dedicated to my brother John and my parents Mary and

Anthony. They started me down the road, always encouraging me in my education. I

look at this book and see that it is full of the interests I acquired as a child, such as a

fascination with maps and a love of the British countryside. This book is dedicated to

them with gratitude for their patience and support, and with all my love.

arc

Hamilton, NY

September 2006



Abbreviations

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle according to the several

original authorities , ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols [RS

23] (London, 1861); translation and dating

following The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised

Translation , ed. and trans. Dorothy Whitelock and

David C. Douglas (London, 1961). As. Laws of Æthelstan (in Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I,

146–83).

Atr. Laws of Æthelred (in Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I,

216–70).

B105 (etc.) Cartularium saxonicum , ed. W. de Gray Birch, 3 vols

(London, 1885–99), no. 105 (etc.).

BHL 34 (etc.) Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae

aetatis , 2 vols, Subsidia Hagiographica 6 (Brussels,

1898–1901); and Bibliotheca hagiographica latina

antiquae et mediae aetatis , Supplementum novum , ed.

Henryk Fros, Subsidia Hagiographica 70

(Brussels, 1986), no. 34 (etc).

CHncor. Coronation Charter of Henry I (in Gesetze , ed.

Liebermann, I, 521–3).

Cn. Laws of Cnut (in Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 278–

371).

DB Domesday Book; references by folio and county

so that any edition can be consulted (N.B.

References to Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk are to

Little Domesday, the rest to Great Domesday).

ECf. Leges Edwardi Confessoris (in Gesetze , ed.Liebermann, I, 627–72 or Bruce R. O’Brien, God’s

Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the

Confessor (Philadelphia, 1999)).

Gesetze , ed. Liebermann Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen , ed. Felix Liebermann,

3 vols (Halle, 1898–1916).

H82 (etc.) Anglo-Saxon Writs , ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester,

1952), no. 82 (etc.).

K23 (etc.) Codex diplomaticus aevi saxonici , ed. John M.

Kemble, 6 vols (London, 1839–48), no. 23 (etc.).

MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica .




xii

Patent Rolls Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public

Record Office (see Bibliography for full references),

except for those of the reign of King John: Rotuli

litterarum patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati , ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy (London, 1835).

PRO Public Record Office, London.

Rect. Rectitudines singularum personarum (in Gesetze , ed.

Liebermann, I, 444–53).

Regesta Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum (see Bibliography

for full references).

RS Rolls Series, i.e., Rerum britannicarum medii ævi

scriptores .

S43 (etc.) P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated

List and Bibliography (London, 1968), no. 43 (etc.).



Introduction

In 1362, the bridge over the Trent at Nottingham collapsed. In response, Edward III

commissioned four men to inquire as to who was liable to repair the bridge ‘whereby

there used to be safe transit for men and carts over the river to the said town and to

the North’.1 The answer returned was simple: no-one was obliged to repair the

bridge. It had been repaired only by alms and through the proceeds from temporary

pontage tolls granted by kings over the previous half century. The king had no powerto compel anyone to rebuild the bridge, so instead he attempted to prime the pump

of charity once again by granting timber from Sherwood Forest. How could it be that

the king had no regular manner of ensuring that a bridge of the strategic and

geographical significance of the Trent Bridge be kept in decent repair? This was, after

all, a site on which Edward III’s forebear and namesake, Edward the Elder, had

ordered a bridge to be built some four and a half centuries before.

This book is about the power of kings and the building of bridges. There has

been a long tradition, from before the Romans, of associating great rulers with their

great building works. This tradition was strong in the English Middle Ages: writers

from Bede to William of Malmesbury, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Ranulf

Higden tell stories in which the great kings, historical and mythical, provide comfort

and security for travellers with public works. This association of benevolent kings

with real measures for their subjects’ safety lies behind the origins of the legal status

of roads and bridges in the Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxon kings, in seeking to

provide order and security, made provision both for obligations to repair bridges and

for the establishment of special jurisdiction over the highway. Both provisions were

bound up with the ideology and practical constitution of the public peace in the

tenth century. Bridges had many other purposes, of course: military, economic,

governmental, and simply for the king’s convenience in his various travels. Bridges

were always of vital strategic importance – a long list could be compiled of battles

fought around river crossings. And, of course, for the historian, a knowledge ofcommunications is fundamental to a proper understanding of economic history, of

military history and, indeed, of history that involves cultural interaction of any kind.

Communication in medieval England was facilitated by an extensive and open

road network. The provision of roads across country was, in an important sense, a

matter of doing nothing and, more importantly, making sure no one did anything

either. In other words, the highway of the Middle Ages – in the words of one scholar

– by and large ‘maintained itself’ .2 The passing traffic would wear down the plants

1 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 365.2 Public Works in Mediaeval Law , ed. C. T. Flower, II, Publications of the Selden Society 40 (London,

1923), xvi.




2

on and by the route, leaving a path free of obstacles; the simple nature of the trafficmeant that it could wade and struggle through even the muckiest conditions. There

were, to be sure, obligations for the repair of drainage ditches by the roads, and, in

the later Middle Ages, more and more attention was given to repair of the busiestroads, but the sources are much quieter on these subjects. Physical repair of the road was, however, the least of the difficulties: for a road to be an effective route it had tobe clear of artificial obstructions, of buildings, crops, ditches, fences and such like,and also clear of obstruction by bandits, robbers, murderers and so on. Maintenanceof the road was a matter of keeping the unwelcome off it. The history of the roads isthus the story of legal jurisdiction and of the definition of a distinct space removedfrom legal order on either side of it.

That said, if the structure of cross-country roads generally did not need or didnot get much attention per se , the physical repair of the road network did occur intwo ways, neither of which involved the maintenance of the actual surfaces of

highways. The first was the paving of streets in towns, which were in effect thenodes of the transport network and thus the most heavily used points; this activity

was orchestrated at the local level, aided in the later Middle Ages by grants of pavagetolls. The second form of road repair was the repair of bridges. Even now, though

we are usually less conscious of it, the choice of a route is determined by the choiceof river crossings: the traveller from Boston to Philadelphia, for example, will largelyset his or her route by the choice of bridges over the Connecticut, Hudson andDelaware Rivers. This was certainly true in the Middle Ages when there were fewerchoices for the crossing of even relatively minor rivers. The route from London to

York may serve as an illustration.3 From Roman times and throughout the Middle Ages, a variety of solutions were offered to two fundamental questions posed by that

journey: how to cross the rivers flowing into the Wash, and how to cross thoseflowing into the Humber. The route least troubled by river crossings swung north-

west out of London, up Watling Street, encountering the Ouse only in its most feeblecondition, up river at Fenny and Stony Stratford; it then joined the Fosse Way andheaded north-east to Lincoln to cut the Gordian knot of the Humber Basin bycrossing the Humber itself by ferry; from there it ran easily into York, crossing theDerwent at Stamford Bridge. The fastest route headed due north on flatter ground; it

was, however, dependent on river crossings at Ware, Huntingdon, Wansford,Stamford, Newark, Retford, Doncaster, Wentbridge, Pontefract, Ferrybridge and

Tadcaster.4 The travellers of the Middle Ages mixed and matched between these two

basic routes, depending on the urgency of their journey, the state of the weather and,above all, the condition of the bridges.5

3 See F. M. Stenton, ‘The Road System of Medieval England’, Economic History Review 7 (1936), 2–21;Brian Paul Hindle, ‘The Road Network of Medieval England and Wales’, Journal of HistoricalGeography 2 (1976), 207–21; idem , ‘Seasonal Variations in Travel in Medieval England’, Journal ofTransport History , new series 4 (1978), 170–78; idem , ‘The Towns and Roads of the Gough Map’,

Manchester Geographer 1 (1980), 35–49; J. B. Mitchell, ‘The Matthew Paris Maps’, Geographical Journal 81 (1933), 27–34; R. A. Pelham, ‘The Gough Map’, Geographical Journal 81 (1933), 34–9.

4 See Map 1.5 See, for example, the itinerary of Robert of Nottingham, travelling between Nottingham, York,

Lincoln and London in the winter of 1324/5; PRO E101/309/29; described at length in Stenton,

‘Road System’, pp. 13–14.



Introduction

3

Map 1: Travelling from London to York




4

In other words, the history of bridges is really the story of the physical repair of

the road network and the obligations for that repair. It has its origins in matters of

environmental history, in the simple but necessary question, how to cross a river?

Building a bridge to facilitate a river crossing is a difficult, expensive, time-consumingand potentially hazardous job. It is not undertaken lightly and, once undertaken,

requires repeated attention and effort from that point on, since a bridge neglected

will soon be a bridge collapsed. Moreover, a bridge built at an important crossing will

attract traffic, which will damage the bridge and raise the question of obligation for

its repair. The history of bridge building is thus necessarily also a story of finance, of

law and ultimately of government.

Consequently, the story to be told in these pages is not so much that of routes

and communications – although naturally the actual roads and bridges must be

considered alongside the theory associated with them – as it is a story of the origins

of law and government. By the fourteenth century, legal and governmental theories

and procedures connected to the repair of bridges had developed. The appearance ofthese practices resulted not from a straight line of development, but from assertions

of royal right and common duty and counter-assertions of seigneurial right and

particular exemption. There is a connection between the bridge-work of the Anglo-

Saxon kings and royal efforts to see bridges repaired in the fourteenth century, but it

is not a simple matter of the gradual accretion of law. In fact, often it is quite the

reverse.

The story will be told in four chapters. Chapter 1 considers the paradox of the

appearance of the bridge-work obligation in eighth-century charters when there seem

to have been few bridges and apparently no great need for them. Chapter 2 identifies

the moment when these haphazard and unimportant obligations were transformed

under the pressure of Viking raids into duties vital and urgent to the survival of the

new West Saxon state. These duties became part of the routine of the public order of

the tenth century, but, as Chapter 3 explores, this routine was to fall apart in the

eleventh and twelfth centuries, leaving only fragments of obligations to be collected

in the legal revolution of the thirteenth century. Chapter 4 watches the kings and the

kings’ lawyers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries try to achieve new solutions

to the ever more pressing problem of bridge repair.

This is not the place for a lengthy overview of scholarship on bridges in medieval

Europe generally; such scholarship will be referred to in the text and the notes where

appropriate. Nevertheless, a few works merit further discussion here as they havehelped framed the questions I attempt to address in this book.6

6 I should, moreover, make note of several works on roads and bridges in particular parts of Europethat helped stimulate my thinking: Johann Plesner, Una Rivoluzione stradale del Dugento (Copenhagen,1938); Thomas Szabó, Comuni e politica stradale in Toscana e in Italia nel medioevo (Bologna, 1992);Marjorie Nice Boyer, Medieval French Bridges: A History (Cambridge MA, 1976); and Robert-HenriBautier, ‘La route française et son évolution au cours du moyen âge’ in Bulletin de la classe des lettres etdes sciences morales et politiques, Académie Royale de Belgique , 5th series 73 (1987), 70–104 (reprinted inRobert-Henri Bautier, Sur l’histoire économique de la France médiévale: la route, le fleuve, la foire (Aldershot,

1991)).



Introduction

5

The best synthetic study of bridge building in the Middle Ages across Europe is

that of Nicholas Brooks.7 He draws attention to the twin legacies of Roman stone

bridges, many of which still survive in Continental Europe, and early medieval timber

bridges, but suggests that the great age of medieval bridge building was between c.1050 and c. 1350. He associates this proliferation of bridges with impulses connected

with lordly and royal power, charitable spirit and communal action.8

As regards the fabric of bridges, Brooks’ work may be supplemented by the work

of Donald Hill on medieval engineering.9 He makes two very important points for

the history of medieval bridges. The first is that the most important element of any

bridge is the foundations: if the builders can achieve a secure foundation for the

piers, then the bridge has a good chance of standing whatever the superstructure.

This remains the essential problem in bridge-building today. The normal technique

of medieval builders was to use water-tight enclosures called coffer dams to remove

the water from a part of the river-bed, so that workers could drive piles. This was an

immensely hazardous process, as the force of the stream could destroy the structureat any time: many lives were lost on the building of London Bridge, for example.10

When it came to the superstructure, there were essentially two different

approaches: beam bridges and arched bridges. The former is the simplest technique,

involving the placing of a straight beam across the divide. The problem with this is

that the load on the bridge is not spread out: when the load is midway between piers,

the full force runs straight down, causing extreme bending stresses. While this

technique can work nowadays with advanced materials such as structural steel,

timber beams would soon break under the stress, especially when heavier carts used

the bridge. Many early medieval bridges seem to have been formed by timber planks

supported by beams between stone piers; in such a bridge the planks and beams

would require constant replacement.11 The great advance in building technique was,

therefore, the arched bridge, using masonry arches to support the roadway. This

design was, of course, used by the Romans; invariably, however, their arches were

7 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Medieval Bridges: A Window onto Changing Concepts of State Power’, HaskinsSociety Journal 7 (1995), 11–29; I am grateful to Prof. Brooks for letting me have a copy of thispaper before its publication.

8 For the roles of military necessity, seigneurial initiative and charitable action in the specific case ofFrance, see Boyer, Medieval French Bridges ; on medieval French bridges, see also Jean Mesqui, Le ponten France avant le temps des ingénieurs (Paris, 1986).

9 Donald Hill, A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times (London, 1984), pp. 61–75. The

theory laid out by Hill should be supplemented by the chapters on structure in David Harrison,The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–1800 (Oxford, 2004), chapters 6 and 7.10 For a marvellous reconstruction of the dangers associated with the building of a bridge in the

Middle Ages, as well as the tensions that a new bridge might cause, see the historical novel byIsmail Kadare, The Three-Arched Bridge , trans. John Hodgson (New York, 1997).

11 The stories of people being able to pick their way between holes in a bridge probably reflect astructure such as this; for a couple of these stories, see Brooks, ‘Medieval Bridges’, p. 17; there isalso the story of a monk, who, when crossing the bridge across the Thames at Marlow, had themisfortune to have his horse’s hind legs fall through the cracks, fixing the horse in place; passers-by advised him to widen the hole to allow the horse to fall into the river, but eventually he and thehorse were saved by the intervention of St Thomas Becket: Materials for the History of Thomas Becket,

Archbishop of Canterbury , I, ed. James Craigie Robertson [RS 67] (London, 1875), 415–16 (from ashort letter not listed in BHL). It is also significant in this context that the preambles to thepontage grants of the later Middle Ages do not say that bridges had collapsed, but that they were in

such poor repair that travellers could only pass at great danger to themselves.




6

almost or entirely semi-circular. Many great bridges of the Middle Ages used

segmental arches, in which the ratio of rise to half-span was considerably less than

one. This kind of bridge can use fewer spans to cross a distance and is lighter. This

latter point is crucial, because most of the weight born by a solid stone bridge is the weight of the structure itself.12

With regard to English bridges in particular, the starting point on the subject has

been the work of E. Jervoise, whose four little books on the Ancient Bridges of

England and Wales13 represent an effort to survey the bridges on all the rivers of the

country on behalf of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. The

purpose of this project was to provide information for the preservation of bridges

that had managed to survive into the modern period, so, for all his collecting of

information from medieval sources, Jervoise’s principal interest is not in the bridges

of the Middle Ages per se . Moreover, he does not attempt to draw any general

conclusions from the assembled evidence.

Until recently, other than Jervoise, work on medieval English bridges has largelybeen confined to local studies.14 The best of these studies are without question those

of Nicholas Brooks and others on the subject of Rochester Bridge and those of

Bruce Watson and others on London Bridge. Both collections have been able to

make use of the documentation connected with the bridges and the trusts established

in the Middle Ages to maintain them.15

Now, however, the most thorough and complete work on English bridges is

David Harrison’s recent work, presented in two articles and a full-length monograph.

The shorter of his two articles on the subject considers the varieties of bridge design

among the surviving medieval bridges.16 He concludes that one can perceive regional

variations based on construction technique; most strikingly, the bridges of the North

of England tend to have wider spans, but whether this results from river

12 Hall’s general principles may be compared with S. E. Rigold’s study of the carpentry of medievaltimber bridges across moats, which includes some speculations about how its principles mighthave been used in the building of bridges across rivers; S. E. Rigold, ‘Structural Aspects ofMedieval Timber Bridges’, Medieval Archaeology 19 (1975), 48–91 (and addenda, vol. 20 (1976), 152– 3). For an example of archaeological evidence of bridge construction techniques, see P. J. Huggins,‘Excavation of a Medieval Bridge at Waltham Abbey, Essex, in 1968’, Medieval Archaeology 14(1970), 126–47, esp. 133–5, and Lynden Cooper, Susan Ripper and Patrick Clay, ‘The HemingtonBridges’, Current Archaeology , no. 140 (vol. 12, no. 8) (1994), 316–21.

13 E. Jervoise, The Ancient Bridges of the South of England (London, 1930); idem , The Ancient Bridges of the North of England (London, 1931); idem , The Ancient Bridges of Mid and Eastern England (London, 1932);

idem , The Ancient Bridges of Wales and Western England (London, 1936).14 Although note should be made of another old work that still deserves attention: J. J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages , trans. Lucy Toulmin Smith (London, 1883); its first chaptercovers roads and br idges.

15 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community: Public Work and Seigneurial Responsibilitiesat Rochester Bridge’ in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays presented to Karl Leyser ,ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), pp. 1–20; idem , ‘Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1381’ in Traffic and Politics:The Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993 , ed. Nigel Yates and James M.Gibson (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 1–40; R. H. Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’ in ibid., pp.41–106. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson, ed., London Bridge: 2000 Years of a RiverCrossing , Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 8 (London, 2001). Other works onLondon Bridge (of which there are many) include: Gordon Home, Old London Bridge (London,1931); and London Bridge: Selected Accounts and Rentals, 1381–1538 , ed. Vanessa Harding and Laura

Wright, London Record Society Publications 31 (London, 1995).

16 David Harrison, ‘Medieval Bridges’, Current Archaeology , no. 122 (vol. 11, no. 2) (1990), 73–5.



Introduction

7

characteristics, date of building or mere architectural fashion he does not speculate.In his longer article, he examines the number and quality of medieval bridges andtheir relationship to inland transportation and economic development.17 He argues

that around three quarters of the sites on which bridges were standing in 1750already had bridges by 1500. These conclusions are amplified in his monograph, The

Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society, 400–1800.18 His main conclusion isthat the road system of medieval England was well served with bridges; that there

were no long stretches of river without a bridge, except for the lower reaches of thegreatest rivers. This network was thus able to handle the increase in traffic of theperiod from 1500 to 1750, and it was only after 1750 that a great number of newbridges were again built on new sites. His biggest concern is to offset what heperceives as the poor regard for the achievement of medieval people in building agreat number of bridges. The logistical and engineering achievement is his focus: hedemonstrates the way in which bridge technology evolved during the Middle Ages

and argues that the state of the bridges and thus of the road system was much betterthan most writers would believe. As his subtitle indicates, his interests are ineconomic history; he concludes by arguing that the state of medieval bridges suggests‘how much the pre-industrial economy of the seventeenth century had in common

with the late medieval or even the eleventh-century economy’.19 As a result Harrison’s work complements the present study very well: he is

interested in engineering and logistics; I am interested in what the construction ofbridges has to say about the history of power. Where we intersect – unsurprisingly –is on the issue of money; here Harrison is inclined to be sanguine, where I seeproblems. The bridges of England were continually in urgent need of money, andno-one wanted to pay. Who had the power to compel payment is the theme of this

book.

17 D. F. Harrison, ‘Bridges and Economic Development, 1300–1800’, Economic History Review 45(1992), 240–61.

18 The only other general book on medieval English bridges is Martin Cook, Medieval Bridges , Shire Archaeology 77 (Princes Risborough, 1998); this work is one of the excellent Shire booksintroducing archaeological subjects to the general reader.

19 Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 232. Harrison has also taken his findings to a wideraudience, publishing articles in History Today and even Country Life : idem , ‘Medieval Bridges’, HistoryToday , 54.11 (November 2004), 22–9; idem , ‘Bridges to our Past’, Country Life , 7 July 2005, pp. 94–7.(I am indebted to Prof. Robert Garland for the former reference, to Mrs Elizabeth Lambert for thelatter.) Harrison has also produced a list of ‘England’s Best Medieval Bridges’ for the Country Life

web site: http://www.countrylife.co.uk/about/medieval_bridges_map.php (accessed 24 April

2006).



Chapter 1

Bridge-work, but No Bridges:

St Boniface and the Origins of the Common Burdens

The obligation to build bridges has a familiar place in the history of Anglo-Saxon

governance because of its status as one third of the misnamed trinoda necessitas .Because the obligation has seemed to be such a matter of common sense, however,

its purpose has by and large been taken for granted. In fact, bridge-work was not a

straightforward phenomenon. A re-examination of the first appearance of bridge-

work in the charters of the early Anglo-Saxon period reveals that there were very few

bridges and that the obligation appears sporadically in the charters rather than

universally. It seems strange that kings insist upon bridge-work, when bridges seem

not to have been important at all.

The Chronology of Bridge Building

The obligation to perform bridge-work appears in many Anglo-Saxon charters from

the eighth century onwards. On the other hand, apparently paradoxically, the bounds

listed in those same charters do not refer to many bridges. Indeed, the weight of

evidence from charter bounds, from place-names, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

and from the formulae of the bridge-work clauses themselves, suggests that there

were not many bridges in England until the tenth century.

In ninety-one authentic1 sets of charter bounds from the seventh, eighth and

1 In all that follows, the authenticity of charters and their bounds will be assessed from the

comments collected in P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968); this is obviously far from an ideal process, especially where the commentsdisagree with one another, and is a process to which Sawyer would object (‘The opinions aboutauthenticity are, of course, of varying value, but there has been no attempt here to omit foolishopinions or to grade the worth of the commentators’, p. x); it seems, however, to be the onlyfeasible way to achieve a sense of change across the whole period. More significant charters havebeen assessed individually, as noted, but their authenticity has not been judged on the basis ofanomalies in their exception clauses or bounds, as that would render the analysis circular. All in all,this argument should be taken as what it is: an attempt to determine broad patterns across anumber of centuries, not to assess the absolute specifics of each case. (I should note that in thetwo places that I have seen this material used since this argument appeared in my doctoral thesis,this admonition has not been heeded, and the numbers have been cited rather too confidently.

Watson repeats the numbers: Bruce Watson, ‘Late Saxon Bridgehead’ in London Bridge: 2000 Yearsof a River Crossing , ed. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson, Museum of London

Archaeology Service Monograph 8 (London, 2001), pp. 52–60 at p. 60; Harrison then repeats the



Bridge-Work, but No Bridges

9

ninth centuries, only one bridge2 is mentioned, namely Crediton Bridge in Devon, which appears in the bounds of a charter of Æthelheard, king of Wessex, dating from739.3 By contrast, there are fifty fords. The tenth century witnesses a change: the firstquarter produced only nine genuine sets of bounds, which refer to one bridge andtwelve fords; the second quarter produced 102 sets, referring to fourteen bridges,sixty-one fords; the third quarter, 173 sets, referring to forty-five bridges, ninety-sixfords; the last quarter, forty-seven sets, containing seven bridges, twenty fords.Moreover, the presence of bridges in the bounds is accompanied by the frequentappearance of the term ‘old ford’. This phrase does not appear in a single genuine setof charter bounds before 945, but appears in thirteen sets after that date, suggestingthat for the first time some fords that were still used as boundary markers werebecoming redundant otherwise.4 Similarly, the descriptions of fords come to reflect a

figures from (a mis-cited) Watson without – apparently – having read my work at all: DavidHarrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–1800 (Oxford, 2004), p. 38.)2 The excavation of a site in Oxfordshire described in two sets of contiguous charter bounds from

the tenth century, in one as a ‘stanford’ and in the other as a ‘stan bricge’, suggests that the twoterms may together imply a stone causeway approaching a paved ford; that the term bricge maystand for a causeway rather than a bridge in certain circumstances would only serve to push thepattern observed here later; John Blair and Andrew Millard, ‘An Anglo-Saxon LandmarkRediscovered: The Stanford /Stan Bricge of the Ducklington and Whitney Charters’, Oxoniensia 57(1992), 342–8.

3 B1331/2/3 (S255); the bounds of this charter are by no means above suspicion; it also happens tobe the largest set of bounds, with ‘82 landmarks enclosing most of Devon’; Oliver Rackham,History of the Countryside (London, 1986), p. 9. One set of bounds that has been excluded requirescomment, since it contains two bridges, which would obviously significantly affect the numbers. Itis B219 (S142), the purported grant by King Offa to Bishop Milred of what Grundy calls ‘a very

extensive area, namely, the parish areas of Worcester [west] of the Severn, and of St John inBerwardine, Cotheridge, the [south] part of Wichenford, North Hadlow, Grimley, Kenswick, Little

Witley and Holt … almost certainly .. . the “home” estate’. The grant of this approximately sixteen-square-mile estate between the Severn and Teme, which was of enormous worth to thecommunity, is included in Hemming’s Cartulary; it was, however, inserted into the early eleventh-century half of the cartulary on some spare pages together with documents relating to theOswaldslow dispute of the 1080s, by one of the scribes of the second half of the cartulary, whichdates from c. 1100. It seems unusual that so important a charter should be handled in such amanner. As regards the bounds, there are two versions, one in Latin, one in English. Grundy takesthe existence of the Latin bounds as a sign of the bounds’ authentic antiquity, since Latin bounds

were more common in the earlier period; however, the Latin only occasionally provides equivalentsfor the English landmarks (i.e., only the prepositions change, not the nouns), and where it does itmakes mistakes (‘in veterem vallem’ for ‘in !a ealdan dic’, ‘in pulles camp’ for ‘in pulles heafod’).

The Latin bounds also include an extra section of land (Little Witley) suggesting that they might bea later emendation of the bounds. Above all, the bounds appear to be a compilation from othersets of bounds in Hemming’s Cartulary: in particular, the section including the two bridges is thecommon boundary with Broadwas, the bounds of which are attached to the spurious charter B233(S126). See The Early Charters of the West Midlands , ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Leicester, 1961), p. 92 (no.216); G. B. Grundy, Saxon Charters of Worcestershire (Birmingham, 1931), pp. 12–18, esp. pp. 12–13;N. R. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: A Description of the Two Worcester Cartularies in Cotton

Tiberius A. XIII’ in Studies in Medieval History presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke , ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp. 49–75 at pp. 53, 57, 67–8.

4 This pattern is in marked contrast to the use of the word ‘old’ in bounds of all periods inconnection with roads: B246 (S141), B348 (S177), B513 (S212), The Early Charters of Wessex , ed. H.P. R. Finberg (Leicester, 1964), no. 567 (S290), B451 (S298), B491 (S317), B548 (S321), B594(S359), B601 (S369), B610 (S380), B696 (S423), B749 (S462), B752 (S466), B764 (S467), B787(S487), B781 (S490), B792 (S495), B755 (S501), B796 (S503), B817 (S513), B830 (S523), B865

(S532), B871 (S533), B869 (S535). For general patterns in the descriptions of roads, see Alan




10

greater sense of the relative quality of the ford, as if that were becoming more

important. The tenth century sees the first appearance of words such as Depford

(‘deep ford’), Bradford (‘wide ford’), Shelford (‘shallow ford’), Fulford (‘muddy ford)

and Langford (‘long ford’). Indirect confirmation of this pattern may be found in the work of forgers: later fabrications of early charters have a disproportionate number

of bridges, reflecting the landscape at the time of forging.

Corroboration of this pattern is also found in the very clauses that mention the

bridge-work obligation. The usual formula for these exception clauses is something

along the lines of ‘free from all secular services except the building of bridges and

forts and army service’. However, in 959 with the accession of Edgar to the rule of

the whole kingdom, there is a change in the nature of the action. Before that date,

the vast majority of the charters use a word meaning ‘building’ ( construccio, instructio,

coedificatio etc.); after that date, the charters are split between referring to building and

repairing ( emendatio, reparatio etc.). Of the 227 genuine charters that refer to bridge-

work before 959, only seven refer to repair, whereas 199 refer to building.5 Bycontrast, of the 199 genuine charters to mention bridge-work between 959 and 1066,

seventy-eight refer to bridge construction, 108 refer to repair.

This pattern is also repeated in place-names. Names of sett lements, of course, are

evidence only of the existence of settlements, not of bridges. It must be assumed that

at any time there are many bridges that have not given their names to settlements and

therefore will not appear in those sources that record only place-names.

Nevertheless, an examination of the names contained in Domesday Book is

instructive, especially when it is compared to the county maps produced by John

Speed around 1600,6 which fortunately contain about the same number of

settlements.7 Domesday Book 8 contains reference to only forty-four9 place-names

containing the element ‘-bridge’10 (and explicit reference to only two bridges: Chester

Cooper, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Saxon Law of the Highway’, Haskins Society Journal 12(2002), 39–69 at 58–63.

5 The remaining twenty-one either have no action, e.g., ‘ab omni jugo vectigalium preter pontemarcem expedicionemque’, B750 (S472); or they have a neutral word such as juvamen , e.g., B932(S590), B952 (S601), B953 (S600); agon , e.g., B815 (S520), B884 (S548), B1023 (S579); or munimen ,e.g., B957 (S593), B959 (S606), B925 (S634).

6 John Speed’s England: A Coloured Facsimile of the Maps and Text from the Theatre of the Empire of GreatBritaine, First Edition 1611, ed. John Arlott, 4 vols (London, 1953–54).

7 The comparison would, of course, be wholly skewed if the illustrated features of the map were

taken into account; Speed’s maps contain representations of many bridges, which have not beencounted here; more importantly, several of Speed’s maps (most notably Cornwall, Kent andSomerset) have the names of many bridges which do not seem ever to have given their names tosettlements; therefore, only -bridge names which are accompanied by a symbol for a settlement onSpeed’s maps are counted here.

8 In what follows, except where noted, I am following the identifications given in H. C. Darby andG. R. Versey, Domesday Gazetteer (Cambridge, 1975).

9 Not including names of hundreds, wapentakes or counties; also not including the name Ebridge inBerkshire, which Darby and Versey were not able to identify (the Place-Name Society suggestsIrish Hill), as it is more likely to have been a -ridge name than a -bridge name.

10 Including those containing the element -bruge , which the authors of the Place-Name Society volumes seem content to accept as a -bridge name, its similarity to the Old Norse word for alanding dock ( bryggja ) notwithstanding; see, for example, the entry for Handbr idge, Cheshire ( Bruge in Domesday) in P. McN. Dodgson, The Place-Names of Cheshire , V.I.i, English Place-Name Society

48 (Cambridge, 1981), 53–4.




11

and Stamford11 ), in comparison to 511 names that contain the element ‘-ford’. Bycomparison, Speed’s maps12 contain eighty-seven -bridge names and 439 -fordnames. Of the -bridge names that appeared between 1086 and 1600, approximately

two-thirds appear in other sources before 1250,

13

suggesting (given the conservatisminherent in place-names) that the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the majorperiod of bridge building. Moreover, beyond the sheer numerical evidence, there is agreat qualitative difference in the names included and excluded. Many of the -bridgenames that do not appear in Domesday Book, but appear otherwise before 1250, arenames of significant river crossings: for example, Bridgnorth, Trowbridge,Ferrybridge, Uxbridge, Boroughbridge, Exebridge, Stockbridge (Hampshire), Brigg(Lincolnshire), Knightsbridge (Middlesex), Robertsbridge (Sussex), Stamford Bridge,Pontefract and Stourbridge. By contrast, the two places that appear in Domesday

with -bridge names, but on Speed’s maps under different names,14 and the five whichappear in Domesday, but not on Speed’s maps at all,15 represent wholly insignificant

bridges, which might have been a noticeable feature in a time of few bridges, but not when bridges were commonplace. Another two -bridge names that appear inDomesday, but are absent on Speed’s maps, seem to stand for natural headlands:Briga /Brige , Weke (Dorset) on Portland Bill and Brigas /Bringas , Bridge (Suffolk) northof Dunwich.16 Similarly, as well as these last two, a number of places in Domesdayare known simply as Bridge (or variants) as if this was designation enough: Bruge ,Handbridge (Cheshire); Birige , Swimbridge (Devon); Brige , Bridgerule (Devon);Bricge /Brigge , Bridge Sollers (Herefordshire) and Brugie , Bridgwater (Somerset). Thereis also a notable change in a few names that suggests the transformation: Ferrybridgeis Ferie /Fereia ; the hundred of Fordingbridge in Hampshire bears the modern name,but the town is simply Forde , suggesting a name in transition.17 Of the counties

covered by Domesday, there are no -bridge names at all in Bedfordshire, Berkshire,Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Middlesex, Rutland, Northampton-shire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire or the East and North Ridings of

Yorkshire.18 In other words, the central and early settled counties of England haveno Domesday -bridge names.

11 DB, 262d [Cheshire], 336d [Lincolnshire].12 Only for those counties represented by Domesday, i.e., not counting Cumberland (two -fords, one

-bridge), Durham (six -fords, one -bridge) or Northumberland (nine -fords, three -bridges); alsonot including some mistakes which appear to be unique to Speed and nothing more than simpleerrors: ‘Kunbridge’ for Kimmeridge, Dorset ( Cameric in Domesday), ‘Fawbridge’ for Foulridge,

Lancashire (not in Domesday), ‘Dichbridge’ for Ditteridge ( Digeric in Domesday).13 Of those in counties for which information is available from the Publications of the English Place-NameSociety , vols 1–72 (1924–96), supplemented by Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of EnglishPlace-Names (Oxford, 1940).

14 Brigeford , Brushford (Devon); Brigeford /Brucheford , Bushford (Somerset).15 Cobruge , Cowbridge (Essex), Hobruge , Howbridge (Essex), Neutibrige , Newtimber (Hampshire),

Telbrig /Telbricg , Ellbridge (Cornwall) and Wesbruge , West Briggs (Norfolk).16 There are two other -bridge names in Domesday that disappear: Botulvesbrige in Huntingdonshire,

which was absorbed into Huntingdon itself (its omission may also have been encouraged by theexistence of another Botulvesbrige , Botolph Bridge for Speed, in the northern half of the county);and Denebrige , Dunbridge, Hampshire, which appears to be marked on Speed’s map by a placemarker, but lacks a name.

17 Darby and Versey only include settlement names, so simply list Forde ; however, see DomesdayBook: ‘In Fordingebrige Hundred, [Robert, son of Gerald] holds Forde ’, DB, 46d [Hampshire].

18 Or the poorly covered Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland, or the Isle of Wight.




12

The same pattern is shown in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Before the eleventh

century there are only two -bridge names in the Chronicle: Bridgnorth ( Cwatbricge ) is

mentioned in 895 and 912;19 Cambridge ( Grentabricg ) in 875 and 917.20 Three new

English

21

-bridge names appear from the second half of the eleventh century on:Bristol ( Brycgstowe ) first in 1051,22 Stamford Bridge ( Stanfordbrycge ) in 1066;23 and

Tonbridge ( Tonebricge ) in 1088.24 Despite all the battles at river crossings, only

London Bridge25 and the bridge over the Trent at Nottingham built by Edward the

Elder in 920 are explicitly mentioned.26 By contrast, up to the year 900, ten different

-ford names are mentioned;27 in the tenth century, there are eleven,28 in the eleventh

twelve29 and in the twelfth only three.30

The Chronicle also contains a few stories that suggest a change in the use and

nature of river crossings. In 893, the Chronicle states that Alfred put the Danes to

flight, so that they fled across the Thames ‘where there was no ford’.31 This annal

19 Bridgnorth is mentioned again in the Chronicle in 1102 and 1126; the name Cwatbricge is only usedin 895 and then only in three of the four versions that contain this passage (A, B and C, not D); inall other passages the name is given as Bricge (and spelling variants thereof); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ,ed. Thorpe, I, 174–5, 186–7, 366, 377. Bridgnorth, strangely, does not appear in Domesday Book,being represented by Quatford.

20 And again in 1010; Cambridgeshire is mentioned in 1010 and 1011; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 144–5, 195, 264–5 (Cambridge), 262–3, 266–7 (Cambridgeshire).

21 The -bridge name (though probably named for a landing dock rather than a bridge) mentionedmost often in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is Bruges ( Bricge etc.), which served as a haven forexiles and thus is mentioned in eight annals: 1037 ( Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 294–5),1039 (pp. 296–7), 1040 (pp. 296–7), 1044 (p. 303), 1047 (p. 303), 1049 (pp. 308–10), 1051 (pp.312–15), 1052 (pp. 316–17, 320).

22 Again in 1063, 1067, 1088, 1126 and 1140; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 314, 330, 342, 356,

377, 384.23 D has Steinford brugge ; E Stængfordes brycge ; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 336–7, 339.24 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 357.25 Mentioned in 1016, 1052, 1097 and 1114; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 279–81, 318, 363,

370.26 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 196.27 Crecanford (a. 456; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 22–3), Charford (x2; 508, 519; pp. 26–7),

Biedcanford (571; pp. 32–3), Bradford-on-Avon (652; pp. 50–51), Hertford (673; pp. 38–9), Beorhford (752; pp. 80–81), Otford (776; pp. 90–91), Kempsford (802; pp. 104–7), Galford (825; pp. 110– 11), Thetford (870; pp. 134–5).

28 Tiddingford (a. 906; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 182–3), Oxford (x2; 912, 924; pp. 186–7,198–9), Hertford (913; pp. 186–7), Stafford (913; pp. 186–7), Bedford (x3; 914, 917, 971; pp. 190– 91, 194–5, 224), Hereford (914; pp. 188–9), Tempsford (917; pp. 194–5), Stamford (x2; 918; pp.

194–5, 210–11), Castleford (948, p. 213), Thetford (952; p. 215), Lydford (997; pp. 246–7).29 Thetford (x2; a. 1004, 1094; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 254–5, 360), Wallingford (x2;1006, 1013; pp. 256–7, 270–71), Oxford (x7; 1009, 1013, 1015, 1018, 1035, 1040, 1065; pp. 260– 63, 270–71, 274–5, 285–7, 293, 297, 332; and Oxfordshire: x3; 1010, 1011, 1049; pp. 264–5, 266–7,310), Bedford (1010, pp. 264–5; and Bedfordshire: x2; 1011, 1016; pp. 266–7, 278–9),Hertfordshire (1011; pp. 266–7), Aylesford (1016; pp. 279, 281–3), Brentford (1016; pp. 280–83),Staffordshire (1016; pp. 278–9), Stamford (x2; 1016, 1070; pp. 278–9, 345), Hereford (x3; 1055,1056, 1088; pp. 324–5, 326–7, 357; and Herefordshire: x3; 1051, 1052, 1060; pp. 315, 316, 328–9),Britford (1065; p. 332), Stamford Bridge (1066; p. 345).

30 Wallingford (x2; a. 1126, 1140; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 377, 384), Stamford (1127, p.378), Oxford (x3; 1137, 1140, 1154; pp. 382, 384, 385).

31 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 166–7; there is one other incident at a ford that might meritcomment: the very first dated annal (dated 60 B.C.) relates that the Britons were able to resist

Julius Caesar’s advance by placing sharpened stakes below the water of a ford across the Thames;

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 5; however, this section of the annal was drawn from Orosius




13

presumes the existence and use of fords. By contrast, the annal for 1013 describes

how many of Swein’s army, advancing on London from Winchester, were drowned

in the Thames, ‘because they did not trouble to find a bridge’.32

It might be expected that archaeology would serve to correct the written sourceson a question such as this. It should be remarked, however, that archaeology is

largely unhelpful when it comes to proving or disproving a putative shift from fords

to bridges. The action of the river itself, combined with modern dredging activities,

makes the evidence of all but the most substantial bridges difficult to find.

Furthermore, the tendency of the people of the Middle Ages to continue building

bridges on the same site can make it difficult to identify the earliest remains. These

remains, even if they are found, may be difficult to date with any precision. Finally,

there is the essential logical problem with using archaeology for such a question:

material remains can prove the existence of an object, but the lack of material

remains does not prove its non-existence. Thus, finding evidence of a new bridge

from c. 1000 does not prove that there was not a bridge on the site before it. All that said, archaeology is instructive in that it seems to provide no positive

evidence against the chronology suggested above. A number of bridges, notably

those at London, Rochester, Cambridge and Chester,33 may have survived in some

form from Roman times to the High Middle Ages, but a survey of recent

archaeological scholarship has turned up no evidence of Anglo-Saxon bridges built

prior to 900.34 By contrast, a number of sizeable and significant bridges built after

that date have been excavated, such as the bridges of Gloucester, the bridge at

Kingston-upon-Thames and the Fleet Bridge in London.35 The most spectacular

discovery of recent years is the set of three medieval bridges across the Trent at

Hemington in Leicestershire. These presumably served the road from Leicester to

Derby in turn: the first having been dated to c. 1096, the other two to the early and

mid thirteenth century.36 None of these excavations, however, can necessarily

disprove the existence of earlier bridges. The evidence from Oxford is more

complete, however. The sequence suggested for the crossing of the Thames there is

as follows: a eighth-century paved ford possibly with a clay causeway to facilitate the

and is only found in versions D, E and F, suggesting that it was not part of the original Chronicle(compiled c. 890), but was added later (at the absolute latest 1031, but probably earlier).

32 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 270–71.33 See below, Chapter 2.34 A ninth-century wooden bridge has, however, been discovered at Clonmacnoise in Ireland;

underwater excavations have revealed a bridge at least 120m long and 5m wide, anddendrochronology dated it to 804: Märit Gaimster, Cathy Haith, John Bradley and Tom Beaumont James, ‘Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1997’, Medieval Archaeology 42 (1998), 107–90 at 169.

35 Gloucester: Leslie E. Webster and John Cherry, ‘Medieval Britain in 1973’, Medieval Archaeology 18(1974), 174–223 at 219; Kingston: Susan M. Youngs, John Clark and Terry Barry, ‘Medieval Britainand Ireland in 1986’, Medieval Archaeology 31 (1987), 110–91 at 131; Fleet: David R. M. Gaimster,Sue Margeson and Maurice Hurley, ‘Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1989’, Medieval Archaeology 34(1990), 162–252 at 178.

36 Lynden Cooper, Susan Ripper and Patrick Clay, ‘The Hemington Bridges’, Current Archaeology , no.140 (vol. 12, no. 8) (1994), 316–21; Chris Salisbury, ‘Flood Plain Archaeology: The Excavation ofHemington Fields,’ Current Archaeology , no. 145 (vol. 13, no. 1) (1995), 34–7; and John Bradley,Märit Gaimster and Tom Beaumont James, ‘Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1999’, Medieval

Archaeology 44 (2000), 235–354 at 284. The details of the construction of the bridge revealed by thepreservation of the timbers in alluvial gravel make this a wonderful discovery: the bridges each had

timber superstructures in the form of trestles, resting on stone piers.




14

approach; the possibility of a late Saxon timber bridge, although what evidence existsfor it is slight; then, in the late eleventh century, the building of a long stonecauseway and the stone Grandpont. This last development finally rendered an

already difficult ford unusable.

37

Beyond these examples, other evidence is more indirect. The layouts of Winchester, York and Stamford suggest realignments connected with bridgebuilding. In Winchester, the later traditions which associated the bridge outside theEast Gate with St Swithun (bishop, 852–862/3), the name Newbridge given to thecauseway connecting the eastern end of the High Street to the gate and, finally, therealignment of the road outside the gate suggest that the bridge over the Itchen wasof tenth-century origin if not slightly earlier.38 The alignment of the roads maysuggest, moreover, that before then the eastern entrance to the city was made up-river from the modern crossing and through the Durn Gate.39 At York, the Romanbridge seems to have fallen into disrepair after the Romans’ departure; the bridge

which replaced it was slightly down-stream of it, aligned with the tenth-centuryDanish mercantile settlement, based around Ousegate and Pavement, which suggeststhat the bridge was built at the earliest in the tenth century.40 At Stamford, there isevidence of two realignments.41 The first bent the Roman road half a mile to the eastto cross the River Welland at a point above a division in the river. At this point, theoriginal town seems to have grown up, right around the site of the later Normancastle. The site of St Peter’s Church was probably the centre of the settlement42 andlines on a straight line formed by roads north and south of the river. Then, at somepoint in the tenth century,43 a bridge was built across the Welland at a point – as

would be expected – below the division of the river. This new bridge caused the roadalignment to shift further to the east.

Two final observations should serve to secure the general point about thechronology of bridge building in the early Middle Ages. First, that there was a changefrom fords to bridges may be shown most obviously by the existence in the HighMiddle Ages of bridges at places with -ford names. If there were serviceable fords atmajor river crossings such as Oxford, Wallingford, Quatford, Fordingbridge,Stamford, Wansford, Hereford, Hertford, Stafford and Stratford-upon-Avon, why

was there a need to build a bridge at these places at all? Second, in all the immense variety of place-names in England, there is not a single place called Stratbridge, a

37 Brian Durham et al., ‘The Thames Crossing at Oxford: Archaeological Studies, 1979–82’,

Oxoniensia 49 (1984), 57–100, esp. 82–95; the Grandpont was on the site of the modern FollyBridge. See also R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Ford, the River and the City’, Oxoniensia 34 (1969), 258–67.38 Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday , ed. Martin Biddle,

Winchester Studies 1 (Oxford, 1976), 244, 261–3, 271–2, 283.39 Biddle does not argue this, but the northward swing of the road from the east away from the line

of the Roman road is very suggestive.40 Jeffrey Radley, ‘Economic Aspects of Anglo-Danish York’, Medieval Archaeology 15 (1971), 37–57 at

39 and fig. 5.41 Christine Mahany and David Roffe, ‘Stamford: The Development of an Anglo-Scandinavian

Borough’, Anglo-Norman Studies 5 (1982), 197–219 at 197 and note, 204–11.42 Mahany and Roffe, ‘Stamford’, p. 203.43 Mahany and Roffe argue that the bridge can be dated to 918 when Edward the Elder built

boroughs on either side of the river; the annal, however, does not stipulate that a bridge was built,so it is possible that the bridge was built later in the century (see below, pp. 43–5); Mahany and

Roffe, ‘Stamford’, pp. 204–6.




15

name that would suggest a bridge on a Roman road; in contrast, there are numerousStratfords, Stretfords, Straffords etc.

The conclusion to be drawn from the charter bounds, place-names and narrative

evidence is that there were few bridges in England before the tenth century, and thatthe great period of the building of bridges at points previously unbridged wasbetween 900 and 1200.44

Environment and Traffic

This period of bridge building can be explained by the necessity for a change fromfords to bridges. The reason that this necessity arose may be found in changes in therivers, caused by the effect of economic development on the environment, and insimultaneous changes in the traffic making the crossings.

The first explanation for the provision of bridges to replace fords is thatpreviously serviceable fords were becoming unusable. The disappearance of usablefords was most dramatically illustrated in the 1950s by the eccentric Lord Noel-Buxton, who, in an avowedly futile protest against the changing world, set out toford the Thames by the Palace of Westminster, where it is thought that the Romanshad a ford. Needless to say, this attempt served better as a whimsical protest than asa practical means of crossing the river.45 Nevertheless, his lordship’s point may beagreed to stand: in the more sensible moments of his account of the protest,46 hecontrasts the modern Thames to the ancient river, noting in particular the effect ofthe embankments, which he calls the chaining of the river: ‘such chains are theenemies of all good forders’.47

44 It is interesting to note in this context the contrast between the proposed English chronology andthat in France; Boyer’s study of bridges in French charter bounds suggests a great increase in thenumber of bridges during the period of Carolingian political authority in the ninth century, butfewer bridges during the disruptions of the tenth century; Marjorie Nice Boyer, Medieval FrenchBridges: A History (Cambridge MA, 1976), pp. 26–7. Harrison rightly concludes that we cannotknow for sure whether the bridges in existence c. 1200 were built before or after the Conquest; heattempts an interesting comparison with the building of mills, but the conclusions from thiscomparison are ambiguous: Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , pp. 45–7.

45 ‘The roads aren’t normal here; the towns aren’t normal. It is hysterical … But I must speak. There

is something to say. You see what a PROTEST it is, to be interested in Thorney? Anyhow, it’s allgoing on. We are in this Age. Fifty millions of us in Britain. Let’s ford a river as a protest’; RufusNoel-Buxton, Westminster Wader being an estimate of Westminster in All Ages, by one who longs for

MUDDY WATER, and the return of the bittern to London Fen (London, 1957), pp. 39–41 [emphasesthoroughly original]. In the summer of 2005, a Yorkshire businessman named Graham Boanas

waded across the Humber to raise money for charity. It is striking that afterwards he commentedthat ‘I am as fit as I have ever been and it was absolutely exhausting’; The Guardian , 22 August 2005<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1554262,00.html> (accessed 11 March 2006).(Incidentally, the same article mentions that Noel-Buxton also tried to ford the Humber: ‘He wasseen walking along the riverbed when the water was extremely low and reached the opposite shore

with his trousers rolled up to his knees. However, it soon emerged that he had used a boat to ferryhimself across the deepest part of the r iver.’)

46 See, for example, the map of the old coastline of the Isle of Thorney (i.e., Westminster), Noel-Buxton, Westminster Wader , p. 90.

47 Noel-Buxton, Westminster Wader , p. 59.




16

This change in the nature of the rivers,48 and thus the river crossings, was part of

what has been called the ‘second landscape revolution’, which occurred between 800

and 1200.49 In this period, rivers were changed by three separate, but mutually

reinforcing aspects of economic development: forest clearance, embanking to drainfields, and deliberate canalization to provide for mills.

The clearance of forests has been re-interpreted in the last thirty years or so, as

new techniques, particularly pollen analysis, have led the correction of the most

famous interpretation of English environmental history, that of W. G. Hoskins. His

notion of the Saxon settlement of a virgin landscape, followed by the rapid

colonization of a still largely empty land after 110050 has been corrected on both

counts. It is now evident that there was much more clearance in pre-historic and

Roman times, and that the Saxon settlement was far less important than he argued;51

similarly, the changes which Hoskins dated to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

have been shown to have been substantially underway two centuries before. The

great increase in population as well as the related clearance of woodlands anddrainage of fens were already happening in the tenth century; they were less dramatic

than Hoskins portrayed them, however, simply because the country was less empty

than he suggested.

Nevertheless, the clearance of woodland between 800 and 1200 should not be

underestimated.52 An increase of the population of both men and livestock implies a

48 For this paragraph and the following ones, see W. G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape ,rev. edn with introduction and commentary by Christopher Taylor (London, 1988); this is a newedition of Hoskins’ classic work (first published in 1955) with introductions to each chapter andrunning glosses by Taylor describing how more recent scholarship (particularly archaeology) hascorrected Hoskins’ interpretations. In the citations that follow, I will distinguish between the work

of Hoskins and that of Taylor.49 Taylor, ‘The English Settlement: Introduction’ in Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn,

pp. 40–42 at p. 42 and Taylor, ‘The Colonization of Medieval England: Introduction’ in ibid ., pp.67–9 at p. 67.

50 See, for example, Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn, pp. 70–71: ‘vast areas remainedin their natural state, awaiting the sound of a human voice … Over some inner fastnesses therereigned, except for the wind and the rain, an utter silence’.

51 Taylor, ‘The English Settlement: Introduction’ in Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn,pp. 40–42.

52 Cp. H. C. Darby, ‘The Clearing of the Woodland in Europe’ in Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth , ed. William L. Thomas (Chicago, 1956), pp. 183–216, esp. pp. 190–92, and Rackham, Historyof the Countryside , esp. pp. 68–85, and idem , Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape , rev. edn(London, 1990), esp. pp. 39–58. Rackham makes some judicious comments about the need for

caution in analysing place-names, and the danger of leaping to facile and imaginative conclusionsfrom the scant evidence of a place-name (e.g., the name Brentwood, ‘Burnt Wood’, is weakevidence for the wholesale burning of woodlands; Rackham, History of the Countryside , p. 84).Furthermore, his comparison of ‘wood’ elements in Anglo-Saxon charter bounds, as well as ofplace-names denoting clearings, amply makes the point that the pattern of the density of

woodlands was similar during the Anglo-Saxon period to that recorded in Domesday (see his mapsin ibid., pp. 82–3). Nevertheless, his analysis of charter bounds is heavily slanted towards theheartland of Wessex and to the period after 950 and thus reflects a landscape quite developed andclose to Domesday, not the earliest period that he tries to illuminate. The place-name analysis isdependent largely on Domesday, and, while it again demonstrates the broad outlines to be similar,there are woodland names to be found in all but the wettest fenlands. Indeed, Rackham’s figuresfor Domesday show that ‘England was not well wooded even by the standards of twentieth-century, let alone eleventh-century Europe’ ( ibid., p. 76), but they still show that the amount of

wooded land was to reduce by a further two-thirds between 1086 and 1895 (Rackham, Trees and

Woodlands , pp. 48–54) and that Domesday Book does represent one moment in an on-going story,




17

substantial increase of lands under cultivation and available for pasture. The heavy

plough made heavy soils profitable for the first time.53 While assarting occurred on

the margins of existing land, not in untouched forests, the woodland was still

reduced. The disappearance of native English woodland creatures such as wolves,boars, beaver, wild cattle and red deer testifies to the diminishment of their habitat;54

the introduction of the rabbit, the pheasant and the fallow deer marks the appearance

of a new tamer landscape.55 Deer and sheep can be the most effective agents of

clearance, eating away the new growth of young trees and thus killing trees more

reliably than humans could without extreme effort.56 In the light of this evidence of

environmental change, the Norman introduction of Forest Law and of enclosed

parks may be taken to suggest a contemporary perception of a threat to the products

so protected.57

Clearance of forests changes the run-off of water.58 As William Cronon describes

in his account of the effect of European settlement on the New England

environment, even the smallest changes can have a cumulative effect. For a whole variety of mutually reinforcing reasons, ‘spring runoff in deforested regions began

and peaked at an earlier date; moreover, smaller rainstorms at other times of year

produced greater amounts of runoff. Watersheds emptied themselves more quickly,

with the result that flooding was more common.’59 The long-term result could be the

not the end of it. His conclusion that ‘the Anglo-Saxons in 600 years probably increased the areaof farmland, managed the woodland more intensively, and made many minor alterations. But theydid not radically reorganize the wooded landscape’ is a good corrective to the older view that‘throughout the length and breadth of the countryside, the ax was at work cutting down the trees,and the pick was at work grubbing up the roots’ (Darby, ‘The Clearing of the Woodland inEurope’, p. 191), but his phrasing downplays the effect of Anglo-Saxon population development

after 800 and the work in re-clearing the woodland that had grown back after the collapse ofRoman Britain. See also Paul Stamper, ‘Woods and Parks’ in The Countryside of Medieval England , ed.Grenville Astill and Annie Grant (Oxford, 1988), pp. 128–48; and, for the situation in France,Roland Bechmann, Trees and Man: The Forest in the Middle Ages , trans. Katharyn Dunham (New

York, 1990), esp. pp. 45–110.53 Darby, ‘The Clearing of the Woodland in Europe’, p. 190.54 Rackham, History of the Countryside , pp. 34–40; for the effect of beaver on the environment and thus

the probable reasons for their eradication, see Bryony Coles, ‘Further Thoughts on the impact ofBeaver on Temperate Landscapes’ in Alluvial Archaeology in Britain , ed. Stuart Needham and MarkG. Macklin (Oxford, 1992), pp. 93–9.

55 Rackham, History of the Countryside , pp. 47–51.56 For the reduction of woods in deer parks to heaths, see Rackham, History of the Countryside , pp. 126,

128.57

Rackham is rightly insistent on distinguishing between forest and woodland: forest in the strictsense in the Middle Ages referred to land, wooded or not, under Forest Law: ‘to the medievals aForest was a place of deer, not a place of trees’ (see also Bechmann, Trees and Man , pp. 13–14, for adiscussion of the etymology of the word ‘forest’); nevertheless, the need to designate particularareas for deer suggests a reduction of their natural habitat. The first and the only pre-Conquestreference to a park (or at least to a deerhay) occurs in 1045 (Rackham gives the reference as Anglo- Saxon Wills , ed. Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930), no. 13; it is correctly no. 31 (S1531)).Forest Law was introduced by William the Conqueror; Rackham, History of the Countryside , pp. 65,123, 130–31.

58 There are plenty of modern examples of this process: in the 1990s, devastating floods inCambodia, which inundated the temple of Angkor Wat, and the flash floods in the Pacific North

West of the United States were both exacerbated, if not caused, by excessive logging.59 William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York,

1983), p. 124; see also Richard C. Hoffmann, ‘Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems in

Medieval Europe’, American Historical Review 101 (1996), 630–69 at 633.




18

drying up of minor streams and springs for the best part of the year. An increase in

the amount and force of the water in major rivers would cause the scouring of a

deeper and more defined bed and the cutting of the most extreme meanders,

producing a straighter bed. The resulting river would be much harder to ford.Moreover, the variation in rivers between the faster spring thaw and the drier

summers would make the remaining fords more seasonal.

The faster run-off would also lead to greater soil erosion; the soil thus eroded

would be washed into rivers. As a result, rivers would become less clear60 and

therefore less easy to cross. Indeed, the medieval notion of good hygiene, involving

the disposal of human waste directly into running water,61 must have made the

fording of rivers an unpleasant, if not hazardous, occupation in some areas.

The drainage of land for cultivation similarly affected the shape of rivers. The

provision of drainage ditches further accelerated the run-off of water; the embanking

of rivers to protect drained fields directly changed the shape of the rivers, defining

them in a set course. Such drainage activity was proceeding in a piecemeal butsignificant manner from an early date. Drainage activity was underway in the

Pevensey Levels in the eighth century; Glastonbury Abbey was working to reclaim

fen lands at least as early as the tenth century.62 The annal for 1098 in the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle (written at Peterborough, on the edge of the Fens) states that heavy

rains caused crops cultivated in the marshes to be destroyed, without indicating that

cultivation of crops in marshland was in any way unusual.63 The fifteenth-century

Pseudo-Ingulfian Chronicle of Crowland Abbey (just eight miles from

Peterborough), which uses earlier materials, talks of the beginnings of cultivation in

the tenth century and of vigorous embanking and settlement activities in the eleventh

and twelfth centuries. Reliable and explicit evidence is available elsewhere from the

twelfth century: the Black Book of the Exchequer talks of new knight’s fees in the

marshes around Ely in mid-century and, in 1189, Richard I granted the men of

Holland and Kesteven the right to reclaim marshland.64 These examples largely

concern the reclamation of marshlands around the coast, but such drainage also

occurred along rivers: for instance, the appearance in Domesday Book of place-

names containing the element ‘-foss’ suggests drainage activities in the Derwent

Valley of east Yorkshire well before the Norman Conquest.65 Similarly, the existence

of place-names ending with ‘-don’, which usually denotes a hill, in flat river valleys

suggests that these places were old islands within the marshes, which gradually

became integrated into the homogenous reclaimed countryside. Just such a place-

name confused the thirteenth-century chronicler of Abingdon Abbey, causing him toinvent a spurious pre-foundation at a nearby hill.66 The wide, flat Thames valley

60 Hoffmann, ‘Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems’, pp. 633–4, 640.61 Hoffmann, ‘Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems’, pp. 643–5.62 Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn, pp. 71–2.63 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 364.64 For these and further examples, see H. C. Darby, The Medieval Fenland (Cambridge, 1940), pp. 43–

52. Evidence of this kind of activity is best preserved by monastic establishments with theircontinuous institutional memory, and we may presume that similar activities were taking place on asmall scale outside the monasteries.

65 Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn, p. 71.66 Chronicon monasterii de Abingdon , ed. Joseph Stevenson [RS 2] (London, 1858), I, 2–3; Frank Stenton,

The Early History of the Abbey of Abingdon (Reading, 1913), pp. 2–3 and 3n. The chronicler with good




19

below Oxford must once have been as wet as the Fens. The transformation of the

valley into cultivated land would have changed the shape and force of the river: the

claiming of fields by the Abbey of Abingdon would, for instance, have had a direct

effect on the ancient ford at Wallingford, just down stream. Thus, whereas Wallingford had been the place where the pre-historic Icknield Way crossed the

Thames and was the lowest ford that William the Conqueror could find after being

unable to cross the Thames at London, it required a bridge by the twelfth century.

Embanking took place in towns too, and thus at the actual point of major river

crossings. Between 1000 and 1500, the London bank of the Thames moved

southwards by up to four hundred feet. From Thames Street, which represents the

line of the Roman river wall, the bank was advanced by gradual accretion of wharves

and the subsequent filling in of those wharves with river-walls to provide building

room.67 A similar process was underway on the opposite side of the river with the

development of Southwark. Consequently, the same amount of water was being

squeezed into an increasingly constricted space. The final aspect of development that would have contributed to the change in

the rivers was the damming and canalization of rivers to provide power for

watermills. The creation of artificially deep mill-ponds and fast mill-races made

previously fordable rivers impossible to cross. This process was already well

advanced by the eleventh century. As R. A. Holt has demonstrated, the 6,082 mills of

Domesday Book represent the saturation of England with them, not an early stage in

their dissemination as has often been argued.68 While it is fair to note that not every

mill recorded in Domesday was a watermill and that some may have been powered

medieval historiographical logic makes the foundation on the dun be by an Irish monk named Abennus. Stenton comments that ‘it is not certain’ that the suffix ‘-dun’ always meant a hill,suggesting Farndon in Nottinghamshire, ‘in flat land by the Trent’, as another place where themeaning is ‘impossible’; other examples might also include Farndon, Cheshire, on the banks of theDee, or Little Farringdon, Oxfordshire, up river from Abingdon. On ‘-don’ place-names in general,see Margaret Gelling and Ann Cole, The Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford, 2000), pp. 164–73(refuting Stenton at p. 165); ‘-don’ does sometimes get confused with ‘-den’, valley ( ibid ., p. 114),but Gelling and Cole include Abingdon in their list of ‘-dun’ (hill) names (p. 168).

67 Tony Dyson, Documents and Archaeology: The Medieval London Waterfront (London, 1989), pp. 12–24,esp. pp. 18, 24 and figures 24–6, p. 15.

68 Archaeological evidence now puts the initial invention of the watermill in the third century orbefore; eight Roman watermills have been found in Britain. Moreover, archaeology has challenged,

in this as in most aspects, the notion of wholesale collapse after the decline of Rome. Certainly watermills have been found in Ireland from as early as 630, and a ‘massive machine’ at Old Windsor on the Thames has been dated to the late seventh century. A charter of 762 (B191 (S25) which admittedly survives in no copy earlier than the thirteenth century) records the transfer ofhalf-use of a mill (not explicitly a watermill) in Kent. Against the background of this early evidence,Holt convincingly dismisses the notion that Domesday’s paucity of references to mills in Devonand Cornwall shows the gradual spread of mills from east to west; R. A. Holt, The Mills of Medieval

England (Oxford, 1988), pp. 1–4, 8–10. John Langdon’s more intensive analysis of mills in the WestMidlands suggests that mill numbers were static or even in decline during the twelfth century andthat the total number of mills only began to increase again in the thirteenth century with theintroduction of the windmill and the use of watermills for such processes as fulling; he furtherargues that fulling mills were less profitable than corn mills and that the sporadic distribution ofthem suggests they appeared only in those places where the demand for corn mills had beenentirely met; John Langdon, ‘Water-mills and Windmills in the West Midlands, 1086–1500’,

Economic History Review 44 (1991), 424–44, esp. 430, 433–6.




20

by animal or human power,69 the distribution of mills shows them clustering around

the major rivers of England.70 The transformation of the rivers is demonstrated by

the fact that, by 1086, some mills on lesser streams had fallen into disuse.71

Moreover, some mills on smaller streams are noted as ‘winter mills’, suggesting thattheir streams did not provide sufficient power in summer.72 The most profitable

mills were situated on the major rivers, and it seems that inhabitants of manors

distant from such a mill would carry their corn to these mills.73 The pattern of

distribution of mills indicates that there was enormous demand for them; the most

populous and well watered counties had the most mills, with the rivers of Norfolk

and Lincolnshire, in particular, being lined with them.74 The swift adoption of the

windmill in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries suggests that demand had

outstripped the rivers’ ability to match it.75

Such demand also led to the construction of mill-ponds and mill-races to

guarantee a reliable water supply.76 An unusually well documented and dramatic

example of the effects of the building of a watermill on the shape of its river may beprovided from the later Middle Ages. In 1318, an inquiry was held to determine

responsibility for the bridge of Sturry outside Canterbury. The jurors found that the

abbot of St Augustine’s should be responsible for the upkeep of the bridge because

he had constructed a new watermill, which had turned the rivulus that had been

crossable by means of a single plank into a larger river. The abbot protested loudly

about this judgment, citing the clause in Magna Carta that states that no free man or

community should be required to build a bridge where not so required by ancient

custom. As a result, the jurors had to be recalled, and another inquiry held. This

inquiry offered further detail: there had been another mill on much the same site

before the abbot built his and

afterwards Roger the then abbot constructed another watermill to make

a profit for his church on the soil of the said abbot on the other side of

the stream. When the mill had been built, he realized that the water of

the said stream could not power both the [first] mill and the abbot’s mill,

69 Taylor, gloss, in Hoskins, Making of the English Landscape , rev. edn, p. 73; for animal and hand mills,see Holt, Mills , pp. 17–20.

70 See the map in Margaret T. Hodgen, ‘Domesday Water Mills’, Antiquity 13 (1939), 261–79 at 267,reprinted in Holt, Mills , p. 9; but, as Hodgen observes, ‘the banks of the three great highway rivers,the Severn, Trent and Thames, were seldom regarded by mill builders as suitable places for milling

operations. The lower waters of the Severn, for example, were free of mills as far as Tewkesbury.On the Trent, the first three mill wheels appear at Grassthorpe thirty of forty miles from itsjunction with the Humber. On the Thames the first mill upstream appeared possibly at Staines butmore probably at Basildon’, Hodgen, ‘Domesday Water Mills’, p. 266.

71 Holt, Mills , pp. 13–14.72 Holt, Mills , p. 12.73 Holt, Mills , p. 13.74 Holt, Mills , p. 11.75 There seems to have been no increase in the number of watermills after 1086 in the densely

populated parts of the country, Holt, Mills , pp. 13–16; for the introduction of windmills, see Holt, Mills , pp. 17–33, 171–5.

76 For an example of the effect of a watermill on the course of a river, see C. R. Salisbury, ‘The Archaeological Evidence for Palaeochannels in the Trent Valley’ in Alluvial Archaeology in Britain ,ed. Stuart Needham and Mark G. Macklin (Oxford, 1992), pp. 155–62; and Patrick Clay, ‘A

Norman Mill Dam at Hemington Fields, Castle Donnington, Leicestershire’ in ibid ., pp. 163–8.




21

so he made a dam between the two mills, where none had previouslybeen built, thus greatly enlarging the mill-pond and raising its level, sothat by this raising a great quantity of water was retained, and it

powerfully sufficed to supply the mills. And [the jurors] say that, afterthe raising was so performed by Abbot Roger, the aforesaid plank wasdestroyed and broken by the vehemence and velocity of the stream of

water, and that the land adjoining on all sides of the plank was deeplyconsumed and devastated, and thus the crossing was widened.

Subsequently, the abbot built a bridge to replace the plank; he claimed, however, thatthis was merely done out of charity. Thus

the jurors were asked if the abbot had ever done any work below the millto enlarge the stream; they said he had not, but repeated that it was thestrength of the new stream that had made the crossing impassable. Thus,

the abbot was ordered either to return the stream to its previouscondition or to build a suitable causeway and bridge for people to crossin safety.77

Forest clearance, drainage of fields, and the building of mills all combined tocause a faster run-off of water and more defined, faster rivers. These developments

would have increased the tendency for flooding. Heavy rains or quick thaws couldcause damage that might previously have been averted by the retention of water in

wetlands. Thus evidence of floods is suggestive that these changes in the nature ofrivers had taken place. As Cronon says in his analysis of storm and flood data forearly New England, ‘negative evidence is always dangerous to use’,78 and this

admonition is all the more true in relation to the use of the Anglo-Saxon Chroniclefor such analysis, given its composite nature, which can skew the data by the whimsof the particular author, and the extremely terse nature of the early annals. However,the Chronicle, which, if it has a collective character, could certainly be described asdown in the mouth, complains of famines, plagues, murrains, the mortality of birds,comets, shooting stars and other celestial happenings, fires, high winds,thunderstorms, winter storms, frosts and poor harvests. Despite this litany ofmisfortune, the Chronicle does not mention a flood until 1014, a tidal flood.79 Then,in 1097 London Bridge is recorded as having been all but swept away, in 1098 heavyrains caused cultivated crops in marshes to be destroyed, and in 1099 there was

another tidal flood.80

Finally, in 1125 ‘there was so great a flood on St Laurence’sDay that many villages were flooded and many people drowned, and bridges brokendown’.81 Thus, as far as the evidence can be taken, it would seem that theenvironmental change in the rivers had occurred by the early twelfth century.

77 PRO KB 27/257, m. 98; for examples of mills affecting fords, see Public Works in Mediaeval Law ,ed. C. T. Flower, I, Publications of the Selden Society 32 (London, 1915), 195–7, II, Publicationsof the Selden Society 40 (London, 1923), 199–203.

78 Cronon, Changes in the Land , p. 124.79 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 274–5.80 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 363–4.

81 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 377.




22

To summarize the whole process crudely, the drying of the lands and the

definition of the rivers meant that approximately the same amount of water was

concentrated into a smaller area. Rivers were thus deeper and faster, and more

dangerous or impossible to ford.

82

This process seems to have occurred in the tenthand eleventh centuries, in the same period that bridges were built more frequently to

replace fords.83

The need for these new bridges would have been increased by a change in traffic.

This was a two-stage process: from pack animals to ox-drawn wains and from wains

to horse-drawn carts.84 Each stage required better roads and river crossings.

Pack animals were the predominant method of transporting goods in the early

Middle Ages. Manorial customals make clear distinction between carrying service to

be performed around the local farm, carriagium , and long-distance carrying to markets

or other manors, averagium , which means transport by pack animal.85 The latter is the

word used for carrying services in Domesday Book.86 As vehicles came to

predominate in the twelfth century, however, pack animals declined in importance,since they could carry only a fraction of the weight that a cart could.87 Nevertheless,

in difficult terrain, pack animals remained faster than vehicles and thus were used for

perishable items such as fish even after the introduction of vehicles for other

goods.88 Above all, pack animals were reliable, being able to keep going through even

the most difficult conditions, and thus less seasonal. They could pick their way

through difficult terrain and could manage a fairly deep ford, even swimming if

necessary, where wains and carts would be swept away. These considerations kept

pack animals important throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern

period, especially in the hillier parts of the country.89

82 Indeed, it should be added that bridges themselves would complete the process of disrupting theriver’s natural flow. This disruption could cause various results. On the one hand, in 1355 a newbridge across the Lea caused a ‘sandbed’ in the middle of the river ‘to the nuisance of ships’;Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , III (London, 1937),71; on the other hand, the swift and dangerous currents around the piers of London Bridge werenotorious to the point that ‘shooting the Bridge’ became a well known hazard: Gordon Home, OldLondon Bridge (London, 1931), pp. 36, 150–51, 232–3, 278.

83 For a discussion of Anglo-Saxon bridge-building techniques, see Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , pp. 102–5.

84 For some general musings on the subject of the introduction of wheeled transport, see William H.McNeil, ‘The Eccentricity of Wheels, or Eurasian Transportation in Historical Perspective’,

American Historical Review 92 (1987), 1111–26.85

David Postles, ‘Customary Carrying Services’, Journal of Transport History , third series 5 (1984), 1–15at 2–3; John Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation: The Use of Draught Animals in EnglishFarming from 1066 to 1500 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 225–7; see also the carrying services to beperformed by the Geneat and Gebur in the Rectitudines singularum personarum (c. 1050), Rect. 2, 4. Andsee also James Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150– 1350 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 201–12 for a thorough investigation of the functioning of carryingservices through the example of Huntingdonshire.

86 See, for example, DB, 132c, 133dx3, 133ax3, 134b, 134cx3, 137b, 140bx2, 141ax2, 141bx4, 141c,141dx2 [all Hertfordshire]; Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation , pp. 24, 225.

87 John Langdon, ‘Horse Hauling: A Revolution in Vehicle Transport in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England?’, Past and Present , no. 103 (May 1984), 37–66 at 59.

88 J. F. Willard, ‘Inland Transportation in England during the Fourteenth Century’, Speculum 1 (1926),361–74 at 368–9.

89 Dorian Gerhold, ‘Packhorses and Wheeled Vehicles in England, 1550–1800’, Journal of Transport

History , third series 14 (1993), 1–26 at 13–17.




23

The second stage in this process, namely the switch from ox-drawn wains to

horse-drawn carts, has been studied by John Langdon (particularly with reference to

farm work, but also by extension to road haulage).90 His examination of the

vocabulary used for vehicles suggests that the second half of the twelfth century wasthe major period of transition between ox-drawn wains and horse-drawn carts.91 By

the thirteenth century, around three quarters of farm haulage was done using the

latter.92 Langdon points to flexibility and an increased market range as the motive for

a switch from the slower but larger wains to the faster but smaller carts. For these

advantages to come into effect, however, the roads and the river crossings must have

been easily passable, since horses, while they are faster on easy surfaces, cannot keep

trudging along on difficult surfaces in the way oxen can. The appearance in manorial

accounts of ox-drawn vehicles (usually plaustra or carrae ) versus horse-drawn ones

(almost invariably carectae ) shows an overwhelming dominance of the latter in the

drier, flatter parts of the country (including an absolute exclusivity in East Anglia),

but a higher proportion of oxen in the wetter, hillier parts (especially the North and West).

The difficulties involved in using horse-drawn vehicles were particularly acute

because the wains and carts of the Middle Ages were almost exclusively two-wheeled

vehicles.93 The various pieces of technology required for a practical94 four-wheeled

vehicle, especially the swivelling front axle and dished outward slanting wheels, were

not brought together before the sixteenth century.95 The disadvantages of the two-

wheeled vehicle were demonstrated in the complaints that attended a third – post-

medieval – transformation in traffic, namely the transition from two-wheeled carts to

four-wheeled wagons. These new large wagons were introduced from the Continent

in the 1560s, but immediately became the subject of prohibition, because of the

damage they did to roads and bridges. Wagoners prosecuted in the early seventeenth

century complained that they preferred wagons to carts because carts were unstable,

especially on hills and in deep fords. Wagons were also easier to pull over

obstructions and through mud because their weight was spread over four wheels

instead of two.96 In other words, before the introduction of the four-wheeled vehicle,

large horse-drawn carts were only a practical means of transportation in very good

conditions. Without good roads and bridges instead of unreliable fords, carts were

troublesome vehicles. Indeed, even with four wheels, the heavier wagons tended only

to predominate in the same areas where carts had first replaced pack animals and

where horses replaced oxen, again being most popular in the flat, dry spaces of East

Anglia.97

90 For the most concise statement of his research with regard to this question, see Langdon, ‘HorseHauling’, pp. 37–66; see also James F. Willard, ‘The Use of Carts in the Fourteenth Century’,History , new series 17 (1932), 246–50 for some of the tasks performed using the ‘heavy and clumsycart’.

91 Langdon, ‘Horse Hauling’, pp. 45–6, 58.92 Langdon, ‘Horse Hauling’, pp. 49–58.93 Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation , pp. 142–56, esp. 154–6.94 Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation , pp. 24–6, 152.95 Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation , p. 155; Gerhold, ‘Packhorses and Wheeled

Vehicles’, pp. 18–19.96 Gerhold, ‘Packhorses and Wheeled Vehicles’, pp. 9–11.

97 Gerhold, ‘Packhorses and Wheeled Vehicles’, p. 17.




24

This pattern of early innovation to take advantage of the better road conditions

in the South-East, but of slower innovation in the face of more difficult road

conditions in the North and West makes England the perfect mirror image of

France. Robert-Henri Bautier has shown how by the High Middle Ages, France wasdivided into three distinct zones of transport: the North-East, the most prosperous

as well as flattest area, was the zone of large, fast horse-drawn carts; the centre was

dominated by ox-drawn wains; in the south and west, pack animals were still most

common.98

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the most efficient method of carrying

goods to market was by horse-drawn cart. Nonetheless, as has been noted, these

horses and carts needed good roads and easy river crossings. The desire to use the

most efficient method of transporting goods therefore created a demand for easily

traversable bridges. The town that wanted to attract passing mercantile trade was well

advised to build a bridge to replace its increasingly difficult ford.

The Synod of Gumley, St Boniface and the Origins of the Common Burdens

If there were very few bridges in the early Anglo-Saxon period, there is an apparent

paradox: why, if there were few bridges, did bridge-work appear at all in early

charters, and why did kings insist upon it? What, in fact, were the origins of the

common burdens?

Before embarking on an account of the origins of the common burdens, a word

of explanation of the term is in order. The common burdens used to be known by

the name trinoda necessitas , but in 1914 W. H. Stevenson discredited this term.99

Stevenson recounts that it had its origin in historians’ trusting transmission of an

error of memory by a renowned scholar. It was first used by John Selden in the early

seventeenth century. In works of 1610 and of 1614, he referred to the reservation of

the trinoda necessitas in a charter of Cædwalla, king of Wessex. In 1618, he referred to

‘that trinoda necessitas , whereto all lands whatsoever were subject, although otherwise

of a most free tenure’.100 By the second edition of the 1614 work, in 1631, the

burdens of the originally precise reference had become ‘that Trinoda Necessitas , as it

was sometimes called’ and ‘in some charters in the church of Canterbury trinoda

necessitas ’.101 This apparently authoritative observation led to the term appearing in

various legal dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including the

second edition of Du Cange’s Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis (1733–36),102

andthus entering into the common pool of medievalist vocabulary. This would be all

well and good except that the term actually appears only in the single charter

originally cited by Selden. Moreover, there the term, instead of the whimsical trinoda

98 Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘La route française et son évolution au cours du moyen âge’ in Bulletin de laclasse des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, Académie Royale de Belgique , 5th series 73 (1987)(reprinted in Robert-Henri Bautier, Sur l’histoire économique de la France médiévale: la route, le fleuve, la

foire (Aldershot, 1991)), 70–104 at 86.99 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, English Historical Review 29 (1914), 689–703.100 Quoted in Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 690.101 Quoted in Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 690.

102 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, pp. 690–91.




25

necessitas , ‘three-knotted obligation’, is properly read as the rather more prosaic trimoda

necessitas , ‘three-fold obligation’.103 And finally, the charter, while purporting to be

from 680, is a late tenth-century forgery,104 the most damning evidence against the

charter’s authenticity being the anachronistic reference to the common burdens.

105

Despite Stevenson’s findings, the term trinoda necessitas is still used as convenient,

if somewhat misleading, short-hand, especially in textbooks.106 Yet, because the term

has no Anglo-Saxon validity, it will be avoided in the account that follows; moreover,

while the term trimoda necessitas should be noted as a tenth-century attempt at

expressing the indivisibility of the three obligations, the straightforward term

‘common burdens’, which does not owe its origins to a unique forgery, will be

preferred here.

The question of the origin of the common burdens hinges on the first

appearance of bridge-work in an authentic charter. This occurs in a grant of

privileges to the Church by King Æthelbald of Mercia at the Synod of Gumley in

749.107 The synod and the charter that came out of it were the response of Æthelbaldto a campaign for reform led by St Boniface. The Church was granted the right to

hold its lands absolutely free from royal exactions except for the building of bridges

and the defence of fortresses against the enemy. Two questions surround this

exclusion clause: first, does it represent the imposition of novel obligations on the

Church or the definition of previously undefined duties? Or, in other words, did the

Church possess a blanket immunity to secular work before the 740s? And, second,

why was bridge-work one of the obligations excluded? The answers to these two

questions will be important in understanding the evolution and function of Anglo-

Saxon bridge-work.

The first of these two questions has been debated by W. H. Stevenson, Eric John

and Nicholas Brooks. In short, Stevenson believed that the common burdens had

always been demanded from ecclesiastical lands and that the 740s marks their first

appearance in the written record; John believes that the Gumley charter is evidence

of a recent imposition of the burdens; Brooks reads the document as evidence of an

effort to define the Church’s previously undefined obligations.108

In his article of 1914, Stevenson seeks to demonstrate that the English Church

had possessed a limited immunity of the kind specified at Gumley from the time of

its foundation, but that this immunity had not previously been specified in charters.

To prove that the Church’s immunity was not new in the 740s, he points to the

existence of charters with unlimited immunities both before and after the 740s.

Instead, he suggests that the charters were silent with regard to exclusion of thecommon burdens from the immunity, because ‘their immunities and their limitations

103 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 691.104 B50 (S230).105 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, pp. 692–7.106 For an example of a textbook using the phrase, see H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman

Conquest (Harlow, 1962), p. 125; or idem , The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 500–1087 (London,1984), pp. 33–4: ‘there gradually emerged in the written records of the eighth century references toa combination of charges upon estates that were later known as the trimoda or trinoda necessitas , thethree necessities’.

107 B178 (S92); the text is to be found in Appendix 1.108 Harrison is happy to summarize their arguments and leave the question open; Harrison, Bridges of

Medieval England , pp. 35–7.




26

were so well known by common law or ecclesiastical law that it was not necessary tomention them’.109 He asserts that since the Church on the Continent did not enjoyimmunity from similar common burdens at the time of Augustine’s mission to

England, the missionaries would never have claimed such a blanket immunity fromEnglish kings.110 Moreover, he adds that ‘the liability to military service and to aid inthe construction and repair of fortresses are such primitive requirements of anyorganized state that it is unlikely that they were suddenly imposed’.111 Therefore, theearly silence of the charters both before and after Gumley may be read as the tacitacquiescence to the three common burdens.112

John, in his work on Anglo-Saxon land tenure, rejects Stevenson’s arguments forlong-standing burdens and argues that the common burdens were imposed onecclesiastical lands113 for the first time shortly before the Synod of Gumley. The cruxof John’s argument is the statement: ‘it cannot be denied that church lands enjoyedimmunity before [749]’.114 He produces four separate pieces of evidence: another

charter of Æthelbald, a comparison to Continental practice, and two passages fromBede. The first piece of evidence is a charter of King Æthelbald from 742, granting

absolute immunity from secular burdens to the churches in Kent in 742, or, as Johnputs it, ‘more accurately [guarantee of] existing immunities against the constantdanger of secular encroachment’.115

Second, John draws a comparison with Continental immunities: John readsÉmile Lesne’s Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France as concluding that ‘it was notuntil the time of the Carolingians that the lands of the Frankish Church were legallyliable for military service’.116 Moreover, he asserts that a Merovingian attempt to raisean army from church lands (described by Gregory of Tours) was ‘exceptional,unusual, and probably illegal’.117

Next, John cites a passage from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica in which, after he haddefeated Penda at the Battle of Winwæd in 655, King Oswiu of Northumbria givestwelve small plots of land for monasteries. The grant is made so that ‘land andmeans, being relieved of devotion to earthly warfare ( ablato studio militiae terrestris )might contribute to the waging of heavenly warfare ( militiam caelestem ) by the eternaland busy devotion of monks’.118 John takes this passage literally, as implying thatecclesiastical estates in Northumbria were not subject to military obligations.

The last piece of evidence is a passage from Bede’s letter to Archbishop Egbert,in which Bede urges Egbert to reform his province by imposing discipline on his

109 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 699.110 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 701.111 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 698.112 Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, pp. 699–702.113 John only discusses the imposition of the common burdens on Church lands, but his conclusions

connecting the imposition to the nature of bookland have a wider significance; Eric John, LandTenure in Early England: A Discussion of Some Problems (Leicester, 1960), pp. 64–79.

114 John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 70.115 John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 71; the grant is B162 and B162A (S90).116 John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 66.117 John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 66n.118 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the Engl ish People , ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford,

1969), pp. 292–3.




27

subordinates and by setting up new bishoprics to spread the Gospel.119 Bede

suggests that these bishoprics be endowed with land taken from corrupt monasteries

which ‘are useful neither to God nor to men, since in truth the life which is observed

in those places is neither according to the rule of God, nor are they possessed bysoldiers and nobles of the secular powers who defend our people from the

barbarians’.120 This re-allocation of land should be done lest ‘the forces of the secular

warriors growing thin, they be absent who should guard our borders from barbarian

invasion’,121 a situation that was arising because young men were finding it difficult

to find land on reaching manhood and were therefore living corrupt lives or

emigrating in search of better prospects. Bede goes on to express his despair at the

sight of laymen who bought the right to found monasteries from the king solely for

the charter of immunities that they would obtain as abbots of the new foundations,

immunities which made them ‘free from both human and divine service ( liberi … a

divino simul et humano servitio )’.122 John reads these passages together to imply that

before Gumley bookland was desirable to noble families both because it washereditary and because it was free from secular duties.

For John, the insistence on bridge- and borough-work by Æthelbald, and,

subsequently, of army service by Offa was intended to place limits on bookland and

thereby to prevent spurious foundations of monasteries by landholders wishing to

evade their duties. This limitation of bookland enabled it to become a method of

making secular grants from the time of these kings onward and to be a frequent form

of secular grant by the time of Alfred.123 He thus reads the silence of the charters

with regard to both immunity and burdens as meaning different things at different

times: before 749, the silence may be read as an absence of burdens, and afterwards

as tacit acquiescence.124

In contrast, Brooks argues that the Church had not possessed a blanket

immunity from labour services before the 740s and that John has erred by reading

personal exemptions of ecclesiastical dignitaries as immunities for their estates.

Brooks disagrees with John’s interpretation of all four pieces of evidence.

Brooks rejects John’s interpretation of Æthelbald’s charter of 742 on the grounds

that it would have applied only to Kent, not Mercia, and therefore the grants of 749

and 742 cannot be compared.125 Moreover, Brooks argues that, in any case, the grant

of 742 is a ninth-century forgery created by the monks of Canterbury in their conflict

with the kings of Mercia.126

119 Bede, Opera historica , ed. Charles Plummer (Oxford, 1896), I, 405–23.120 Bede, Opera historica , ed. Plummer, I, 414.121 Bede, Opera historica , ed. Plummer, I, 415.122 Bede, Opera historica , ed. Plummer, I, 415.123 John, Land Tenure in Early England , pp. 77–9. On bookland, see also Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and

Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (Oxford, 1994), pp. 324–34.124 John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 65.125 Nicholas Brooks, ‘The Development of Military Obligations in eighth- and ninth-century England’

in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoesand Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 69–84 at p. 76 and note; he ignores John’sparenthetical remark that ‘one passage in the record suggests that the privileges were expected toobtain over all England south of the Humber’, John, Land Tenure in Early England , p. 70.

126 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 76n.




28

With regard to the Continental comparison, Brooks claims that John’sinterpretation of Émile Lesne’s work is wrong: according to Brooks, in the passagecited, Lesne was actually writing only about the personal obligations of bishops and

abbots to serve in the army.

127

So, whereas John reads the passage from Gregory of Tours as meaning that royal efforts to extract service were extraordinary, Brooksreads it in the opposite way to imply that the kings only rarely allowed claims ofimmunity.128 He notes that on the Continent, the compulsion of service fromecclesiastical tenants was not new in the eighth century. In particular, he mentionsthe requirement of bridge-work from ecclesiastical tenants in the Theodosian Codeof 423, and the recognition that this requirement was called an antiqua consuetudo inItaly in the 780s.129

Turning to Bede, in response to John’s interpretation of the story of Oswiu inthe Historia ecclesiastica , Brooks concludes that ‘certainly land which was now toprovide food-rent and housing for monks could no longer supply the same needs for

warrior lords, but we should not assume that the men on the land had no militaryobligations’ and supports his conclusion that poor tenants had military obligations with the references to other stories from Bede.130

Similarly, Brooks argues that, in his letter to Egbert, Bede is referring to theindividuals holding the land not to the tenants on the land. That is to say, the abbotsor pseudo-abbots were free of the obligations, but this does not imply that theirlands were exempt.131

Thus Brooks convincingly rejects John’s case that the Church had an absoluteimmunity before the 740s.132 Instead, he proposes a more complicated picture in

which the Church enjoyed a muddle of different immunities in need of definition.133 This argument is supported by his observation that the reservation clauses onlyappear when immunity clauses appear. The early references are sporadic, inconsistentand ambiguous. The first immunity clause appears in a charter of 699 in which King

Wihtred of Kent granted that churches might be free from the exaction of publictribute, so the Gumley charter is not only one of the first charters to contain anexemption clause, but one of the first to have an immunity from which anything canbe exempted.134 The first charter to contain an exemption clause is again from Kent,a charter of Æthelberht II of 732. It reserves an unspecified ius regium whichpertained to all ecclesiastical lands, which Brooks takes to be ‘some or all of themilitary obligations which are more precisely reserved and stated to be “common” or

127

Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 73n; see Émile Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France ,II, fasc. 2 (Lille, 1926), 456–90.128 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 73n.129 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 77n.130 St Cuthbert before entering Melrose interrupted his life as a shepherd with periods serving as a

soldier; Imma survived the Battle of the Trent in 678 by claiming to his captors that he was not asoldier but one of the poor folk who, while not expected to fight, were expected to follow thearmy with supplies; Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 74n.

131 John, Land Tenure in Early England , pp. 44–6, 73–4; Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 74nn; Brooksdoes not refer explicitly to the first passage from the letter, but his remarks may be taken to applyto both.

132 See, however, the following of John’s argument in Richard P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligationin Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 43–57, esp. pp. 52–3.

133 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 77.134 B99 (S20); Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 75 and note.




29

“general” in later charters’.135 He finds support for this position in a Wessex charter

of 739 granting land ‘so that it is immune and forever secure from all fiscal causes

and royal matters, except for matters pertaining to military service ( expeditionalium

rerum )’.

136

It is possible that the res expeditionales might be the same or similar to the iusregium in Kent.137

It seems therefore that the Gumley charter of 749 represents one part of a wider

process to define the Church’s immunity from secular interference. This being the

case, the question remains, why would bridge-work be an issue in this process?

In answering this question, whilst disagreeing as to whether Æthelbald was

responding positively or negatively to Boniface’s pressure,138 Brooks and John agree

in making St Boniface the driving force behind the inclusion of the common burdens

in the charter of 749. Boniface, after his success in reforming the Frankish Church in

the early 740s, had been waging a cross-Channel letter-writing campaign to persuade

King Æthelbald to forego his rapacious and immoral behaviour. As, however, neither

Brooks nor John lingers over why bridge-work should have been a matter of concernfor the king and the prelates at Gumley, I believe they have overlooked the

significance of the saint and the Continental connection he represents in the English

origins of bridge-work.

In noting the parallels between English and Continental obligations, Brooks

suggests that this is an example of ‘similar problems … receiving similar solutions …

because of contemporary contacts in times of danger and because the origins of

these obligations … lay in a common Germanic and Roman past’.139 I will argue here

these ‘contemporary contacts’ were closer in the 740s than at other times in the early

Middle Ages, and that St Boniface, one of the most extraordinary and influential men

of the period, served as a medium for the transmission of institutional and legal ideas

through western Europe.140 Bridge-work was, in its English origins, an alien

135 B148 (S23); Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 75.136 B1331 (S255); quoted in Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 76.137 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 76.138 In John’s account, Æthelbald defied the criticisms of St Boniface that he had been abusing the

rights of monasteries by granting that monasteries and churches be free from all secular duties, butexcluding ‘the building of bridges and the necessary defence of fortresses against enemies’. Becauseof his belief in a previously unlimited immunity, John reads this not as a true grant of immunity,but as the imposition of two burdens under the pretext of protecting the churches. Brooks agreesthat it was Boniface who prompted the clause, but disagrees with John about the attitude of

Æthelbald at the Synod of Gumley, seeing it as a positive response to the criticism. In Brooks’

account, the reservation of bridge-work should not be taken as defiance of Boniface since it wasonly intended to place limits on the labour services demanded from monastic lands; and, besides,‘there is no suggestion that these works were to be performed by the monks’, which had been theessence of Boniface’s complaint; Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 78. I believe that Brooks isentirely right to see the charter as a positive response to Boniface. It would seem, if nothing else,that John’s argument flies in the face of the words of the charter. It would be an act ofconsiderable bravado to call a synod in order to defy the most influential holy man of the day andto frame that defiance in a charter with the subscribed consent of bishops.

139 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 69; see also Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Church’s Military Service in theNinth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View?’ [reprinted from Studies in Church History 20(1983), 15–30] in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 117–132.

140 In their work on St Boniface, both George Greenaway and Timothy Reuter draw attention toBoniface as someone transmitting ideas across the Channel, but they both concentrate on histransmission of English ideas to the Continent: George Greenaway, ‘Saint Boniface as a Man of

Letters’ in The Greatest Englishman: Essays on Saint Boniface and the Church at Crediton , ed. Timothy




30

introduction, taken directly both from Francia and the archives of the see of Rome; it

was introduced into England through St Boniface as a means to place a strict

definition on the sacred and profane spheres.

In order to understand the introduction of bridge-work in this re-interpretation, it is

necessary to make a brief excursus on Boniface’s modus operandi . In his two great

works, the foundation of the Church of Germany and the reform of the Frankish

Church, St Boniface was always guided by two authorities: the pope and the Church

Fathers.141

Boniface’s relationship to the Papacy defined his mission at every stage. Wilhelm

Levison describes Boniface’s ‘close connexion and cooperation with the Papacy’,

which caused him to ‘[send] reports on the progress of his work and [ask] the pope

for information and instruction on problems of ecclesiastical practice arising in a soil

new to Christianity’.142 Boniface’s own visits to Rome were marked not just by

submission and reverence to the pope, but by close consultations to plan hismissions.143

Boniface was inspired, however, not merely by the Papacy itself,144 but by its

connection to the Church Fathers and the apostolic mission that it represented. Sent

to minister to the heathen Germans by Pope Gregory II, Boniface saw himself as a

new Augustine, commissioned by a new Gregory and thus guided by the example of

ancient precedent. Boniface’s understanding of this ancient precedent was more than

superficial: he repeatedly sought out the authoritative writings of his spiritual

forebears. For example, at Boniface’s episcopal consecration, the pope ‘equipped

him with a little book in which the most sacred laws of ecclesiastical order made by

episcopal synods have been compiled and commanded him that henceforth this

norm of episcopal conduct should be kept inviolate and that the people under his

jurisdiction should be taught by these examples’.145 Similarly, in reforming the

Frankish Church and imposing the synodal system, ‘being a legate of the Roman

Church and the Apostolic See, [Boniface] urged that the numerous canons and

ordinances decreed by early councils should be preserved so as to improve the health

of heavenly doctrine’.146 Boniface sought practical guidance from patristic sources

Reuter (Exeter, 1980), pp. 31–46; Timothy Reuter, ‘Saint Boniface and Europe’ in ibid., pp. 69–94.For a similar example of a churchman, namely Theodore of Tarsus, serving as the medium for thetransmission of legal ideas, see Martin Brett, ‘Theodore and the Latin Canon Law’ in Archbishop

Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence , ed. Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1995), pp.120–40.141 See Catherine Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c. 650–c. 850 (London, 1995), esp. pp. 102–10.142 Wilhelm Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 72, 74; for

example, on one occasion, Boniface sent a messenger from Germany to the pope seeking adviceon the everyday needs of the Church, Vitae Sancti Bonifatii archiepiscopi Moguntini , ed. WilhelmLevison, Scriptores rerum germanicarum (Hanover and Leipzig, 1905), p. 27 (BHL 1400).

143 On the occasion of Boniface’s second visit to Rome in 722, during which Gregory II raised him tothe episcopate and gave him the name Boniface, Gregory ‘brought up many other matters aboutholy religion and the true faith which were worth examining, and [Boniface and Gregory] theyspent almost the whole day talking them over’; Vitae Sancti Bonifatii , ed. Levison, p. 29.

144 As Boniface’s more strained relations with Pope Zacharias demonstrate.145 Vitae Sancti Bonifatii , ed. Levison, p. 30.146 Vitae Sancti Bonifatii , ed. Levison, pp. 41–2; there follow brief but specific references to four of the

great councils of the early Church.




31

and, not surprisingly, his most constant guide was Gregory the Great, whose writingshe hungrily sought and used.147

Drawn from the example of St Gregory, the main themes of Boniface’s efforts atreform may be summarized under three headings: an insistence on ecclesiasticalhierarchy, particularly recognition of the authority of Rome; the maintenance ofchurch law, especially an insistence on properly sanctioned marriage; and theseparation of religious and profane, especially with regard to the discipline of priestsand monks. Despite the common themes, however, it would be wrong to viewBoniface through the lens of eleventh-century reform. His insistence on properlyreligious behaviour by those in holy orders did not at any time imply the exclusion oflay authority. In particular, Boniface’s mission in Germany and Francia would havebeen impossible without the active support of Charles Martel and his sons.148

If his work in England were to proceed along the same lines as this successful work on the Continent, Boniface might be expected to have sought an alliance with a

powerful secular authority in the arrangement of a proper division betweenecclesiastical and lay spheres, thus allowing the Church to discipline its ownmembers. It appears that this was precisely what he did.149

First, he sought a working relationship with the most powerful English king,namely King Æthelbald of Mercia. His letter of 745/6 admonishing the king was sentonly after first preparing the ground. An earlier letter accompanied by gifts thanksthe king for his assistance, but hints at discord present and future by ending with aquotation from Ecclesiastes: ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: FearGod and keep his commandments.’150 The subsequent letter of admonition, co-

written with five other bishops, starts with praise of Æthelbald’s alms giving,protection of the Church and maintenance of peace. Only after this mollifying

beginning does it turn to scathing criticism of the king’s failure to marry and hisseduction of nuns, which sins have led all the English into sin.151 Then, the letter getsto the issue of privileges of monasteries:

147 This search led him to develop a relationship with the papal archivists: in 735 he wrote toNothelm, archbishop of Canterbury asking for a copy of the Libellus responsionum of Gregory, which

would be of use in his missionary work, because the Roman archivists claimed that they did nothave a copy among the other materials of that pope. Similarly, there survives a letter from acardinal-deacon of Rome to Boniface apologizing for the delay in sending the copies of Gregory’sletters that he had requested. Boniface also sent transcripts of Gregory’s letters which he had

himself made in the Roman archives to friends in England; Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus ,ed. Michael Tangl, MGH Epistolae Selectae, I (Berlin, 1955), 57, 96–7, 158 (nos 33, 54, 75).148 As Wallace-Hadrill has written, ‘As a firm upholder of the principle of a national church protected

by its ruler, [Boniface] expected the Carolingians to exercise more, not less, authority in the choiceof suitable bishops and abbots’; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘A Background to St Boniface’s Mission’ in

England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoesand Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 35–48 at pp. 47–8; see also Levison, England and theContinent , p. 75.

149 Cp. Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils , p. 104: ‘The relationship between the canons of theCouncil of Clofesho and Boniface’s reported Frankish decrees is best explained by the traditional

view that the latter influenced the former. While the English church was certainly a model forBoniface’s work on the continent, it was neither without flaws, nor was Boniface blind to them ashis letter to Cuthbert shows.’

150 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 142 (no. 69); the quotation is from Ecclesiastes 12:13.

151 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 151 (no. 73).




32

Furthermore it is reported to us that you have abused many privileges of

churches and even carried off some of their properties. And this, if it is

true, is considered a great sin … [for] he who embezzles or snatches the

properties of Christ and the Church shall be deemed a homicide in thesight of the righteous judge … And it is said that your reeves ( prefecti ) and

ealdormen ( comites ) inflict greater violence and slavery upon monks and

priests than other Christian kings have done before. Truly, since the

apostolic pontiff St Gregory, by means of sending preachers of the

catholic faith from the Apostolic See, converted the race of the English

to the true God, the privileges of the churches in the realm of the

English remained undefiled and inviolate until the times of Ceolred, king

of the Mercians, and Osred, king of the Deirans and the Bernicians.152

A number of points should be emphasized from this letter. The first is that

Æthelbald is accused of two things with regard to monasteries’ privileges: the theft ofproperties and the forced labour from monks. The second is that Boniface claims

that the Church’s privileges go back to the Roman foundation of the English Church

by Gregory the Great.

At the same time, Boniface sought to bring the English Church to acknowledge

proper discipline and authority. The letter of admonition to Æthelbald was

accompanied by other letters addressed to churchmen. These repeat the same

themes. One letter makes clear that the real issue behind Boniface’s anger about what

he saw as the English rejecting lawful marriage was that the English in so doing were

‘disdaining the custom of other peoples and despising the apostolic command’.153

Similarly, in a letter to Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, Boniface describes the

reforming work performed in Francia and particularly the model of ecclesiasticaldiscipline achieved through regular synods, and moves on to criticize what he saw as

decadent aspects of the English Church. He then returns to the theme of lay

intrusions into ecclesiastical properties:

A layman or emperor or king or any one of the reeves or ealdormen

justifying himself by secular power who seizes by violence a monastery

from the power of the bishop or abbot or abbess and installs himself in

the place of the abbot to rule and have the monks under him and to

possess the property, which was provided by the blood of Christ, such a

man the ancient fathers used to call a thief and a sacrilegious and a

murderer of the poor … Against such men who we find here and there,let us blow the trumpet of God, lest we damned for keeping silent.154

At the end of the letter Boniface returns to the topic of violence against monks,

complaining of ‘the forced slavery of monks upon royal works and buildings, which

one does not hear of being done anywhere in the whole world except among the race

of the English. It is not right that priests consent to it or keep silent about it. It is an

152 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 152 (no. 73); the letter then recounts the grim ends thatthese two kings received as divine comeuppance.

153 Boniface’s letter to the priest Herefrid who was charged with carrying the letter to the king; DieBriefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 156 (no. 74).

154 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, pp. 169–70 (no. 75).




33

evil unheard of in past ages.’155 The themes in his letters to churchmen are clear: the

Church must be separate from worldly things; it must be disciplined and strongly led

so that it can withstand the immoralities of the world. In particular, it is wrong of the

Church to acquiesce tacitly in the violation of the religious life. The result of this two-pronged letter-writing campaign was a pair of synods. The

Synod of Clofesho of 747 laid down proper standards of conduct for the religious; the

Synod of Gumley of 749 defined the boundaries of the lay and religious spheres. It is

only in the context of Boniface’s policies of reform that the first appearance of

bridge-work in the charter issued at Gumley can be properly understood.

The text of the charter may be found in Appendix 1. This charter was the direct

result of Boniface’s pressure. It represents a deal between the Church and King

Æthelbald, designed to allow both to prosper. The deal is most obvious in the

structure of the charter. The charter begins in the first person (‘ego Æthelbaldus …

concedo’), but half-way through it changes to the third person (‘Æthelbaldus …donavit’). Moreover, the preamble is briefly repeated: ‘Quapropter ego Æthelbaldus

… pro amore cælestis patriæ, et pro remedio animæ meæ…’ is matched by ‘Quia

Æthelbaldus rex, pro expiatione delictorum suorum et retributione mercedis

æterni…’ Finally, the language of the donation changes at the same mid-point: where

the first half speaks calmly in the language of secular donation, the second half rings

with the language of Boniface’s admonitions, speaking of ‘propriam libertatem’, gifts

‘in sæculare’ and ‘tribulationes … in domo Dei’. Most tellingly of all, the donation

concludes ‘quatenus sublimatus regni eius prosperis successibus polleat’. The last

three words were a favourite formula of Boniface used in a number of his letters.156

The structure of the charter suggests that the first half of the donation is the

king’s terms; the second is the Church’s. Consequently, what is essential to each

becomes clear. The king secures military resources from church lands when he

chooses to call upon them, for which he gives up all other dues from those lands; the

Church secures the freedom to enjoy its lands unmolested. This deal follows the

form of that between Carloman, the Carolingian Mayor of the Palace, and the

Frankish Church in 743.157

155 ‘de violenta quoque monachorum servitute oper ibus et aedificiis regalibus, quae in toto mundonon auditur facta nisi tantum in gente Anglorum’; Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 171n(no. 78); quoted in Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 77 (with ‘violentia’ for ‘violenta’).

156

This coincidence of style was noticed by Wilhelm Levison. Levison notes that this formula, whichoriginated in the Actus Silvestri , was popularized in the English Church by Aldhelm; the phrase wasalso used by Bede and the Lindisfarne biographer of St Cuthbert; Levison, England and the Continent ,pp. 285–6 and 286n.

157 ‘We establish, moreover, with the counsel of the servants of God and the Christian people, that,because of the imminent wars and the attacks of other peoples who live around us, we will retainfor a time with God’s indulgence some part of ecclesiastical property as a charitable gift ( precario )and tax ( censu ) for the help of the army … And, if it is deemed necessary, as the pr ince orders ( ut

princeps iubeat ) the gift will be renewed again’; Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 102 (no.56). Here attention may be drawn to the phrase ‘omnique populo edicto regis facienda jubentur’ inthe Gumley charter, which both John and Brooks pause over. John takes it to mean that thecommon burdens had recently been imposed on all the Mercians by royal edict; John, Land Tenurein Early England , pp. 66–7, 70–71. For Brooks it is an ambiguous comment: it may be taken as areference to a new law, but equally may be taken as one to the strengthening of customary law;

Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 78. However, the verb jubentur is in the present tense, thus I




34

However, the question remains: why was bridge-work included in the charter? In

749, England was not being attacked by river-borne marauders. Indeed, the period

from 650 to 750 was a period of peace and growing prosperity.158 Neither the

sources cited above on the question of the Church’s immunity nor the letters ofadmonition mentions bridge-work at any point. Moreover, the words of the charter

suggest that what was important to the king: the clause ‘sed nec hoc

prætermittendum est cum necessarium constat æcclesiis Dei’ in the singular seems to

refer only to the defence of fortresses, not to the building of bridges. If borough-

work was what was important, the addition of the building of bridges seems an odd

one, given – to repeat – that there were very few bridges in eighth-century

England.159

Here the claim in the charter that this represents the Church’s propria libertas and

Boniface’s assertion that the immunity of the English Church dated back to the time

of Gregory the Great deserve more attention. Boniface claimed in his letter that

‘since the apostolic pontiff St Gregory … converted the race of the English to thetrue God, the privileges of the churches in the realm of the English remained

undefiled and inviolate’.160 If he had turned to the story of the conversion of the

English, at least as it is represented in the Historia ecclesiastica , for evidence of an

ecclesiastical immunity at the time of St Gregory, he would have been

disappointed.161 Whenever first-hand guidance from the Fathers was lacking,

however, Boniface took his understanding of Gregory’s actions from the

contemporary practices of the Continental Church. He consistently sought to ground

his assertions of proper church right in, as he expressed it in another context, ‘the

would interpret the phrase to refer to the repeated summoning of help when deemed necessary,and thus the phrase matches the phrase ‘ut princeps iubeat’ in the Frankish document.

158 J. R. Maddicott, ‘Prosperity and Power in the Age of Bede and Beowulf’, Proceedings of the British Academy 117 (2002), 49–71 at 58; Maddicott goes on to speculate ‘whether English royalreservation of bridgework as a communal obligation from the eighth century onwards may nothave had as much to do with taxing trade as moving armies’, p. 66.

159 Cp. ‘The notion that bridge-building and fortification defense … arose during the eighth centuryfits well with the archaeological evidence; the earliest excavated English fortified boroughs are ofMercian provenance and can be dated to the middle of the eighth century’; Abels, Lordship and

Military Obligation , p. 53; Abels’ evidence does not include bridges.160 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 152 (no. 73); Stevenson claims that this tradition was

one that Boniface probably heard of before leaving England in 718 and cites a charter of KingCenwulf of Mercia of 814 as independent evidence for this tradition; while this is not an

impossible surmise, a charter from fifty years after Boniface’s death does not seem to be sufficientevidence for an independent tradition; Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 699n, 700–701; thecharter is S177 (B348).

161 Æthelberht of Kent is described as endowing the church richly and giving it his protection; theLibellus responsionum (a copy of which Boniface had sought from the archbishop of Canterbury in735) is full of the separation of the sacred from the profane and issues of proper ecclesiastical law;it, moreover, dictates penalties against the robbers of churches and the allotment of ecclesiasticalrevenue, but it makes no reference to the Church’s immunity from secular dues; Bede, EcclesiasticalHistory , ed. Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 74–5, 78–83, 114–15, 142–3; for a discussion of the text ofthe libellus and Bede’s use of it, see Paul Meyvaert, ‘Les “Responsiones” de S. Grégoire le Grand àS. Augustin de Cantorbéry: à propos d’un article récent’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 54 (1959), 879– 94; idem , ‘Bede’s Text of the Libellus responsionum of Gregory the Great to Augustine of Canterbury’in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoesand Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 15–33 (reprinted in Paul Meyvaert, Benedict, Gregory,

Bede and others (London, 1977)).




35

custom of other peoples and apostolic command’.162 Most directly, he justified his

attack on the labour of monks to Archbishop Cuthbert on the grounds that ‘one

does not hear of [its] being done anywhere in the whole world except among the race

of the English’.

163

Indeed, if Boniface had sought to compare the English situation with a proper

Continental model, he would have come across the sordida munera and the exclusions

from them.164 In the fourth century, responsibility for public duties had devolved

onto local landholders. However, many classes of people, including churchmen, had

quickly gained exemptions from these ‘dirty works’, which included a variety of

public duties connected with supply of food, material and transport for the army, and

the repair of public buildings.165 In response to these claims of exemption, in 423

Emperor Theodosius II decreed that no-one should be exempt from responsibility

for the upkeep of roads and bridges.166 This decree was repeated again in 441 with

the explicit clarification that the obligation rested on land not on the people

themselves.167 From the Theodosian Code, the idea of the sordida munera passed intothe Breviary of Alaric in Visigothic Spain,168 and the prohibition of exemptions from

the building of bridges and roads passed into the Lex romana Burgundionum in Gaul169

and Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis in the East.170 The use of the Theodosian Code and

the Breviary of Alaric was common in Francia and in the Frankish Church in

particular: the Lex Ribuaria stated that the Church lived under Roman law,171 the

Church produced many manuscripts of the two collections,172 clerics were schooled

in the codes,173 and ecclesiastics quoted from the laws in their writings.174 As part of

this continuation of late Roman law, the immunities of ecclesiastical lands in Francia

162 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 156 (no. 74).

163 Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius , ed. Tangl, p. 171n (no. 78).164 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Medieval Bridges: A Window onto Changing Concepts of State Power’, Haskins

Society Journal 7 (1995), 11–29 at 15.165 Theodosian Code, XI.10.2 (370), XI.16.15 (382) and XI.16.18 (390); Codex Theodosianus , I,

Theodosiani Libri XVI cum constitutionibus Sirmondinis , ed. Th. Mommsen and P. Krueger (Berlin,1905), 593, 601–2, 602–3.

166 Theodosian Code, XV.3.6; Codex Theodosianus , I, ed. Krueger and Mommsen, 818.167 Novella Valentiniani, 10 (441); Codex Theodosianus , II, Leges novellae ad Theodosianum pertinentes , ed. Th.

Mommsen and Paul Meyer (Berlin, 1905), 91–2.168 The Breviary of Alaric, under the title ‘De Extraordinariis sive Sordidis Muneribus’, only repeats

one of the earlier prohibitions included in the Theodosian Code’s section of the same name, that isthe one against the levying of extraordinary exactions by officials in the provinces, Lex RomanaVisigothorum , ed. Gustav Haenel (Leipzig, 1848), pp. 224–5; the Breviary omits altogether the

section (Theodosian Code XV.3) on road repair, which includes the prohibition of exemptionfrom bridge-work; the Breviary does repeat a sententia of Paulus that states that ‘whoever digs upthe public road, he alone will be compelled to repair it’, pp. 350–51.

169 Lex romana, XVII.1; Leges Burgundionum , ed. Ludwig Rudolf von Salis, MGH, Leges, I, 2, I(Hanover, 1892), 141; again the obligation is explicitly territorial.

170 Codex Justiniani I.2.7, XI.75.4; Corpus iuris civilis , II, Codex Justinianus , ed. Paul Krueger (Berlin,1877), 13, 452.

171 Lex Ribuaria, 61.1: ‘secundum legem Romanam, quam ecclesia vivit’, Lex Ribuaria , ed. FranzBeyerle and Rudolf Buchner, MGH, Leges, I, 3, II (Hanover, 1954), 109. See Ian Wood, ‘TheCode in Merovingian Gaul’ in The Theodosian Code , ed. Jill Harries and Ian Wood (Ithaca, 1993), pp.161–77 at p. 166.

172 Wood, ‘The Code in Merovingian Gaul’, pp. 164–6.173 Wood, ‘The Code in Merovingian Gaul’, pp. 167–9.174 Dafydd Walters, ‘From Benedict to Gratian: The Code in Medieval Ecclesiastical Authors’ in The

Theodosian Code , ed. Jill Harries and Ian Wood (Ithaca, 1993), pp. 200–16, esp. p. 200.




36

did not extend to exemption for tenants from the repair of roads and bridges, nor

from military service:175 Charlemagne, for instance, continued to insist on taking

labour services from church lands.176 Similarly, public works continued to be an

obligation imposed on church lands in Italy: in the eighth century, churches theresecured the right to be immune from the intrusion of royal officials to demand the

fulfilling of their obligations, but the obligations themselves persisted.177 In the 780s,

the new Carolingian king of Italy, Pippin, son of Charlemagne, decreed that

‘concerning the repair of churches or the making of bridges or the repair of streets,

this shall be done by all means just as was the ancient custom ( sicut antiqua fuit

consuetudo ), and immunity shall not be favoured nor any excuse succeed in this

matter’.178 The antiqua consuetudo here is probably a reference to provincial Roman

law,179 and Pippin’s decree is re-assertion of the Roman prohibition of exemptions.

Thus, just as St Boniface’s influence on the Synod of Gumley would have turned

English clerics towards the arrangement of their relationship with the king along

established Continental lines, it is probable that this led to the introduction of theidea of the sordida munera and the exceptions to them to place proper limits on the

rights of the king. The transmission of the idea is not exact, but the outline of the

settlement is preserved. Through the example of the ancients and of Continental

practice, bridge-work was agreed to be a duty owed by ecclesiastical lands.

To summarize: St Boniface set out in the late 740s to reform the English Church

in the same manner that he had established the German Church and reformed the

Frankish Church, namely by the separation of the sacred and profane through the

establishment of ecclesiastical discipline, the strengthening of this discipline through

synods, and a partnership in the maintenance of order and discipline with a strong

and virtuous king. In England, this process involved admonishing the bishops to

impose ecclesiastical order and simultaneously warning the king to become a virtuous

figure himself. The culmination of this activity was the Synod of Gumley at which, as

at Carloman’s second synod in 743, proper lines were drawn to ensure that the

partnership between king and Church could function to their mutual benefit. The

king could use church lands by prior agreement for the defence of the realm, but

those lands would remain in the hands of the Church, and the monks themselves

would not be forced to labour. This arrangement was established on what were

perceived to be proper lines drawn from ancient and Continental usage, and thus the

Church conceded the exclusion of bridge-work from its exemption as a symbol of

the propriety of its actions.180

175 Maurice Kroell, L’Immunité franque (Paris, 1910), pp. 111–27.176 His son, Louis the Pious, however, exempted several houses from these dues; Lesne, Histoire de la

propriété ecclésiastique en France , II, fasc. 2, 419–25.177 Katherine Fischer Drew, ‘The Immunity in Carolingian Italy’, Speculum 37 (1962), 182–97 at 184.178 Capitularia regum Francorum , MGH Leges 2, I, ed. Alfred Boretius (Hanover, 1883), 192, 197 (no. 91,

c. 4; no. 93, c. 7); see Drew, ‘Immunity in Carolingian Italy’, p. 185n.179 Cp. the association of lex Romana and antiqua consuetudo in the seventh-century Angers Formulary;

Wood, ‘Code in Merovingian Gaul’, p. 162.180 Cp. Helen M. Cam, Local Government in Francia and England: A Comparison of the Local Administration

and Jurisdiction of the Carolingian Empire with that of the West Saxon Kingdom (London, 1912), pp. 100– 120, esp. p. 120: ‘On the whole, then, we incline to think that whilst the English immunity may

very probably have owed something to the Frankish immunity at the outset, the Church here a lso




37

This interpretation of the origins of bridge-work helps explain two puzzling

aspects in the early history of the obligation. The first problem is the apparent

paradox noted above that in charters of the eighth and ninth centuries, even though

the obligation is often included, there are very few bridges in the attached bounds. The second problem is that, after Gumley, the obligation appears only sporadically in

the charters for the first hundred years; as Brooks observes ‘it was not apparently of

great importance to donor or donee, lay or ecclesiastical, whether the reservation was

included or not’.181 If the origins of bridge-work are understood as part of a

settlement worked out along lines that were both ancient and foreign, it can be seen

that the bridge-work was, in a sense, hypothetical, even symbolic. To forge the

partnership with a reformed monarch, the Church conceded that its lands would be

liable for certain obligations just as the Church Fathers had done. Only years later did

these obligations become real and onerous. In other words, bridge-work may be seen

in its origin to have more to do with the proper definition of land tenure than with

actual bridges.182 In the century and a half following the Synod of Gumley, bridge-work seems to

have remained unimportant. Brooks, having dismissed the idea of a sudden change in

the eighth century, paints a picture of relative continuity thereafter, of a gradual

process of definition of pre-existing obligations. He traces the appearance of

references to the common burdens in the Anglo-Saxon charters, kingdom by

kingdom. After the first explicit reference to bridge-work and the defence of

fortresses at Gumley in 749, similar reservations of these duties appear in charters of

the Hwicce in 767 and 779. Between 793 and 796 Offa of Mercia, Æthelbald’s

successor, granted land at Westbury-on-Trym in Gloucestershire free from all

burdens except ‘expeditionalibus causis et pontium structionum et arcium

munimentum’.183 Here at last is the first reference of undoubted authenticity to all

three common burdens together, and, indeed, we are told that ‘it is necessary to all

the people, so that no one is excused from it’. Moreover, if we accept the evidence of

a thirteenth-century cartulary,184 just a short while earlier in 792 Offa had sought to

define the liberties of the churches of Kent and had granted freedom from all secular

dues except ‘army service within Kent against sea-borne pagans in roving bands

( contra paganos marinos cum classis migrantibus ) or against the South Saxons when it is

deemed necessary, and bridge-building and the fortifying of fastnesses against the

being a ready means of connection, the later developments of the institution in [England] wereindependent of foreign influence.’181 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 73. This observation is made in response to Eric John’s theory of

a tenurial revolution brought about by the transformation of bookland.182 Once this definition of proper tenure was accomplished, it was possible for that tenure to be

sought by laymen, hence the subsequent extension of the use of bookland. As H. R. Loyndescribes the development: ‘Folkland … represents land still subject to the vaguer and moreloosely defined burdens of communal obligation associated with early Anglo-Saxon kingship.Bookland itself is further advanced again, exempting from the loosely defined burdens, butultimately sharpening those that remained. Service at fyrd , burh and bridge came to mean more askingdoms grew in size and complexity’; Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest , p. 175.

183 B274 (S139); quoted in Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 78.184 B848 (S134); this charter lacks a witness l ist, as do all the charters in the cartulary, but Brooks

accepts it on the grounds of its historical content, its lack of spurious claims and its consistent

formulae; Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 79n.




38

pagans likewise within the bounds of the Kentishmen’.185 Thus, with the explicit

reason or justification of the earliest Viking attacks, Offa extended definition of the

common burdens to Kent.186 In the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the evidence is

later. As Brooks notes, there are no eighth- or ninth-century charters for East Angliaand Northumbria, and ‘South Saxon charters of this period include neither immunity

clauses nor the reservation of the military burdens [but this may be due to] the habits

of the Selsey scriptorium .’187 As regards Wessex, the problem is to distinguish authentic

from inauthentic charters, but Brooks perceives ‘a pattern … among the few charters

upon which some reliance may be placed’.188 The earliest charters (739 and 794)

reserve only army service, but in 846 a charter of Æthelwulf reserved bridge-work

too, but not fortress-work.189 Thus, Brooks suggests that it was not until the reign of

Æthelbald from 855 to 860 that fortress work was added. This sequence of events

would be noticeably similar to that in Francia, where fortress-work was not added to

the long-standing army service and bridge-work until the 860s.190

Nevertheless, while the exemption of the common burdens becomes morefrequent through the ninth century, it is also true that many charters of that period

also confer general immunity, presumably including freedom from the common

burdens. The clause ‘free from all things, known and unknown, small and large, of

king and of noble’ appears in a number of charters.191 A few are more explicit,

granting freedom from ‘all public work on buildings’.192 When this pattern is placed

against the almost complete lack of bridges in the charter bounds, there is no

indication that the notion of bridge-work as an inescapable common duty has been

established as an effective and burdensome element of governance. For that, we

must look to the tenth century.

185 B848 (S134); quoted in Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 79.186

Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, pp. 78–80.187 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 80, but see p. 80n.188 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 80.189 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, pp. 80–81; the charters are B1331 (S255; a. 739), Early Charters of

Wessex , ed. Finberg (as n. 4), no. 398 (S267; a. 794) and B451 (S298; a. 846). Brooks notes thatthree charters from before 846 also contain reservations of the common burdens – B282 (S268; a.801), 389 (S273; a. 825) and 438 (292; a. 842) – but considers them to be of doubtful authenticity.Of the three only the charter of 842 includes fortress work which Brooks suggests may be a laterinterpolation as the charter only survives in the fourteenth-century Glastonbury cartulary; Brooks,‘Military Obligations’, p. 81 and note.

190 This suggestion is supported by the evidence of archaeology, which shows the earliest walls of West Saxon boroughs to have been of later construction than those of the Mercian boroughs;Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, pp. 81–2.

191 For example, B343 (S173), B359 (S181), B373 (S187), B432 (S196), B455 (2) (S199).

192 B325 (S161), B341 (S169).



Chapter 2

Viking Wars, Public Peace:

The Evolution of Bridge-work

The definition of the common burdens was part of the growth in power and

sophistication of royal government; as kings’ demands on their people grew, so theybegan to grant immunities from secular burdens to churches and favoured

individuals, reserving the military obligations necessary for all. To the ancient army-

service were added fortress- and bridge-work, the insistence on which gained

increasing urgency under the pressure of Viking attacks.1 Indeed, as Nicholas Brooks

concludes, ‘the development of royal authority in England was directly connected

with the successful enforcement of public works and general military obligations so

that an adequate defence against the Vikings was provided’.2

This ‘development of royal authority’ can be seen through bridge-work in

successive generations of the West Saxon dynasty. Alfred appears to have been the

first king to insist successfully upon the performance of common burdens, to unite

the people to resist the Vikings. Edward and his sister Æthelflæd used the commonburdens in their wars of reconquest, imposing the common burdens as they built

burhs . Æthelstan and his half-brother Edmund then turned the policy inwards,

making bridge-work part of the new public peace. Under Edgar, this peace reached

its apogee in an accepted and uniform order. And under Æthelred, all became

disorder again.

Before it is possible to analyze this process, however, it is necessary to step back

for a moment and re-consider the essential question, what was the purpose of

bridge-work?

1 As discussed in Chapter 1, bridge-work first appears in a charter connected to a synod held atGumley (which is about as far from the sea as one can get in England!) in 749, before the start of

Viking raids. Of course, there were other enemies, including other Englishmen. Brooks explainsthe early appearance of military obligations by reference to the incursions of the Welsh and theconstruction of Wat’s Dyke and Offa’s Dyke, but does this really explain the bridges? In thecontext of discussing army-service, Brooks does also suggest that Offa’s increased impositionsmight be related to the need ‘to sustain the Mercian military supremacy’ and thus might parallelCharlemagne’s similar demands; Nicholas Brooks, ‘The Development of Military Obligations ineighth- and ninth-century England’ in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented toDorothy Whitelock, ed. Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 69–84 at p. 83.

2 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 84.




40

The Purpose of Bridge-work

Authors of general works on Anglo-Saxon governance necessarily mention the three

common burdens, from which theoretically no-one was exempt, and thus refer tobridge-work in passing. Most, however, never pause to ask why an early medieval

king would require all his subjects, who could be exempted from almost everything

else, to build bridges. Bridge-work is seemingly too obvious to discuss. Only a

scholar of an earlier generation, W. H. Stevenson, came close to stating this outright:

the other two obligations, army service and borough-work, he argued, constitute

‘such primitive requirements of any organized state’ that it is not surprising or

significant that they are not mentioned in the earliest charters, so they do not need

explanation. In this context, however, even Stevenson omitted bridge-work, as if

hesitant to commit himself on it.3

When historians do enlarge their comments, they fall into implicit and unwitting

division on the question of what the purpose of bridge-work was. Frank Stentonrefers to the duty of ‘making bridges and strongholds for the defence of the land’.4 In

the same vein, Michael Powicke concludes that the description of the three burdens

imply that ‘public service was above all military’.5 More expansively, Warren

Hollister, in his work on military institutions, discusses Edward the Elder’s building

of the bridge over the Trent at Nottingham to link fortresses on either side, and

suggests that such work demonstrates that ‘all three of the trimoda necessitas could be

military in nature’.6

The military nature of all three obligations has not been accepted unanimously,

however. An alternative view sees bridge-work as being required for the purpose of

maintaining the road network. H. R. Loyn sees the obligation as a matter of ‘the

keeping open of communications’.7 David Hill agrees that the charters’ insistence on

bridge-work demonstrates royal interest in communications, arguing that ‘although

these bridges had a defensive role in some cases, it is not possible that works of this

complexity, widely scattered over the face of Anglo-Saxon England, connected two

muddy lanes and were only part of a system of farm tracks’. Hill claims the

widespread and complicated obligations attached to Rochester Bridge as a good

example ‘of the widespread responsibility for bridges throughout the countryside’.8

James Campbell follows Hill, claiming bridge-work as part of ‘the maintenance of the

communications system as a whole’ since ‘bridges were especially important in this

period’; he takes the evidence of the bridge-work obligations at Rochester and

3 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, English Historical Review 29 (1914), 689–703 at 698.4 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England , 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), p. 289.5 Michael Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England: A Study in Liberty and Duty (Oxford, 1962),

p. 21.6 C. Warren Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Obligations on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1962),

p. 72.7 H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, 500–1087 (London, 1984), p. 155; Loyn also

states that in his law codes Æthelred instructed the people ‘to be zealous … about theimprovement of the roads everywhere in the country’; he can only be thinking about bridge-workat this point; Loyn, Governance of Anglo-Saxon England , pp. 163–4.

8 David Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), p. 115.



Viking Wars, Public Peace

41

Cambridge as evidence of ‘a wider system’.9 Finally, Richard Abels, despitedescribing at length the struggle of King Alfred to impose the common burdens onhis people, does not discuss the nature of bridge-work, except by implication indeclaring its imposition in Mercia to be inspired by Continental duties for repairingboth bridges and roads.10

It is left to Nicholas Brooks to consider the supposedly military nature of bridge- work seriously. He calls all three burdens ‘military obligations’ and examines theconnection between the three:

It is worth considering why these three in particular were never remitted.Service in the army and the repair of fortresses were clearly essential forthe safety of a kingdom, but bridge-work might seem less vital.Unbridged rivers could seriously delay the efforts of local forces to driveout an enemy army, but if the king’s concern had been with the mobility

of their armies and with ease of communications, we might expect tohear in the English sources of corvées for the upkeep of roads. Thesolution may lie in the fact that in England bridges were linked to thefortresses; an early ninth-century charter from Worcester which speaksof bridge-work and fortress-work as a single obligation and phrases suchas pontis arcisve coaedificatione suggest that … the same man usuallyperformed the two services in the same place. Bridge and fortress were asingle military unit; together they secured the river crossing for thearmies of the kingdom and together they prevented the movement ofenemy troops either by land or by river.11

Brooks further draws attention to Alfred’s blocking of the River Lea against the Vikings in 895 and the role of the bridges of London and Paris in resistance to Viking attacks.12

Brooks’ solution, however, while alluring, turns out to be founded on somewhatshaky evidence. The two Worcester charters in question are in Hemming’s Cartulary;in both the exception clause reads ‘preter tamen his duobus causis arcis et pontisconstructione et expeditione’.13 One charter was, however, forged on the basis of theother.14 The one that was the basis also survives in earlier manuscripts. In the earlier

versions the exemption clause is the conventional ‘liber … ab omnibus aliissæcularibus rebus durisque servitutibus modicis et magnis notis ignotis preter tamenhis tribus causis arcis et pontis constructione et expeditione atque a pascua regis et

principis vel subditorum eorum’. 15 Clearly, the land was intended to be free from the pascua regis – the exception clause ends with ‘expeditione’ – but Hemming misread

9 James Campbell, ‘Was It Infancy in England? Some Questions of Comparison’ in England and Her Neighbours, 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais , ed. Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale(London, 1989), pp. 1–17 at pp. 3–4.

10 Richard P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 52–3.11 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, pp. 71–2.12 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 72.13 B360 (S181); B357, MS C (S180, MS 2) [emphasis added].14 F. M. Stenton, ‘The Supremacy of the Mercian Kings’, English Historical Review 33 (1918), 433–52 at

445n.15 B357, MSS A and B (S180, MSS 1, 4) [emphasis added]; MS A/4 is a seventeenth-century

transcript of the lost original.




42

the clause and, in removing what he took to be an unwelcome burden, changed the

three to a two. Thus, the understanding of bridge- and borough-work as a single

obligation arose solely from the error of one monk. Moreover, in contrast to these

two charters referring to two obligations, stand over two hundred and fifty chartersreferring to three obligations, not to mention two charters referring to four

obligations with the inclusion of compensation for theft,16 and one charter referring

to two obligations with the omission of bridge-work.17

Brooks’ other verbal clue, the use of words such as coedificare , is also problematic.

The word appears in the Vulgate version of St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (‘vos

coædificamini in habitaculum Dei in Spiritu’)18 and the North African Old Latin

translation of the first letter of St Peter (‘vos frates tanquam lapides vivi

coædificamini domus spiritualis’)19 to mean the building together of the faithful into

the Church of God. From these two verses, the word passed into Christian

scholarship, the latter citation being a favourite of St Augustine.20 The word just

seems to be a stronger version of ædificare , just as construere derives from struere .Indeed, if the choice of the word implies anything in the bridge-work formulae, I

would suggest that the co- refers not bridges and fortresses being built together, but

to the people coming together to do the work. That this should be the preferred

reading of the word is suggested by its use. The word coedificatio appears in forty-one

charters; in twenty-two of those charters, army service and the coedificatio of bridges

and forts are referred to as three duties.21 In another eighteen, the three are called the

communis labor .22 This leaves only one charter in which coedificatio of bridges and forts

is not either counted as two tasks or described as common work; that is a charter of

somewhat doubtful authenticity included in the twelfth-century Abingdon

chronicle.23 In that charter, the common formula ‘liberum ab omni mundiali

obstaculo … excepto istis tribus expeditione pontis arcisve coedificatione’ is used,

but the ‘tribus’ is omitted. There are, furthermore, a few charters that describe works

in general as regalis coactio.24 Finally, while it is true that the word coedificatio never

refers to the building of only bridges or only forts, this should be put in the context

that of 506 Anglo-Saxon exemption clauses, forged and genuine, that use a word

describing the action to be performed25 428 use only one word against seventy-eight

that use two; in other words, the words restauratio, constructio, edificatio etc. are all used

16 B370 (S186), B487 (S206).17 B426 (S287).18

Ephesians 2:22.19 I Peter 2:5; Vetus Latina: die Reste der Altlateinischen Bibel , new edition, 26.I, Epistulae Catholicae , ed. Walter Thiele (Freiburg, 1956–69), 100.

20 A search of the Patrologia Latina database for ‘coaedific-’ turns up 117 uses, 20 by St Augustine.21 B740 (S351; a twelfth-century forgery), B742 (S446), B744 (S445), B749 (S462), B752 (S464), B753

(S464), B758 (S463), B762 (S461), B764 (S467), B777 (S480), B828 (S524), B951 (S628), B1068(S699), K638 (S846), K648 (S856), K652 (S857), K689 (S882), K743 (S962; possibly a twelfth-century forgery), K783 (S1013), K1282 (S855), K1283 (S858), Liber monasterii de Hyda , ed. EdwardEdwards [RS 45] (London, 1866), pp. 242–3 (S877).

22 B748 (S470), B763 (S465), B786 (S488), B796 (S502), B824 (S526), B868 (S534), B945 (S587),B946 (S588), B948 (S585), B988 (S641), B1043 (S674), B1044 (S679), B1045 (S660), B1077 (S693),B1138 (S730), B1211 (S768), K749 (S968), K1281 (S852).

23 B996 (S665).24 B714 (S438), B998 (S647), B1127 (S727).

25 The formula ‘preter arcem pontem expeditionem’ is also quite common; e.g., B1164 (S735).




43

with ‘pontis arcisve’, suggesting that the combining of the two actions was more a

matter of scribal efficiency than statement of practice.

Furthermore, the other evidence that the two actions were necessarily connected

is also a little shaky: the passage of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which describes Alfred’s blocking of the Lea makes no mention of a bridge and states only that

Alfred blocked the Vikings’ escape down the river by building fortresses on either

side.26

Here a Continental comparison is instructive and instructive in surprising ways.

The best documented case of a ruler building a bridge to resist Viking attacks is a

bridge in northern France, which has been used to confirm the known utility of such

projects: Charles the Bald’s ‘fortified bridge’ at Pîtres (modern-day Pont-de-l’Arche

on the Seine, just south of Rouen). This bridge was supposedly constructed by

Charles in 862 after he learnt the success that a bridge could have against the Vikings

in fights against them near Meaux in 862. In 862 and again in 864, he held assemblies

at Pîtres, admonished his nobles about the virtue of communal work against the Vikings and set about the construction of a fortified bridge to block the Seine. There

has been some scholarly debate about the place of this bridge in Charles’ overall

defensive scheme for the realm, and about the labour that went into it.27 It has been

considered one of the great enterprises of Charles’ reign, a feat striking to

contemporaries.28

Unfortunately, there is no solid evidence that the bridge existed at all in the ninth

century. The Annals of St-Bertin say that in 862 ‘Charles caused all the leading men

of his realm to assemble about 1 June, with many workmen and carts, at the place

called Pîtres, where the Andelle from one side and the Eure from the other flow into

the Seine. By constructing fortifications ( munitiones ) on the Seine, he closed it off to

ships sailing up or down the river.’29 Similarly, in 864, ‘Charles ordered fortifications

( firmitates ) to be constructed [at Pîtres] on the Seine to prevent the Northmen from

coming up the river.’30 Finally, in 869, according to the Annals, Charles instructed

that ‘there should be sent to Pîtres one young warrior for every 100 manses, and a

cart with two oxen for every 1,000 manses, along with the other dues which still

greatly burden his realm. These young men were to complete and then guard the fort

( castellum ) which the king had ordered to be built at Pîtres out of wood and stone.’31

26 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 172–3; cp. Hertford (912), Buckingham (914), Bedford (915),

Stamford (918) and, finally, Nottingham (920), the exception which proves the rule since thebuilding of the bridge is specified; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 186–7, 190–92, 195–6.27 Carroll Gillmor, ‘The Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building on the Seine under Charles the Bald’,

Anglo-Norman Studies 11 (1988), 87–106; Simon Coupland, ‘The Fortified Bridges of Charles theBald’, Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991), 1–12.

28 Ferdinand Lot, ‘Le Pont de Pitres [sic]’ [reprinted from Le Moyen Âge 18 (1905), 1–27] in Recueil destravaux historiques II (Geneva, 1970), 535–61 at 550 and note.

29 Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard and Suzanne Clémencet (Paris, 1964), p. 91;The Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Janet Nelson (Manchester, 1991), p. 100.

30 Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Grat et al., p. 113; Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Nelson, p. 118. Couplandreads the absence to a reference to the bridge as a sign that Hincmar, the author of the Annals,‘seems to have taken for granted the prior existence of a bridge at the site’; Coupland, ‘FortifiedBridges’, p. 4.

31 Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Grat et al., p. 153; Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Nelson, pp. 153–4; Nelson

thinks that the phrase ‘along with the other dues that still greatly burden his realm’ may have been




44

The confusion has been caused by an assumption that the building of

fortifications on both sides of a river implies the building of a bridge between them.

This assumption has been combined with a misreading of several texts. In particular,

the Annals of St-Bertin relate that in 865Charles, for his part, came up to the place called Pîtres where the

Northmen still were. Now there were bridges ( pontes ) over the Oise and

the Marne at two places called Auvers and Charenton, but the local

people who had built them long ago could not repair them because of

the attacks of the Northmen. On the advice of his faithful men, Charles

therefore ordered these bridges to be repaired by men drafted from

more distant regions to perform labour services in order to complete the

fortifications ( firmitates ) on the Seine, but on condition that this was

treated as a special case of urgent need and that the men who would now

repair these bridges should never at any future time suffer anydisadvantage through performing labour services on this particular job.

Guards were then assigned to watch both banks of the Seine.32

This passage makes a distinction between the bridge repairs done on tributaries of

the Seine up-river from Pîtres and the work done on fortifications at Pîtres itself, but

the close association of the two in the text seems to have been misleading. Similarly,

the fact that the Edict of Pîtres (864) mandates work on bridges does not mean that

a bridge was being built at Pîtres.33 The idea of a bridge at Pîtres has also been

supported by the identification by Ferdinand Lot of a passage by Ado of Vienne34

about the fortified bridge in Paris with the supposed bridge at Pîtres.35 In truth, it is

not until the middle of the tenth century that Flodoard, in summarizing the letters ofHincmar (who was both the author of the Annals and the king’s principal

counsellor), talks of the ‘work of the bridge ( opus pontis ) … at Pîtres ( Pistis )’.36

Flodoard was writing a century after the events he describes,37 and, although he was

cathedral archivist at Reims and purports to give a summary of Hincmar’s letters,38 it

is not impossible that he fell into the same confusion as modern scholars, reading a

added later (p. 154n). In 873, the Annals also refer to ‘the new fort ( castellum nouum ) at Pîtres’; Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Grat et al., p. 195; Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Nelson, p. 185.

32 Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Grat et al., pp. 122–3 ; Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Nelson, p. 127.33 Edictum Pistense, c. 27; Capitularia regum Francorum , MGH Leges 2, II, ed. Alfred Boretius and

Victor Krause (Hanover, 1897), 321.34 Ado of Vienne, Chronicon , MGH Scriptores 2, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (Hanover 1829), p. 323.35 Lot, ‘Le Pont de Pitres’, p. 550n; Anne Lombard-Jourdan, Aux origins de Paris: la genèse de la rive droite

jusqu’en 1223 (Paris, 1985), p. 36; Gillmor, ‘Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building’, p. 89n. The issueof the identification of this bridge has been complicated by a forged charter, but, simply put, thereis no reason to identify this bridge with the one at Pîtres in the absence of better evidence thatsuch a bridge existed; we know that the bridge at Paris existed and was important a few years lateragainst the Vikings.

36 Flodoard of Reims, Historia Remensis ecclesiae , MGH Scriptores 36, ed. Martina Stratmann (Hanover,1998), p. 258; Hincmar of Reims, Epistolae , MGH Epistolae 8, I, ed. Ernst Perels (Munich, 1975),165.

37 Coupland in a different context dismisses Ado as ‘remote from events in distance’ and Flodoard as‘remote from events in time’; Coupland, ‘Fortified Bridges’, p. 11n.

38 For a brief summary of the life and writing of Flodoard, see The Annals of Flodoard of Reims , trans.

Steven Fanning and Bernard S. Bachrach (Toronto, 2004), pp. viii–xi.




45

bridge into the earlier accounts where one is not actually mentioned.39 In other

words, he is a shaky foundation on which to build a case for a bridge at Pîtres in the

860s (although perhaps a better one for a bridge there in the mid-tenth century).

Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from the case of Pîtres. The mostimportant lesson is the value of fortifications on either side of the river: a bridge was

not seen as necessary to stop the Vikings. Charles the Bald repeatedly stationed

troops on both sides of rivers in order to block them without bridges being built.

That said, if a bridge could be built, it was clearly the best solution. An obstruction of

a river would have to be temporary if trade were not to be cut off,40 and a bridge is

obviously also useful in allowing traffic to cross. Indeed, in 862, in the same

campaign that was the inspiration for the work at Pîtres, the Vikings destroyed the

bridges over the Marne to impede the royal army in its pursuit.41 Charles may also

have been thinking of his grandfather’s example: in 789, on one of his Slavic

campaigns, Charlemagne built two bridges across the Elbe, ‘on one of which he built

fortifications of wood and earth at both ends’.42

The point of these bridges wasclearly to facilitate the movement of his army, not to block the river. Indeed, the

provision for bridge building in the Edict of Pîtres couples it with work on

causeways across marshes.43 In short, when considering English bridge-work, the

example of Pîtres serves to keep us honest: although ninth-century rulers could

perceive the need to block rivers against Vikings, there were other ways to do it, and

the coupling of the two obligations in the charters does not necessarily mean that

they were always performed together.44

One final point argues against the conclusion that the bridges were simply

supposed to block rivers. There are seven charters in which the elements of

exemption clauses are qualified by adjectives: in these, the expeditio is popularis , the arx

39 As is often the case, archaeology cannot help on the question of the existence of a bridge. Anytraces of early bridges (including the high medieval bridge that gave Pont-de-l’Arche its name) havelong since been swept away; see Brian Dearden, ‘Charles the Bald’s Fortified Bridge at Pîtres(Seine): Recent Archaeological Investigations’, Anglo-Norman Studies 11 (1988), 107–12. There has,however, been good work on the fortifications that allow absolute certainty that this was the site ofCharles the Bald’s defences: Brian Dearden and Anthony Clark, ‘Pont-de-l’Arche or Pîtres? ALocation and Archaeomagnetic Dating for Charles the Bald’s Fortifications on the Seine’, Antiquity 64 (1990), 567–71.

40

Coupland, ‘Fortified Bridges’, p. 6.41 Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Grat et al., p. 88; Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Nelson, p. 98; Coupland,‘Fortified Bridges’, pp. 2–3.

42 Annales regni Francorum , ed. Friedrich Kurze, MGH Scriptores 6 (Hanover, 1895), p. 85; CarolingianChronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories, trans. Bernhard Walter Scholz andBarbara Rogers (Ann Arbor, 1970), p. 68.

43 Edictum Pistense, c. 27; Capitularia , II, ed. Boretius and Krause, 321.44 Similarly, it argues against the notion that the placement of boroughs on either side of rivers (as

recorded by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) necessarily implies that a bridge was built between them:cp. Christine Mahany and David Roffe, ‘Stamford: The Development of an Anglo-ScandinavianBorough’, Anglo-Norman Studies 5 (1982), 197–219 at 204–6: ‘King Edward the Elder is the mostlikely candidate as our first bridge builder, for it was he who bridged the Trent at Nottingham, inan effort to integrate his two boroughs there, and it seems inconceivable that he would fail to linkthe similarly placed boroughs in Stamford, on either side of the infinitely more insignificant stream

of the River Welland.’




46

is regalis , and the pons is viaticus .45 To these seven may be added three peculiar charters

the exemption clauses of which contain fuller descriptions of the required tasks;

these describe bridge-work as the duty to build bridges when they are necessitated by

the turbulence of fords.

46

Nevertheless, even if the evidence for Brooks’ assertion that bridge-work was

connected to fortress-work does not stand up, the logic of his assertion is sound.

The Viking campaigns of the late ninth and early tenth centuries had the character of

guerrilla raids, involving spectacular mobility.47 The response of Alfred and his

successors was to make efforts to trap the Vikings48 and bring them to battle. Thus,

in the reconquest of England in the early tenth century, Alfred’s descendants built

their boroughs in a methodical manner at major river crossings, securing both the

river and the road. In all but one case, there is no indication in the Chronicle that a

bridge was built to link the fortresses, but, as Brooks rightly points out, it would

make perfect sense, given the known utility of the bridges of Paris and London in

fighting the invaders.49 There is no reason, however, to suppose that the blocking ofthe river was the sole motive for insisting on bridge-work, nor, indeed, that the

motive stayed the same throughout the Anglo-Saxon period.

With these considerations in mind, it is possible to return to the period in which

bridge-work, introduced as a symbol of righteous governance by St Boniface,

intermittently ignored, insisted upon and waived through the ninth century, became

an onerous and supposedly inescapable burden.

The ‘County Bridges’ and the Origins of Bridge-Work

In the vast majority of cases, it is impossible to determine whether there was any

continuity between the Anglo-Saxon and late medieval bridge-work obligations. The

Anglo-Saxon charters do not specify particular bridges to be maintained, only the

45 B581 (S355; a. 892x899), B885 (S545; 949), B1227 (S761; 968), K762 (S993; supposedly 1042, but atwelfth-century forgery), K767 (S999; 1043), K800 (S1025; supposedly 1054, but a twelfth-centuryforgery), K1305 (S918; 1008).

46 K673 (S874), K772 (S1004), Liber monasterii de Hyda , ed. Edwards, pp. 238–42 (S869).47 For example, the movement of the Viking army from East Anglia to Chester, into Wales, across

Northumbria and back to East Anglia (893–94); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 170–73.48 For example, on the Lea (895) and in an estuary in Devon (896); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe,

I, 172–3, 176–7; in a similar fashion the Battle of Maldon may be seen as a failed effort to bring a Viking army to battle: the famous and apparently foolhardy invitation to the Vikings to cross thebridge unopposed appears perfectly rational if considered against the alternative of having the

Vikings keep moving unhindered.49 For the building of bridges against the Vikings in the Frankish Empire, see Marjorie Nice Boyer,

Medieval French Bridges: a History (Cambridge MA, 1976), pp. 21–6; for the suggestion that Alfred was consciously following Carolingian practices and that the Vikings themselves recognized thetactic, see Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation , pp. 72–3 and note; cp. Helen M. Cam, LocalGovernment in Francia and England: A Comparison of the Local Administration and Jurisdiction of theCarolingian Empire with that of the West Saxon Kingdom (London, 1912), pp. 146–7, 150–51 and, esp.,152–3 and 153n. There were a number of fortified bridges in high-medieval England, includingones at Shrewsbury, Chester, Durham, York and Bedford; the only ones that survive are the onesat Warkworth (Northumberland) and Monmouth; see M. L. J. Reynolds, ‘Monnow Bridge andGate, Monmouth’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 142 (1993), 243–287, esp. 250 and 265; David Harrison,

The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–1800 (Oxford, 2004), plates 6, 10.




47

existence of the duty; the late medieval litigation usually concerns the duties of a

single landholder or community to maintain a single local bridge, but does not

specify the origins of the obligation. There are, however, a number of cases that may

be open to more analysis. There is evidence of bridge-work obligations spread over a wide area connected

to the bridges of Rochester, Chester, London, Huntingdon, Nottingham and

Cambridge. These bridges are bound together by three similarities: first, by their

antiquity and importance, since they stand out as being quite the earliest major

bridges of England; second, by the very existence of this evidence of bridge-work,

which is evidence of wide responsibility quite unlike that for other bridges; and third,

by similarities in the history of the boroughs to which they were attached. If any one

of the six bridges were to be taken out of context (as, indeed, they generally have

been in the few studies published to date) the evidence for bridge-work might be

considered a local peculiarity, not worthy of further comment. If, however, the

similarities between the examples are kept in mind, when the six examples are placedside-by-side the accumulated weight of evidence may be sufficient to support more

substantial conclusions about the origin and nature of Anglo-Saxon bridge-work.

The general question of these obligations and their survival into a later period

was discussed by Maitland and Round in the midst of a wider debate on the question

of feudal tenure. Maitland, in discussing borough-work, used the example of bridge-

work in Cambridgeshire to demonstrate the existence of county-wide obligations,

distributed by the hide, connected to the county town; he speculated that this could

be taken as paradigmatic of the connection of county to borough, a paradigm that

found its truest expression in the counties of the Midlands. For Maitland, there was a

well defined system of bridge- and wall-building obligations from the tenth century

on. Round responded by questioning Maitland’s evidence: first, for Round, the

Cambridgeshire obligations were levied on particular estates, not the whole county;

second, no other county could be shown to have such a county-wide system that

dated from the Anglo-Saxon period. Thus, for Round, neither borough-work nor

bridge-work should be understood as systematic, county-wide obligations.50 Round’s

criticisms of Maitland will be borne in mind in the discussion that follows, serving as

a reminder to keep the local circumstances in mind as well as the broader trends.

The first point of similarity that might suggest such broader trends is the

antiquity of the bridges in question. The six bridges for which evidence exists of

widely distributed bridge-work can be traced back to around the year 900. As noted

above, this makes them very unusual; bridges were rare until the tenth century, andthese bridges were great bridges at major river crossings.

The bridge over the Medway at Rochester51 is one of the most important river

crossings in all of England. It carries Watling Street and thus links not only London

50 Frederic William Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, Three Essays in the Early History of England (Cambridge, 1897), pp. 186–9; idem , Township and Borough being the ‘Ford’ Lectures delivered in theUniversity of Oxford in the October Term of 1897, together with an Appendix of Notes relating to the History ofthe Town of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1898), pp. 37–8; J. H. Round, ‘“Burh-bot” and “Brig-bot”’ inFamily Origins and Other Studies (London, 1930), pp. 252–62.

51 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community: Public Work and Seigneurial Responsibilitiesat Rochester Bridge’ in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays presented to Karl Leyser ,

ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), pp. 1–20; idem , ‘Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1381’ in Traffic and Politics:




48

to Canterbury, but London to Dover and the Continent. That there was a bridge at

Rochester in Roman times, and possibly before, is demonstrated by the Romans’

name for Rochester, Durobrivis , which is a compound of two Celtic words meaning

‘walled town by the bridge(s)’.

52

The bridge which stood there in the early and HighMiddle Ages was itself Roman in origin; until the total reconstruction of the bridge in

the 1380s, the Roman stone piers were used to support a timber road way.53 Indeed,

it is perfectly conceivable that the bridge remained intact in some shape or form

continuously from the late Roman period until the floods and increased traffic of the

late Middle Ages destroyed it.

The bridge at Chester was also Roman. The Roman fort that was the basis for all

subsequent settlement at Chester was deliberately placed to guard the lowest possible

river crossing at which an approach was possible down the steep gorge of the Dee.54

Remains have been found of a causeway built by the Romans to facilitate access to

the river crossing,55 and masonry of a Roman bridge has been found strewn on the

river bed.56 In the High Middle Ages, this bridge was of the same sort found atRochester (stone piers supporting a timber superstructure), and it was in use until it

was entirely replaced in the 1350s.57

A similar pattern is possible at London: there was also a bridge there in Roman

times,58 and again it is probable that the Anglo-Saxon bridge used the same stone

The Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993 , ed. Nigel Yates and James M.Gibson (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 1–40.

52 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, pp. 10–11; Margaret Gelling, Signposts to the Past: Place- Names and the History of England (London, 1978), p. 45; Ivan D. Margary, Roman Roads in Britain , 3rdedn (London, 1973), p. 528 (the Antonine Itinerary). For Roman bridges in general, see ColinO’Connor, Roman Bridges (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pp. 145–9; and D. P. Dymond, ‘Roman Bridges

on Dere Street, County Durham, with a General Appendix on the Evidence for Bridges in RomanBritain’, Archaeological Journal 118 (1961), 136–64.

53 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, p. 11; Brooks suggests that it cannot be established whether this was the original form of the bridge or whether the Roman bridge originally had stonearches, and the timber was only substituted for it when the arches collapsed. On the technology ofRoman bridges, see O’Connor, Roman Bridges , esp. pp. 44–62, 163–86. O’Connor states ‘most (ifnot all) British bridges had a timber superstructure’, p. 63.

54 D. Mason, ‘Chester: The Evolution and Adaptation of its Landscape’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 59 (1976), 14–23 at 18.

55 F. H. Thompson, ‘Roman Wall in Lower Bridge Street’, Journal of the Chester and North Wales Architectural, Archaeological, and Historic Society 47 (1960), 34–5.

56 T. J. Strickland, ‘The Roman Heritage of Chester: The Survival of the Buildings of Deva after theRoman Period’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 67 (1984), 17–36 at 25 and plate 1.

57

Strickland, ‘The Roman Heritage of Chester’, pp. 25, 27; the place-name Handbridge (DomesdayBook, Bruge ), at the south end of the Dee Bridge may also refer to it, which would provide furtherevidence of the existence of the bridge in the Anglo-Saxon period; P. McN. Dodgson, The Place-

Names of Cheshire , V.I.i, English Place-Name Society 48 (Cambridge, 1981), 53–4.58 For various opinions on the site of the Roman and early medieval bridges, see Gordon Home, Old

London Bridge (London, 1931), pp. 2–6; Marjorie B. Honeybourne, ‘The Pre-Norman Bridge ofLondon’ in Studies in London History presented to Philip Edmund Jones , ed. A. E. J. Hollaender and

William Kellaway (London, 1969), pp. 17–39, esp. pp. 35–9; Graham Dawson, ‘Roman LondonBridge’, London Archaeologist 1, no. 5 (Winter 1969), 114–17; idem , ‘Roman London Bridge, Part 2:Its location’, London Archaeologist 1, no. 7 (Summer 1970), 156–60; Ralph Merrifield, ‘RomanLondon Bridge: Further Observations on its Site’, London Archaeologist 1, no. 8 (Autumn 1970),186–7; Graham Dawson, ‘London Bridge – a rejoinder’, London Archaeologist 1, no. 10 (Spring1971), 224–5; idem , ‘The Saxon London Bridge’, London Archaeologist 1, no. 14 (Spring 1972), 330– 32; Ralph Merrifield and Harvey Sheldon, ‘Roman London Bridge: A View from Both Banks’,

London Archaeologist 2, no. 8 (Autumn 1974), 183–91; Gustav Milne, ‘Further Evidence for London




49

piers as the late Roman bridge.59 The first written reference to the bridge comes

from a charter dating from the second half of the tenth century,60 and the bridge was

an important defensive structure in the Danish wars of the eleventh century.

The Romans also built a bridge at Cambridge. On the northern side of the Cam,near the site of the medieval castle, there was a Roman fort, guarding the lowest

crossing of the Cam where two Roman roads converged.61 The Antonine Itinerary

calls this place Duriloponte , which suggests the existence of a bridge.62 Moreover,

Cambridge, a rare Anglo-Saxon -bridge name, appears (as Grantebrycge ) as early as the

ninth century.63 There is no reason not to suppose that, once again, the Roman

bridge survived in some form through to the High Middle Ages.

The evidence is less clear for the bridge at Huntingdon. The bridge does not

appear in records until the late twelfth century and there is no useful place-name or

archaeological evidence. Thus, in comparison to the first four bridges, any

conclusions must be much more speculative. The importance and placement of the

Bridge?’, Britannia 13 (1982), 271–6, esp. 276; Nick Bateman, ‘Bridgehead Revisited’, London Archaeologist 5, no. 9 (Winter 1986), 233–41. For the best summary of archaeological opinion, see Trevor Brigham, ‘Roman London Bridge’ in London Bridge: 2000 Years of a River Crossing , ed. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson, Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph8 (London, 2001), pp. 28–51.

59 Brigham argues that the lack of material evidence for the Roman bridge suggests that the bridge was deliberately demolished at some point; he says that ‘it is very likely’ that this demolition couldhave been done by the Romans themselves in the fourth century, ‘assuming the bridge becameredundant or too expensive to maintain’, but then goes on to suggest that it took place at the time

the twelfth-century bridge was constructed, partly because of the length of time it took to build thenew bridge (for which see below, pp. 110–13); Brigham, ‘Roman London Bridge’, p. 51; in thesame volume, Bruce Watson suggests that tenth-century bridge ‘incorporated the remaining piersof the Roman bridge’; Bruce Watson, ‘The Late Saxon Bridgehead’ in London Bridge: 2000 Years of aRiver Crossing , ed. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson, Museum of London

Archaeology Service Monograph 8 (London, 2001), pp. 52–60 at pp. 52–3.60 B1131 (S1377); the charter refers to the drowning of a supposed witch at Lundene brigce . See,

however, the questions raised by David Hill, who suggests that it may be possible to read the words as referring to a bridge on the road to London and thus a bridge in Northamptonshire closeto where the woman was arrested. His suggestion is based on the inherent implausibility of a caseof witchcraft being settled more than eighty miles from the place of discovery and the analogy ofroads being named after the places to which they lead; he cannot, however, find another bridgecalled London Bridge anywhere; David Hill, ‘London Bridge: A Reasonable Doubt?’, Transactions of

the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 27 (1976), 303–4.61 One running from the south-east towards Ely, the other from Colchester towards Godmanchesterand the Midlands; see Arthur Gray, ‘The Ford and Bridge of Cambridge’, Proceedings of the Cambridge

Antiquarian Society 14 (1909–10), 126–39, at 130–33 for the strategic importance of Cambridge; seeMargary, Roman Roads in Britain , 3rd edn, pp. 208–13 for the course of the roads.

62 Gelling, Signposts to the Past , p. 46; A. L. F. Rivet and Kenneth Jackson, ‘The British Section of the Antonine Itinerary with an Appendix on Place Names’, Britannia 1 (1970), 34–82; Jackson arguesthat the name cannot have meant ‘fort at the bridge’, because that will not account for the element‘-li’ in the middle; he suggests instead that the name might have meant ‘fort on the wet river( uliponti )’, but concedes that the Romans might have taken this to be a bridge name (p. 73); Jacksonalso notes that the Latin word pons was adopted into the British language (cp. Welsh pont ), p. 79.

63 In an interpolation to a manuscript of Felix of Crowland’s Life of St Guthlac and in the annal for875 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Helen Maud Cam, ‘The City of Cambridge’ in The VictoriaCounty History of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely , III, The City and University of Cambridge , ed. J. P. C.

Roach (London, 1959), 1–149 at 2; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 144–5.




50

Roman crossing suggest, however, that there was a Roman bridge at Huntingdon.64 Three major roads converge from the south: from Cambridge, Royston and Baldock. After the crossing, the road divides again on the northern side, one road heading

north towards the Roman crossing of the Nene at Durobrivae, the other heading forLeicester.65 Furthermore, the meeting of these five roads is at the confluence ofseveral rivers, a location consistent with the building of a bridge over the narroweststretch of the river, in contrast with fording the shallower wider divided river. 66 Onthe other hand, it is likely that the bridge did not survive in serviceable conditionthroughout the first millennium. In Huntingdonshire, the Nene is a fairly shallowriver and there are many places with -ford names on the Nene in the stretch of a fewmiles.67 Moreover, the pattern of modern roads suggests that, at some point in the

Anglo-Saxon period, the crossing of the Nene was made by fording at widermarshier places rather than at the shorter crossing that would have required a bridge.However, the appearance of the borough of Huntingdon as a fortified place for the

Danes, for Edward the Elder, and subsequently for William the Conqueror suggeststhat the road again ran through Huntingdon, and thus over the bridge, by 900.

The bridge at Nottingham is the exception to the pattern, in that it is certain thatit was not Roman. Nottingham was not a Roman site and no Roman road crossedthe Trent there. The other exceptional element is that in the case of Nottingham,dateable evidence of bridge building exists: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states thatEdward the Elder built the bridge over the Trent at Nottingham in 920. TheNottingham bridge-building obligations were, however, to maintain the Leen Bridgenot the Trent Bridge. The Leen is a small river that joins the Trent just belowNottingham;68 the medieval borough of Nottingham stood on the northern bank ofthe Leen, separated from the Trent by half a mile or so of marshy land. There is no

evidence for the origins of the Leen Bridge except for the possibility that the passagein the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which describes the building of the Trent Bridge 69 implies that the Leen Bridge pre-dates the Trent Bridge. The building of a bridgeacross the Trent at Nottingham, that is to say above the confluence with the Leen,

64 William Page and S. Inskip Ladds, ‘Huntingdon Borough’ in The Victoria History of the County ofHuntingdon , ed. William Page, Granville Proby and S. Inskip Ladds, II (London, 1932), 121–48 at125; Margary, Roman Roads in Britain, 3rd edn, p. 205.

65 Margary, Roman Roads in Britain , 3rd edn, maps 7a and 7b, pp. 192–3.66 Dymond does not, however, include Huntingdon in his list of sites for which there is evidence of

Roman bridges: Dymond, ‘Roman Bridges on Dere Street’ (as n. 52).67

Two are of particular interest: Hartford, a small settlement just down river from Huntingdon, andthe Hemingfords, another mile or so down stream. Hartford appears in Domesday Book asHereforde (DB, 203c [Huntingdonshire]), which means ‘army ford’, an equivalent to herepa ! , ‘armyroad’, which was one Anglo-Saxon word for highway; the names Hereford and Hartford appear ina number of places around the country at major river crossings (but Hertford, Hertfordshire,should not be counted here: it first appears in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica as Herutford , ‘Hart/StagFord’; Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People , ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors(Oxford, 1969), p. 348). The Hemingfords appear in Domesday Book as Emingforde (DB, 204c,204d, 206c, 207a, 207b, 208ax2 [Huntingdonshire]), which may be a mistake for ‘Erningforde’, thatis to say the ford associated with Erning Street (or what now tends to be called Ermine Street).

68 However, the Leen was subsumed into the Nottingham Canal in the Industrial Revolution andcannot even be seen on modern road maps of the city.

69 ‘King Edward went with the army to Nottingham, and ordered to be built the borough on thesouth side of the river, opposite the other, and the bridge over the Trent between the two

boroughs’, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 196.




51

certainly suggests that the crossing of the Leen was already in use, but this might

equally have been by a ford.

To sum up the evidence on the antiquity of the bridges, then, it can be seen that

the six bridges for which there is evidence of far-flung bridge-building obligationsmay all have been in existence in some shape or form by around 900. Those at

Rochester, Chester, London, Cambridge and, probably, Huntingdon were originally

Roman; the bridge at Nottingham was of Anglo-Saxon construction, possibly some

time before 920.

The second similarity between the bridges that allows speculation as to broader

trends is the nature of the obligations themselves. To start with Rochester again, the

survival of the Roman bridge there into the fourteenth century was due to the system

of local obligations to repair it. These obligations are the best documented of all the

six cases and have attracted the best scholarship. Nicholas Brooks has demonstrated

that the obligations to maintain the bridge at Rochester did not fall on a random

assemblage of Kentish manors, but rather reflect the distribution of labour across the Anglo-Saxon lathe, in a manner that may reflect Roman arrangements. Brooks’

arguments may be summarized briefly here.

The distribution of obligations is first recorded in the Textus Roffensis , the early

twelfth-century cartulary of Rochester Cathedral Priory, in both an English and a

Latin version.70 While the text has been dated to the late tenth century, Brooks

rejects the calculations behind this date as relying too greatly on interpretations of

the impossibly muddled tenurial history of the Kentish manors, and accepts instead

an early eleventh-century date on the basis of linguistic evidence.71 The date of the

manuscript itself is from around 1120, but its first half, in both versions, has been

replaced with leaves from the late twelfth century.72 Brooks concludes, however, that

the changes made in the obligations were limited to a minor re-allocation of the

obligations between estates belonging to the bishop of Rochester.73 The obligations

were repeated unchanged in numerous royal inquests into the fourteenth century.

The document ascribes responsibility for the nine piers of the bridge, detailing a

certain amount of timber to link them. Two of the piers are described as being of the

bishop of Rochester, two of the archbishop of Canterbury and one of the king. The

bishop, archbishop and king cannot be shown to have ever held some of the estates

listed with the piers, so Brooks suggests that they were merely supposed to organise

the obligations.74

Brooks demonstrates, furthermore, that the lands being assessed for the bridge

repairs correspond to the lathe of Aylesford. Only five estates break this pattern.Four, namely Southfleet, Stone, Pinden and Fawkham, were lands of the bishop of

Rochester and may have been included as part of the tenurial rationalization of the

70 The Old English version of the document is printed with a translation in Anglo-Saxon Charters , ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 106–9; the Anglo-Saxon text and both the Rochester andCanterbury versions of the Latin text may be found in Traffic and Politics: The Construction and

Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993, ed. Nigel Yates and James M. Gibson (Woodbridge,1994), pp. 362–9.

71 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, p. 5 and note.72 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, pp. 3–6.73 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, pp. 4–5, 7–8.74 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, pp. 6–8; this is another reason why the dating of the

document by means of an examination of the holding of the estates is a flawed approach.




52

obligations between the c. 1120 manuscript and the later version. This was not thecase with the other exception, Westerham, which is well away from the bridge, onKent’s western border. As Brooks notes, this was the one place where there is

known to have been opposition to the obligations: in 1311 the people of the manorattacked the king’s bailiff who was attempting to distrain upon them for the repair ofthe bridge.75

Having demonstrated that the obligations were in origin based upon the lathe of Aylesford, Brooks allows himself some ‘heady conjecture’ about the origins of theseobligations, musing as to a possible Roman origin for obligations. Whether thisRoman connection is correct or not, it may be stated with absolute confidence thatthe bridge-building obligations on the estates of the lathe of Aylesford, which wereenforced vigorously until late in the fourteenth century, represent pre-Conquestarrangements.

The medieval obligations to maintain the Dee Bridge at Chester are not as well

documented as those of Rochester. The starting place is Domesday Book, whichmakes it clear that the obligations were of Anglo-Saxon, pre-Conquest origin; itstates that ‘For the re-building of the city wall and bridge, the reeve used to call upone man from each group of five hides of the county. For each man who did notcome, his lord would pay forty shillings to the king and the earl. This fine was notpart of the farm.’76 The same county-wide obligations77 were enforced again from thethirteenth century, when they were revived on the basis of the Domesday entry, 78 until the building of a new bridge to replace the Roman bridge in the 1350s.

Just as at Chester, it is thanks to the activities of the Normans in the years afterthe Conquest that we have our only real evidence for the Anglo-Saxon bridge-building obligations connected to London. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1097

states that

this was in every respect a very severe year, and over-oppressive withbad weather, when cultivation was due to be done or crops to be got in,and with excessive taxes that never ceased. Also, many shires whoselabour was due at London were hard pressed because of the wall that

75 Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community’, p. 15; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , II (London, 1916), 26.

76 DB, 262d [Cheshire].77 R. Stewart-Brown, ‘“Bridge-Work” at Chester’, English Historical Review 54 (1939), 83–7; Stewart-

Brown demonstrates that the obligations were the same, despite slight differences in the hidage; anagreement of 1288 (to settle a dispute over the repair of the bridge after it was damaged in a floodin 1279) assessed the city at only 52 hides rather than the previous 53!. Stewart-Brown shows thatthe 52 hides represent the same 53! minus the lands given to Chester Abbey in 1093, which weremade free of unspecified works. The abbey was able to use this immunity to free itself from theefforts of the sheriff to have it contribute to the bridge repair again in 1346 and 1355. One otherexception from the county-wide nature of the obligations should be noted: in 1355, the poor menof the forest of Macclesfield petitioned Edward III that they should not contribute to the bridgebecause as inhabitants of the ancient forest their lands were not geldable and were therefore notliable to pay for the repair; R. Stewart-Brown, ‘The Dee Bridge’, Cheshire Sheaf , 3rd series 16 for

June 1919 (1921), 27–8.78 Stewart-Brown, ‘The Dee Bridge’, pp. 27–8; an inquest of 1255/6 had to consult Domesday Book:

Alan de la Zouche when justiciar had spent £20 19s 2!d on the repair of the bridge and wanted tohave it subtracted from his farm; the inquest consulted Domesday Book, decided that this should

be allowed since the county was liable and ordered the sum to be extracted from the county.




53

they built about the Tower, and because of the bridge that was nearly all

carried away by a flood, and because of the work on the king’s hall, that

was being built at Westminster, and many men were oppressed thereby.79

It is difficult from this scant reference to know much, if anything, about the natureof these obligations. They may be assumed to be pre-Norman, since they are

accepted as not being an innovation by an Anglo-Saxon source as early as 1097. They

were assessed as far afield as Alciston and Limpsfield in Sussex80 and on all the

estates of St Paul’s scattered throughout the Home Counties.81 It is impossible to

know more about the obligations because the replacement of the bridge in its

entirety in the twelfth century brought them to a relatively early end. Nevertheless,

again at London, we find Anglo-Saxon bridge-building obligations. The essential

difference that can be established between these obligations and the other similar

examples is that the London obligations were assessed on ‘many shires’, not on a

single county or part of a county. The evidence for the obligations for repairing the bridge at Huntingdon first

appears in 1194, when the abbot of Thorney brought suit against William of

Chesterton, who was presumably one of the abbey’s tenants, for failure to contribute

towards the repair of the bridge.82 Evidence on the extent of the obligations comes

from a case heard by Hugh Bigod in 1259. The county complained that the burgesses

of Huntingdon were driving heavy cartloads of dung and corn across the bridge,

damaging the bridge in the process, but were not contributing to the bridge’s repair.

The burgesses responded that they had always done so and that the whole county

was quit of the toll given towards the repair of the bridge. It was ruled that, since

there was no reason that the burgesses should be quit of toll unless they actually

contributed to the bridge and they had not, those who had been carting dung andcorn across the bridge should pay the toll.83 Round read this evidence as suggesting

that the men of the county repaired the bridge in order to be quit of a pre-existing

toll. This interpretation seems unlikely. Rather than the county agreeing to contribute

to the repair in return for quittance, it appears that the county was exempt from a

newly established toll because it was already paying for the bridge directly.84 Thus,

Huntingdon Bridge provides another example of county-wide obligations.

79 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 363.80 Regesta , II, no. 1060 ( Fœdera, conventiones, litteræ et cujuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Angliæ et alios

quosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates , ed. Thomas Rymer and Robert Sanderson,

new edn, I (London, 1816), ed. Adam Clarke and Fred. Holbrooke, 8), Regesta , II, no. 1717(appendix, no. cclviii), Regesta , II, no. 1718 (appendix, no. cclix).81 Honeybourne, ‘The Pre-Norman Bridge of London’, p. 20.82 Rotuli curiae Regis: Rolls and Records of the Court held before the King’s Justiciars or Justices , ed. Francis

Palgrave (London, 1835), I, 132.83 Placitorum in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio, temporibus Regum Ricardi I, Henrici

III, Edwardi I, Edwardi II (London, 1811), p. 148.84 Round claims this case as definitive evidence that such obligations were not Anglo-Saxon in origin,

reading the case as implying that the people of the county were liable to repair the bridge atHuntingdon only in return for being exempt from the tolls levied on the bridge. The key phrasehere (quoted by Round, ‘“Burh-bot” and “Brig-bot”’, p. 264n) is ‘Dicunt enim quod totuscomitatus Huntedeon’ quietus est teleoneo dando in villa de Huntedon’ pro reparacione pontispredicti’; Round reads this as ‘the whole county is quit of the toll given in the town of Huntingdonin return for repairing the bridge’; I would read it as ‘the whole county is quit of the toll given in

the town of Huntingdon for the purpose of repairing the bridge’. It is further stated that ‘the




54

The exact apportionment of the obligations on the men of the county cannot be

known; however, we do know that they were apportioned by hundred: the jurors at

the eyre of 1286 declared that ‘the bridge should be repaired by the community of

the whole county, that is to say by the four hundreds of Toseland, Leightonstone,Normancross and Hurstingstone, so that each hundred is obliged to make its share

of the bridge at its own expense’.85 This need not, however, imply that within the

hundreds the load fell equally: for example, in 1377 the countess of Norfolk

successfully claimed that her lands in the county were non-geldable and thus quit of

contributions towards Huntingdon Bridge.86 So, while there is no definitive

information on the origins of the obligations for the bridge at Huntingdon, it is

possible to see that they existed by the late twelfth century and were of the county-

wide arrangement found elsewhere, with exceptions made for non-geldable land,

implying that the obligations fell on only certain estates.

Similarly, there were arrangements for the repair of the bridge over the River

Leen in Nottingham which amply fulfilled Maitland’s notion of the ‘county bridge’;the evidence here, however, was dismissed by Round as being ‘late’. The evidence is

the record of an inquiry into the county-wide obligations to maintain the bridge after

it was destroyed in floods in January 1458.87 The inquest found that the men of the

town of Nottingham and from each of the six wapentakes of the county ‘should

repair and maintain, and from time out of mind have repaired and maintained’

specified sections of the bridge.88

There are a number of pieces of evidence that suggest that these obligations

were, indeed, of considerable antiquity by the 1450s. First, there are the relatively

heavy obligations on the wapentakes of Thurgarton and Lythe, and of Bassetlaw.

Both of these wapentakes were products of changes that took place in the late

Middle Ages: Thurgarton and Lythe had originally been separate wapentakes, and

Bassetlaw had absorbed the northern wapentake of Oswaldbeck. If the obligations

on the new amalgamated wapentakes in the 1450s are halved they are of the

approximate magnitude of the others, which suggests that the obligations predated

the changes in the wapentakes. Similarly, the inquest stated that the five arches of the

Bassetlaw section had previously been six arches, which suggests an active memory

burgesses cannot show that they should be quit of repairing the bridge except by reason of the tollfrom which the county is quit by reason of repairing the bridge ( quia predicti burgenses non possuntostendere quod quieti esse debeant de reparacione predicti pontis nisi racione predicti theoloneis de quo predictuscomitatus est quietus racione reparacionis predicti pontis )’; this explanation is entirely neutral as to the

question of which came first, the toll or the obligation.85 Royal Justice and the Medieval English Countryside: The Huntingdonshire Eyre of 1286, the Ramsey AbbeyBanlieu Court of 1287, and the Assizes of 1287–8 , ed. Anne Reiber DeWindt and Edwin BrezetteDeWindt (Toronto, 1981), I, 403, no. 661.

86 Maud E. Simkins, ‘Fen Stanton’ in The Victoria History of the County of Huntingdon , ed. William Page,Granville Proby and S. Inskip Ladds, II (London, 1932), 280–85 at 282.

87 Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, King Henry IV to King Richard III, 1399–1485 , ed. W. H.Stevenson (London, 1883), 222–41.

88 Down the length of the bridge, north to south: the men of Nottingham were responsible for thenorthern head of the bridge and the northern-most two arches, a length of 46!ft; the wapentakeof Broxtow was responsible for the next three arches, or 81!ft; Thurgarton and Lythe five arches,135!ft; Bassetlaw five arches, 169!ft; Newark three arches, 69ft; Bingham is responsible for a105ft ‘partem sive parcellam’; and, finally, Radcliffe two arches and the southern head, 57ft. Thepiers between the sections were to be jointly repaired. This makes a total of twenty arches, plus

Bingham’s part or parcel, 664ft in all.




55

of bridge repair over some time.89 Indeed, the very acceptance by the county of itsobligations is evidence of the long-standing nature of the obligations. Not only didthe jurors of the wapentakes freely admit their obligations, but there does not seem

to have been any opposition to the principle that the men of the county, howeverdistant from the bridge, should do their part. Several wapentakes did not at oncecontribute, but there is no indication that they questioned the validity of theirobligation.90

The most revealing piece of evidence that the Leen Bridge obligations may notsimply be dismissed as ‘late’ is the contrast between the county-wide obligations torepair the Leen Bridge and the recurrent efforts to raise the funds for the repair ofthe greater bridge of Nottingham, that over the Trent, which was known as theHethbeth Bridge. Hethbeth Bridge was damaged or entirely destroyed on a numberof occasions in the High Middle Ages and on each occasion new provisions had tobe made for its repair because of the lack of long-standing obligations. These ad hoc

provisions for Hethbeth Bridge relied on charity from the Church, from passers-byand from kings. During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there washelp towards the financing repair from episcopal indulgences,91 royal gifts,92 grants ofpontage tolls,93 bequests,94 profits of a ferry which replaced the bridge whennecessary 95 and, above all, fund raising activities on the part of burgesses96 and bridge

wardens.97 The burgesses summed up these efforts in 1467 when, as they once moresent out representatives to seek alms for the bridge, they declared that alms were

89 One of the middle arches had probably been widened to make the passage easier for boats.90 Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, ed. Stevenson, 234–9, 420–21.91 In 1231, the archbishop of York granted a twelve-day indulgence to those contributing to the

repair of the bridge, Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, ed. Stevenson, 439–40.92 In 1362, Edward III commissioned an inquest to discover who was bound to repair the bridge

and, finding there was no one so obliged, he appointed the sheriff and four other men to collect‘masons, carpenters, sawyers and other workmen’ to repair the bridge and allowed the inhabitantsof Sherwood Forest to bring wood to give or sell for the reconstruction; Patent Rolls, Edward III,xii, 289, 314–15. He also took the initiative in seeking a more permanent solution, sending thesheriff and others to inquire of ‘masons, carpenters and other good men of the county ofNottingham … whether it will be more expedient to repair the bridge or build a new one in a saferplace, and, whether the bridge should be repaired or a new bridge built with stone or timber’;Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 365.

93 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 344, iii, 191, v, 62, Edward III, i, 102, 318, iii, 95, 167, viii, 295. In 1347,the pontage grant was extended for the repair of the bridges and causeways across the meadowsbetween the Trent and the Leen (but not, significantly, for the Leen Bridge), Patent Rolls, Edward

III, vii, 267.94 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 365; Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, ed. Stevenson, 82–3, 89– 90.

95 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 419; reprinted in full in Records of the Borough of Nottingham , I, KingHenry II to King Richard II, 1155–1399 , ed. W. H. Stevenson (London, 1882), 182–3.

96 By the early years of the fourteenth century, the supervision of the rebuilding of the HethbethBridge had been taken over by Alice le Palmer, to whom Edward II granted protection on anumber of occasions; Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 169, 344, iii, 378, iv, 129. Edward III also grantedher an exemption from taxation, Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 188.

97 The first evidence is from the winter of 1251–52; Henry III granted the wardens protection addingthat ‘it is the king’s will that alms be bestowed upon them for the remaking of the bridge’; PatentRolls, Henry III, iv, 120, 125. The wardens accounts from 1457/8 have survived; Records of theBorough of Nottingham , II, ed. Stevenson, 220–23 for the Latin summary, and 364–8, for extractsfrom the itemized expenditures in English; for further accounts from the less spectacular years of

1458–61, see ibid., II, 244–7. The accounts include income from rents, a ferry, bequests and alms.




56

especially worthy for ‘the bridge of Hethbeth over the Trent, for which nothing is

owned from which it can be maintained, unless only by charitable gifts’.98 All in all,

the vicissitudes of Hethbeth Bridge reveal the stark contrast between it and the Leen

Bridge. While the Leen Bridge hardly appears in the record, the Trent Bridge is neverout of it for more than a few years. The Leen Bridge did not necessitate complicated

provisions because the county was obliged to repair it; in other words, although the

evidence at Nottingham certainly is ‘late’, the obligations were not. Indeed, it may be

suggested that just as the Leen Bridge probably pre-dated the Trent Bridge, so the

obligations predated the Trent Bridge and thus dated from before 920.

The final set of obligations are those attached to the bridge over the Cam in

Cambridge. The evidence for these obligations is in the form of records of inquests

taken as early as 1339 and as late as 1752. They show a remarkable consistency of

obligation, and were still being calculated by hides in 1752. The obligations were not

county-wide; they fell on particular estates.99

The origins of the Cambridgeshire obligations are not immediately obvious. Theearliest reference to them is in the Hundred Rolls of 1278, in which it is recorded

that the bridge was in disrepair and that ‘the repair and reconstruction of the Great

Bridge of Cambridge pertain to the county of Cambridge and to certain people of the

county who hold geldable lands ( terras geldabiles ) which should repair the bridge’.100

While there were complaints about the malicious actions of the sheriff,101 there were

no complaints at all about the idea of the levy, and it may be assumed that these were

the same geldable hides that were obliged to contribute from 1339 onwards. By 1278

the obligations were well known and accepted by those obliged to pay.

A study of the geographical distribution of the estates to be assessed for bridge

maintenance is more revealing. The estates in question all lie in a fairly contained area

of the south-west of the county, in the hundreds of Longstow, Papworth,

Whittlesford, Chesterton, Northstow and Wetherley. The reason for the uneven

distribution of pontage lands is that the lands that were to become Cambridgeshire

were divided between the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia. The boundary

between the two passed right through Cambridge, along the Cam and then followed

the West River up to Whittlesford and Duxford.102 The pontage lands all lay in what

98 Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, ed. W. H. Stevenson, 264–7.99 They were attached to the land and not to the individuals holding it, as can be seen by the plea of

one alleged defaulter, that ‘ipse non tenet aliqua terras seu tenementa in comitatu predicto perquem ipse pontem predictum reparare tenetur’ and by the words of the 1339 indictment that

certain individuals hold ‘terras per hidas … oneratas ad reparandum pontem’; Public Works in Mediaeval Law , ed. C. T. Flower, I, Publications of the Selden Society 32 (London, 1915), 34, 35.100 Rotuli hundredorum temporis Henrici III et Edwardi I in Turri Londinensi et in Curia Receptae Scaccarii

Westmonsterii asservati , 2 vols (London, 1812–18), II, 392.101 The reason the bridge was in such a state was that the sheriff was taking both the profit of a ferry

that had replaced the bridge and the money from the pontage lands and was putting them to hisown uses; moreover, a henchman of his was sneaking out and tearing up planks from the bridge toensure that it was never usable; the sheriff was also accused of taking forty shillings’ worth oftimber from poor people at Barnwell Fair and only paying them one mark, of only using a mark’s

worth of timber on the bridge and keeping the rest for his own uses, and of taking stone for thebridge and not paying for it; Rotuli hundredorum , I, 49, 50, 53, II, 55, 407.

102 Arthur Gray, The Dual Origin of the Town of Cambridge , Cambridge Antiquarian Society, QuartoPublications, new series 1 (Cambridge, 1908), esp. pp. 1–16. See also Helen Maud Cam, ‘TheOrigin of the Borough of Cambridge: A Consideration of Professor Carl Stephenson’s Theories’,

Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 35 (1933–4), 33–53.




57

had been Mercian territory, as, indeed, did the lands owing ward-penny at Cambridge

Castle,103 which suggests that the obligations go back to a time when Mercia and East

Anglia were separate entities.

What conclusions may be drawn from this grab-bag of evidence? Well, if the sixbridges and the obligations to repair them are examined next to each other, a number

of observations can be made. First, these systems of far-flung obligations are

unusual: there is no evidence for such arrangements in any other county nor for any

other bridge. Second, the bridges are unusual: all the bridges existed by the early

tenth century. Indeed, in the cases of Chester, Rochester, London and perhaps

Huntingdon, the bridge may have survived in some form from Roman times. Third,

the obligations were onerous and becoming more onerous as time passed: the repair

of bridges on the main roads of England was an expensive undertaking. Fourth,

despite the high cost, the obligations were understood and accepted: the only

opposition to the levies was on the grounds that the obligations were being applied

to lands they should not, not that the obligations itself were illicit. Medieval people were very conscious of right and of precedent; they were not likely to accept an

innovation, especially an onerous one, lightly. Fifth, the patterns of obligations are

consistent with an Anglo-Saxon origin. Moreover, in the cases of Chester, London

and Rochester, the evidence refers directly to that period; and at Cambridge the

pattern is highly suggestive of an Anglo-Saxon origin.

The collected evidence suggests therefore an Anglo-Saxon origin for these

bridge-building obligations. And indeed the history of the Anglo-Danish wars

supports this idea. All the six bridges may be described as having been on the

disputed border between Danes and English. All were at boroughs; all were fought

over and required restoration at one time or another.104 Moreover, there are common

elements in the descriptions of the restorations: in 886, ‘King Alfred occupied

London; and all the English people that were not under subjection to the Danes

submitted to him’;105 at Huntingdon in 917, after Edward the Elder had restored the

borough ‘all the people of the district who had survived submitted to King Edward

and asked for his peace and protection’;106 in the same year, ‘the army which

belonged ( hierde ) to Cambridge chose [Edward] especially as its lord and protector,

and established it with oaths just as he decreed’;107 at Nottingham, the following year,

he ‘manned [the restored borough] both with Englishmen and Danes. And all the

people, who had settled in Mercia, both English and Danes, submitted to him.’108

Let me suggest that in these submissions and oaths was included the promise to

maintain the borough, including the bridge. This suggestion may be supported byobserving the close connection between borough restoration and oath, and,

especially in the case of Cambridge, the emphasis on the king’s initiative in setting

103 Gray, Dual Origin , pp. 26–8.104 Rochester: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 118–19 (a. 842), 152–3 (a. 885); Chester: pp. 170–

71 (a. 893), 182–3 (a. 907); London: pp. 118–19, (a. 842) 120, 122 (a. 851), 152–3 (a. 883), 156–7 (a.886): Huntingdon: pp. 194–5 (a. 917): Nottingham, pp. 134–5 (a. 868), 195 (a. 918), 196 (a. 920)210–11 (a. 942); Cambridge: 144–5 (a. 895), 195 (a. 917).

105 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 156–7.106 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 194–5.107 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 195.

108 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 195.




58

terms for the oath.109 Thus, when Alfred and his successors pursued a policy ofborough building to turn back the Vikings, they may have organised the extantbridge- and wall-building obligations around the repair of the boroughs. Small detailsin the accounts of the oaths support this suggestion. For example, the one bridgementioned as being built in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, namely the Trent Bridge inNottingham, postdates the submission of the people of the town and had noobligations attached to it; it seems the older bridge was the one about which oaths

were taken. Similarly, when the army that belonged at Cambridge swore its oath, adistinction is made in the Chronicle between that army and the army of East Anglia,

which swore at the same time; this distinction perfectly matches the pattern ofpontage lands connected to Cambridge. Indeed, it should be noted that the word ‘tobelong’, hieran , (and its Latin equivalent pertinere ) recurs over and over again indescriptions of obligations.110 It is, for example, the word used in Burghal Hidage todescribe the allocation of hides to borough-work.111 It is the same word that is used

to describe the relationship of armies and lands that ‘belonged’ to boroughs.112 Mostsignificantly, it is the word used in the preamble of VI Æthelstan, the law codeagreed by ‘bishops and reeves who belong to London’; this suggestion ofrepresentatives of more than one county ‘belonging to London’ fits with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of the many shires being oppressed by work at London in1097,113 and by the existence of bridge-work obligations connected to LondonBridge in Sussex.114

In conclusion, the apparent coincidence of six unusually old bridges, all withunusual bridge-work obligations of a pre-Conquest origin, and all with similarexperiences in the wars of c. 900, suggests that Alfred and his descendants not onlypursued a deliberate policy of borough-building, but accompanied this policy with

the establishment of concomitant obligations for the repair of the restored borough,and, if there was one, a bridge. If this is indeed the case, it may be remarked that wehave come a long way to get back surprisingly close to Maitland’s idea of a deliberateconnection of borough to shire. Under this explanation, however, this connectionmay be seen to have arisen from specific historical circumstances, and, as such, may

109 Cp. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation , pp. 78–96.110 H. P. R. Finberg, ‘The Ancient Shire of Winchcombe’ in The Early Charters of the West Midlands

(Leicester, 1961), pp. 228–35 at pp. 228–9.111 Anglo-Saxon Charters , ed. Robertson, pp. 246–49; or ‘An edition and translation of the Burghal

Hidage, together with Recension C of the Tribal Hidage’, ed. Alexander R. Rumble in The Defence ofWessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications , ed. David Hill and Alexander R. Rumble(Manchester, 1996), pp. 14–35. For an attempt to reconstruct the work of organization that laybehind the Burghal Hidage, see Nicholas P. Brooks, ‘The administrative background to theBurghal Hidage’ in ibid., pp. 128–50, esp. pp. 141–4.

112 London: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 186–7 (a. 911); Oxford: pp. 186–7 (a. 911); Bedford:190–91 (a. 914); Northampton: pp. 190–91 (a. 914); Derby: pp. 190–93 (a. 917); Cambridge: p. 195(a. 917); Stamford: p. 195 (a. 918). See also II As. 20.1, 20.4: ‘the chief men who belong ( hiron /hyron ) to the borough’.

113 The word used in describing the shires whose work belonged to London in 1097 is, however,‘belumpon’; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 363.

114 Not to mention the Londoners’ claim to hunting rights in the Chilterns, Surrey and Middlesex inthe probably spurious charter of privileges of Henry I; Hn. Lond. 15, Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I,526; on its authenticity, see C. N. L. Brooke, G. Keir and S. Reynolds, ‘Henry I’s charter for the

City of London’, Journal of the Society of Archivists , vol. 4, no. 7 (April 1973), 558–78.




59

not be extended to other bridges, boroughs and counties for which evidence does

not exist.115

King Alfred, Bridge-Work and the Creation of the West Saxon Public Order

Asser tells us that

By gently instructing, cajoling, urging, commanding, and (in the end,

when his patience was exhausted) by sharply chastising those who were

disobedient and by despising popular stupidity and stubbornness in

every way, [King Alfred] carefully and cleverly exploited and converted

his bishops and ealdormen and nobles, and his thegns most dear to him,

and reeves as well … to his own will and to the general advantage of the

whole realm ( ad communem totius regni utilitatem ). But if, during the courseof these royal admonitions, the commands were not fulfilled because of

the people’s laziness, or else (having been too late in a time of necessity)

were not finished in time to be of use to those working on them (I am

speaking here of fortifications ( castellis ) commanded by the king which

have not yet been begun, or else, having been begun late in the day, have

not been brought to completion) and enemy forces burst in by land and

sea (or, as frequently happens, by both!), then those who had opposed

the royal commands were humiliated … and are sorry that they had

negligently scorned the royal commands; now they loudly applaud the

king’s foresight and promise to make every effort to do what they had

previously refused – that is, with respect to constructing fortresses and

to the other things of general advantage to the whole kingdom ( de arcibus

construendis et ceteris communibus communis regni utilitatibus ).116

This passage marks the turning point from the casual and sporadic insistence on the

common burdens, which is characteristic of the ninth century, to the vigorous and

universal insistence upon them in the tenth. The common burdens, first amongst

them, of course, being fyrd service, became fundamental in the resistance to the

Vikings. In this resistance, England learned from the Continental example. As

Brooks suggests that this is an example of ‘similar problems … receiving similar

115 It is interesting in the light of this argument to notice that when Notker the Stammerer describeshow even the greatest of Charlemagne’s subjects were not excused from the great buildingprojects, he cites as an example, the arches ( archæ ) of the bridge of Mainz, which may be a hint ofbridge-building obligations allocated by arches in a manner reminiscent of Rochester; NotkerBalbulus, Gesta Karoli Magni imperatoris , ed. Hans F. Haefele, MGH Scriptores, new series 12 (Berlin,1962), pp. 40–41.

116 Asser, Life of King Alfred , ed. William Henry Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), pp. 78–9; translation from Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources , ed. and trans. SimonKeynes and Michael Lapidge (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 101–2. For Alfred’s difficulties in

insisting on the common burdens, see Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation , pp. 75–8.




60

solutions’.117 In the case of Alfred, however, there is more.118 He had visited the

court of Charles the Bald, and his father had married Charles’ daughter Judith. As

Keynes and Lapidge remark ‘it is possible that [Alfred’s] stay with Charles the Bald

also awakened in him a general interest in Frankish affairs, and he may have made aspecial effort to ascertain in particular how the Carolingian kings had dealt with the

Viking raiders, when confronted with the same problem himself’.119 In this context, a

second lesson may be learned from the example of Pîtres, discussed above:120 the

emphasis on the communal labour. In the assembly in 864, Charles lectured his

nobles on the virtues of communal work,121 and the Edict of Pîtres lays out clear

rules on how the work should be done.122

In England, the understanding of obligations as truly communal and therefore

inescapable may be observed in the charters. As noted above, Nicholas Brooks has

observed that ‘In the century from 750 to 850 less than one fifth of the extant royal

diplomas reserve any or all of the three military obligations. It was not apparently of

great importance to donor or donee, lay or ecclesiastical, whether the reservation wasincluded or not. A scribe might reserve the common burdens in one charter, and

omit them in the next.’123 The great change between sporadic and unimportant

exclusions and the appearance of almost uniform exclusion occurred in the first half

of the tenth century. Of 95 genuine124 ninth-century charters, 80 contain general

immunities, of which only 33 exclude bridge-work; of 234 genuine charters from

between 901 and 958, 210 contain general immunities, of which 185 exclude bridge-

work; of 168 genuine charters from between 959 and 1000, 158 include general

immunities, of which 143 exclude bridge-work.

That this trend is more than just a meaningless change in formulae is suggested

by the language of the charters of the 930s. There is a group of charters that include

apparently unqualified immunities: these refer to freedom from ‘the yoke of

detestable ( exosae , detestande ) servitude’.125 This is the last significant group of

exemptions that do not exclude the common burdens. From the 930s, the language

of servility becomes more intense: the phrase ‘ab omni servili iugo libera’126 appears,

117 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 69; see also Janet L. Nelson, ‘The Church’s Military Service in theNinth Century: A Contemporary Comparative View?’ [reprinted from Studies in Church History 20(1983), 15–30] in Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1986), pp. 117–132.

118 See Janet L. Nelson, ‘“A King across the Sea”: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, Transactions of the

Royal Historical Society , 5th series 36 (1986), 45–68.119 Alfred the Great , ed. Keynes and Lapidge, introduction, p. 14.120 See above, pp. 43–5.121 ‘communiter laboravimus’; Edictum Pistense, Adnuntiatio Karoli, c. 2; Capitularia , II, ed. Boretius

and Krause, 311.122 On the role of consensus in the Edict, see Janet Nelson, ‘Legislation and Consensus in the Reign

of Charles the Bald’ in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies presented to J. M.Wallace-Hadrill , ed. Patrick Wormald, Donald Bullough and Roger Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 202– 27 at pp. 218–20.

123 Brooks, ‘Military Obligations’, p. 73.124 See above, p. 8n.125 B674 (S412), B675 (S413), B677 (S416), B689 (S417), B692 (S418), B691 (S419), B695 (S422),

B696 (S423), B702 (S425), B704 (S426).126 B728 (S442), B730 (S441), B752 (S466), B775 (S485), B777 (S480), B796 (S503), B814 (S508),

B1068 (S699), K783 (1013).




61

and the works being excluded are routinely referred to as a yoke ( iugum )127 or obstacle( obstaculum ).128 At the same time, the charters refer frequently to the three burdens asthe ‘common work’ and explain that it cannot be waived. Of the sixty-five charters

that explain that the three burdens are common to all,

129

forty-three date frombetween 930 and 958 (and a further twenty from after 958); of the fifteen chartersthat state that the three burdens cannot be waived for anyone, ten date from between930 and 958 (and another four from after 958). The language of the charters givesthe impression that a kind of propaganda campaign was underway, justifying theuniversal demand for the common burdens against considerable hostility.

The charters also provide a sense of what bridge-work was supposed to be boththrough the categories from which it was excluded and through the descriptions ofits importance. Bridge-work was an earthly tax ( mundialis census ),130 a royal tax ( census

127

116 genuine charters: B587 (S221), B426 (S287), B491 (S317), B674 (S412), B675 (S413), B677(S416), B689 (S417), B692 (S418), B691 (S419), B695 (S422), B696 (S423), B702 (S425), B704(S426), B728 (S442), B730 (S441), B742 (S446), B744 (S445), B745 (S458), B750 (S472), B752(S466), B775 (S485), B777 (S480), B796 (S503), B800 (S504), B814 (S508), B895 (S559), B938(S589), B957 (S593), B965 (S618), B981 (583), B1051 (S680), B1052 (S681), B1053 (S685), B1054(S683), B1058 (S682), B1066 (S690), B1067 (S688), B1068 (S699), B1071 (S696), B1075 (S698),B1076 (S695), B1080 (S689), B1082 (S703), B1083 (S706), B1085 (S702), B1096 (S833), B1099(S711), B1100 (S720), B1101 (S717), B1113 (S716), B1114 (S718), B1115 (S710), B1116 (S709),B1120 (S719), B1123 (S722), B1124 (S708), B1125 (S714), B1142 (S724), B1152 (S824), B1153(S826), B1155 (S815), B1156 (S822), B1158 (S827), B1169 (S734), B1171 (S732), B1172 (S733),B1176 (S738), B1186 (S744), B1189 (S737), B1191 (S746), B1196 (S747), B1199 (S748), B1200(S754), B1214 (S764), B1215 (S765), B1216 (S767), B1218 (S762), B1229 (S772), B1234 (S773),B1257 (S777), B1259 (S775), B1268 (S780), B1269 (S781), B1270 (S782), B1283 (S749), B1286(S789), B1305 (S794), B1309 (S805), B1312 (S801), B1316 (S800), B1319 (S811), K622 (S835),

K624 (S837), K626 (S836), K629 (S838), K633 (S840), K632 (S841), K655 (S861), K688 (S885)K698 (S891), K703 (S896), K714 (S911), K725 (S919), K744 (S963), K751 (S967), K778 (S1010),K783 (1013), K1277 (S829), K1279 (S843), K1289 (S883), K1291 (S888), K1292 (S887), K1305(S918), K1312 (S937); W. G. Searle, Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis: An Investigation Attempted ,Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Publications 27 (Cambridge, 1894), pp. 211–13 (S766), The

Early Charters of the West Midlands , ed. H. P. R. Finberg (Leicester, 1961), no. 419 (S932).128 Fifty-eight genuine charters: B734 (S449), B741 (S447), B748 (S470), B749 (S462), B753 (S464),

B756 (S468), B757 (B469), B758 (S463), B759 (S460), B762 (S461), B764 (S467), B767 (S476),B781 (S490), B789 (S491), B808 (S507), B821/2 (S527), B833 (S529), B888 (S578), B902 (S575),B927 (S610), B966 (S611), B967 (S584), B975 (S581), B977 (S603), B979 (S604), B982 (S619),B992 (S642), B994 (S645), B996 (S665), B999 (S646), B1003 (S649), B1022 (S577), B1023 (S579),B1027 (S653), B1028 (S654), B1029 (S659), B1035 (S651), B1077 (S693), B1093 (S705), B1138(S730), B1211 (S768), B1226 (S769), K648 (S856), K657 (S864), K658 (S867), K664 (S868), K673

(S874), K689 (S882), K692 (S886), K772 (S1004), K775 (S1001), K1282 (S855), K1283 (S858),K1296 (S902), K1301 (S910), K1303 (S915), Liber monasterii de Hyda , ed. Edwards, pp. 231–6(S865), 238–42 (S869).

129 B348 (S177), B438 (S292), B763 (S465), B748 (S470), B768 (S474), B770 (S475), B774 (S483),B780 (S512), B776 (S481), B786 (S488), B787 (S487), B788 (S486), B793 (S502), B799 (S498),B801 (S496), B817 (S513), B821/2 (S527), B824 (S526), B831 (S521), B866 (S542), B868 (S534),B870 (S531), B875 (S547), B878 (S551), B877 (S552), B887 (S553), B888 (S578), B892 (S558),B894 (S516), B931 (S571), B945 (S587), B946 (S588), B948 (S585), B963 (S622), B973 (S627),B988 (S641), B998 (S647), B999 (S646), B1001 (S643), B1022 (S577), B1034 (S657), B1035 (S651),B1043 (S674), B1044 (S679), B1045 (S660), B1074 (S692), B1077 (S693), B1118 (S715), B1127(S727), B1138 (S730), B1211 (S768), K706 (S899), K719 (S926), K730 (S955), K749 (S968), K752(S970), K753 (S976), K775 (S1001), K776 (S1012), K778 (S1010), K1278 (S839), K1281 (S852),K1307 (S927), K1318 (S969), K1322 (S975); the phrase communis labor appears for the first time in acharter of 940, B763 (S465).

130 B601 (S369), B642 (S395).




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regalis , regale tributum ),131 an impost ( vectigal ),132 a royal burden ( regalis sarcina ),133 a royal

service ( regale servitium ),134 which was most necessary from all regions,135 was known

to all,136 constituted from ancient times,137 should be provided by all people,138 was

necessary to the royal dignity

139

and was observed by the common usage.

140

These descriptions of bridge-work accord well with the information on the

performing of bridge-work provided by the law codes. It is worth noting first,

however, the silence of the early law codes on the subject. No code before the time

of Æthelred mentions bridges. This silence is all the more deafening because some of

the codes deal with subjects that were usually attached to bridge-work by context.

For instance, Ine’s laws refer to the penalty for failing to serve in the army.141 While

this silence in the seventh-century codes should not be seen as surprising since they

pre-date the first appearance of the obligations in charters, the absence of a reference

to bridge-work in Æthelstan’s laws is more surprising. His second code makes

provisions for borough-work, but does not mention bridges.142

The later Anglo-Saxon law codes make clear that bridge-work was considered tobe one fundamental aspect of the maintenance of the public order. The related codes

V and VI Æthelred and II Cnut include bridge-work in sections dealing with those

matters related to the public order. Each code begins with a section on ecclesiastical

crimes, which ends with a general statement urging the observance of God’s law.143

There follows a section on the peace ( fri ! ), which begins in each code with a general

statement urging everyone to work to improve the peace144 and ends with an

admonition that injustice should cease and righteousness flourish.145 Between these

introductory and concluding clauses the codes contain various measures of common

concern. V Æthelred includes coinage, borough-work, bridge-work,146 military

service, the building of ships, desertion from the army, outlawry, plots against the

king and obstruction of the law of the king or Christ, plus a section on specific

injustices that the king had worked to stamp out.147 VI Æthelred omits this specific

list; it adds weights and measures, the penalty for damaging naval vessels and for

131 B969 (S608); B243 (S38), B1121 (S713).132 B750 (S472).133 B887 (S553), B936 (S664).134 K636 (S848).135

B971 (S614).136 B1103 (S669).137 B1285 (S784).138 K810 (S1033).139 B769 (S478).140 K772 (S1004).141 Ine 51. On the law codes, see Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth

Century , I, Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), esp. chapter 5.142 II As. 13.143 V Atr. 26; VI Atr. 30; II Cn. 7.1.144 V Atr. 26.1; VI Atr. 31; II Cn. 8.145 V Atr. 33.1; VI Atr. 40.1; II Cn. 11.1.146 Bridge-work is omitted in MS G (which is a hand of c. 1060 according to Liebermann); there does

not seem to be any significance to this omission.

147 V Atr. 26.1–32.5.




63

violence to widows and nuns.148 This list is shortened and simplified in II Cnut: only

the coinage, weights and measures, borough- and bridge-work, the building of ships

and the military service are included.149 Together these constitute a fairly

conventional list of matters pertaining to the king under the early medieval publicorder. This public context is reinforced by II Cnut, which emphasizes that the duties

are to performed whenever necessary ‘for mænelicre neode’, or, as the Quadripartitus

version of the same clause (with a characteristic royalist twist) has it, ‘ad commune

regni nostri commodum’.150

That the public obligation to repair bridges was to be undertaken communally is

confirmed by the details of the penalty for non-participation specified in the law

codes. II Cnut specifies that the fine for neglect of borough-work, bridge-work or

army service is 120 shillings under English law and as custom dictates in the

Danelaw.151 If this neglect were denied fourteen compurgators would be named of

whom eleven would have to support the denial. The Leges Henrici Primi repeat this

provision,152 but add that neighbours should usually be appointed as compurgatorsbecause it is impossible that even a single member of the community could be

present at the muster and not be noticed.153 All of which suggests that a community

would come together to perform its common borough-work, bridge-work or army

service.

One other text suggests the inescapability of the common burdens. The

Rectitudines singularum personarum of c. 1050 states that ‘the law of thegns is, that if he is

to be worthy of bookright, he should do three things for his land: army service,

borough-work and bridge-work ( fyrdfæreld 7 burhbote 7 brycgeweorc )’.154

The exemption clauses in the charters suggest some further details on the

changing performance of bridge-work. Two changes to the formulae occur during

the reign of Edgar. The first has been noted above:155 with the accession of Edgar in

959, there is a change in the words used for the work connected to bridges and forts.

Whereas previously, the words used had been almost exclusively ones meaning

building (e.g., constructio, instructio, coedificatio ), after that date, the words are split

between ones meaning building and ones meaning repair (e.g., emendatio, reparatio ).

The second change is the appearance in common formulae of the word rata ,

‘proportionate’, especially in the formula ‘tribus his exceptis rata videlicet expeditione

pontis arcisve restauratione’.156 The word appears in only two charters from before

148 VI Atr. 31–9; all but coinage, weights and measures, borough- and bridge-work, the building ofships and the military service are omitted in MS D (i.e., cc. 33–9 omitted), reducing the list to thesimplest form as it appears in II Cnut.

149 II Cn. 8-10.150 II Cn. 10; for the Quadripartitus version, see Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 315.151 II Cn. 65.152 Hn. 66.6, 66.6a.153 Hn. 66.6b; the Latin is somewhat cryptic: ‘quia solus non potuit tantis efficientiis invisibilis

affuisse’.154 Rect. 1; the Quadripartitus translates this as ‘Taini lex est, ut sit dignus rectitudine testamenti sui et

ut tria faciat pro terra sua, scilicet expeditionem, burhbotam et brigbotam’.155 See above, Chapter 1.

156 For example, B1054 (S683), B1058 (S682).




64

959,157 but in eighty-nine after that date. The appearance of the word suggests the

existence of settled and agreed obligations, shared in common.

These changes in formula during the reign of Edgar suggest an evolution in the

nature of bridge-work and the other obligations. In earlier years, the obligations hadbeen ones to be performed ‘when deemed necessary’,158 ‘by royal command’,159 and

the army service performed in a ‘most prompt’ manner;160 Asser describes Alfred as

being vexed because his people would not respond quickly enough to his

summonses, so that the necessary work on fortresses would be too late. The

requirement for communal repair of bridges and fortresses by settled proportions

suggests a more settled situation and the adaptation of the obligations of military

emergency to the routine needs of peacetime.161 This interpretation, of course, agrees

absolutely with what we know of the reign of Edgar the Peaceable: such regular and

routine cooperation of all people in common obligations is reminiscent of the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle’s description that Edgar ‘improved the peace of the people ( folces

fri ! ) more than the kings who were before him in the memory of man. And God alsosupported him so that kings and earls willingly submitted to him and were subjected

to whatever he wished. And without battle he brought under his sway all that he

wished.’162

One final point should be mentioned about bridge-work in the tenth century. As

has been noted, from the 930s, charters insist that no-one can be exempted from the

common burdens. Several charters demonstrate that this was at least theoretically

true even of the king and his family. A charter of 943, in which Edmund granted

land on the Isle of Thanet to his mother, reserves the three burdens ‘which it seems

to us are to be demanded communally from everyone’.163 Shortly afterwards, the

same king granted some lands to his wife, again reserving the common burdens, with

the explanation that they were ‘common to everyone’.164 In 953, Eadred granted land

to his mother reserving the common burdens without explanation.165 Edgar went

one better: in two charters of 963 and 964, he granted estates to himself, whilst still

reserving the common burdens.166

Of course, our evidence does not permit the examination of actual cases of the

obligations being performed, but it seems that in this period, the heyday of the

Anglo-Saxon public order, the theory was maintained with absolute consistency: no

one could be excused from the common burdens, no matter in what degree of

favour they were held. Even the king was below the law.167

157

B895 (S559), B981 (S583).158 B201 (S106), B202 (S58), B203 (S59), B204 (S60), B848 (S134).159 B178 (S92).160 B780 (S512).161 This change is also suggested by the provision in II Æthelstan that all borough-work should be

finished by a fortnight after Rogation Days; II As. 13.162 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 217.163 B784 (S489).164 B817 (S513).165 B898 (S562).166 B1118 (S715), B1127 (S727).167 This is not to say, of course, that the king and his family were expected to erect bridges personally;

we must assume that all lords were delegating the actual physical labour to their peasants. Ifevidence is needed of this point, see the levying of the fine for a failure to perform bridge-work at

Chester on the man’s lord; DB, 262d [Cheshire].




65

All that was to change. A sign of things to come may be found in the documents

relating to the messuage called ‘Goodbegot’ in Winchester. According to a charter of

1012 in which King Æthelred granted this land to his wife Emma,

it is declared to be beyond the taxation of our majesty ( ex censoriaeminentiae nostrae ditione ), so that this liberty from my aforesaid demands

will be firm and inviolable, but moreover let it stay secure from every

yoke of worldly servitude as long as the torch of faith shines its light

upon the land of the English and indeed from these three matters,

namely, the repair of bridges and walls and the adding to the warlike

multitude.168

This liberty was confirmed subsequently by Æthelred and Emma’s son, Edward the

Confessor.169 Both the language of the grant and the subsequent confirmation

suggest that this was seen as an extraordinary grant,170 but the very idea that the king

could by his own authority grant immunity from the three common burdens was thebeginning of the end.171

168 K720 (S925).169 H111 (S1153).170 The place continued to enjoy an exceptional status until the time of Henry VIII; Anglo-Saxon Writs ,

ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1952), p. 383.

171 Cp. the examples of ‘beneficial hidation’; Anglo-Saxon Writs , ed. Harmer, pp. 375–7.



Chapter 3

‘As Free as the King Could Grant’:

The End of Communal Bridge-work

Bridge-work was one element of the Anglo-Saxon public order. It was a communal

obligation which was theoretically inescapable; most other duties might be remittedby the king, but not bridge-work. This theory was either not understood or not

respected by the Conqueror and his sons. On the one hand, we see them exploiting

the common burdens to their fullest extent. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle complains

of the grievous burdens imposed in 1097 on the counties whose work was due at

London, caused by the building of the Tower of London and Westminster Hall and

the repair of London Bridge, so that ‘many men were oppressed thereby’.1 Similarly,

William the Conqueror demanded that the bridge-work, which he had newly

imposed on the Isle of Ely after the suppression of the last Anglo-Saxon resistance,

be performed ‘without excuse’.2 On the other hand, William and his sons remitted

bridge-work as a mark of favour. It is this use of previously communal and public

obligations as an instrument of lordly rule that changed the legal understanding ofthe common burdens. Once they had chosen to excuse their most favoured monastic

institutions from communal public duties, the way was open for every house of any

standing to excuse itself from these obligations by forgery. These forgeries betray the

changing understanding of bridge-work: in claiming that they had been excused from

the obligation by a famous king of yore, the forgers reflect the state of the law under

the Norman kings. The possibility that the personal favour of a king should allow

such exemption demonstrates the different perception of kingship by the time of the

Normans. Whereas the Anglo-Saxon public order was at least theoretically

immutable so that the king could not even grant exemptions from bridge-work to his

own land, under the Normans, bridge-work was a feudal incident, alienable like any

other.

This new understanding of bridge-work will be examined in three separate but

contemporaneous manifestations. The first is the forged charters produced by so

many monasteries in the twelfth century. The second is the Coronation Charter of

Henry I, in which remittance of bridge-work, like that of other dues, is used as a

political bargaining chip. The third is the twelfth-century legal compilations, which

quietly diluted or omitted bridge-work.

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 363.2 English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I , ed. R. C. van Caenegem, I, Publications of the Selden

Society 106 (London, 1990), 48, 50; cp. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 346–7.



‘As Free as the King Could Grant’

67

Monastic Exemptions

Battle Abbey was the first institution or individual to secure immunity from the

common burdens after the Conquest; it secured genuine and unique privileges as aresult of William I’s notion of the foundation as, to use Eleanor Searle’s word, his

Eigenkloster .3 Subsequently, the great monasteries of England all sought to ape these

privileges largely by means of forgery. It was, however, Battle’s connection to the

king and the privileges that the connection came to entail which set the pattern for all

subsequent exemptions.

The story of Battle Abbey’s struggle to preserve its exceptional ecclesiastical

exemptions against the influence of the bishop of Chichester is well known; the

parallel story of the fight for secular immunities is less known, largely because it was

accomplished before the period of interest for the house’s chronicler and without the

need of forgeries. Eleanor Searle in her work on the abbey and its lordship retells the

story of the ecclesiastical litigation4 and of the achievement of secular jurisdictionalindependence from neighbouring lords.5 As regards the freedoms granted by the

Conqueror and his sons, however, she concludes ‘these are great privileges, but not

unusual for a royal foundation’.6 This assertion cannot stand; not only did the

privileges include freedom from opera castellorum et parcorum et pontium as well as from

the murder fine,7 freedoms hitherto allowed to no foundation, but the freedoms

from the communal obligations were contested by the abbey’s neighbours. There

survive numerous writs issued by the Conqueror’s sons to aid the abbey in its

defence of its rights; these writs include ones on the subject of the abbey’s freedom

from bridge- and castle-work.

The writs were necessary because the local authorities did not take this

unprecedented freedom lying down. Henry I had to send one writ to his officers8

and another to his barons9 in Sussex reminding them that the lands of Battle were

3 For the foundation of privileged abbeys by the dukes of Normandy, see David Bates, Normandybefore 1066 (London, 1982), pp. 193–4, 205.

4 Eleanor Searle, Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and its Banlieu, 1066–1538 , Pontifical Instituteof Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 26 (Toronto, 1974), pp. 21–35.

5 Searle, Lordship and Community , pp. 197–218.6 Searle, Lordship and Community , p. 206n.7 The abbey never received a formal foundation charter from William I because he died before the

abbey was consecrated; however, a writ of the Conqueror establishing of the privileges of the

house was confirmed by Henry II, and these same freedoms can be seen in writs concerning theabbey’s properties outside Sussex, as well as in all the succeeding confirmations, forged andotherwise, of later kings. Henry II’s confirmation of William I’s writ is printed in V. H. Galbraith,‘A New Charter of Henry II to Battle Abbey’, English Historica l Review 52 (1937), 67–73 at 73. The

writs repeating the freedoms are Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066– 1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford, 1998), no. 14; Regesta , I, nos 290, 314a (appendix, no. l a), 348b(appendix, no. lvi a), 426a (appendix, no. lxxvi a) (all of these except no. 290 are printed among theaddenda to volume I at the back of volume II); Regesta , II, nos 827 (appendix, no. xlvii), 894, 1238,1404, 1717–18 (appendix, nos cclviii–cclix), 1804; for the privileges forged after 1154, see EleanorSearle, ‘Battle Abbey and Exemption: The Forged Charters’, English Historical Review 83 (1968),449–80 at 469–80.

8 Regesta , II, no. 1060; Fœdera, conventiones, litteræ et cujuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Angliæ et aliosquosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates , ed. Thomas Rymer and Robert Sanderson,new edn, I (London, 1816), ed. Adam Clarke and Fred. Holbrooke, 8.

9 Regesta , II, no. 1717 (appendix, no. cclviii).




68

exempt from bridge-work, and that, in particular, the manor of Alciston was to befree of bridge-work owing at London Bridge and castle-work owing at PevenseyCastle. Failure to observe this order was to be punished by forfeiture. A similar writ

specified the manor of Limpsfield was to be free of work at London Bridge.

10

In all things, especially the dispute with Chichester, but in secular matters too,Battle based such claim of freedom on the notion that its lands had been given ‘byroyal authority’,11 ‘as the king’s own alms’12 to ‘his demesne chapel’,13 which was ‘asymbol of the royal crown’,14 and thus the lands were held ‘with royal privileges’,15 ‘as free and quit as [the king] held them’16 and ‘as free as the king could grant’.17 Thatis to say, freedom from bridge-work was predicated on the notion that bridge-work

was an obligation like any other owed to the lord king, and that the king, having noearthly lord, did not owe it. This understanding is quite different from the tenth-century theory that bridge-work was one of the public and common obligations from

which no man could be exempt, not even the king.

Henry I followed his father’s lead. When he founded Reading Abbey in 1121, heendowed it with privileges as exceptional as Battle’s. Although the variousfoundation charters have all come under close scrutiny as regards their authenticity,18 the privileges are consistent throughout and similar to the Conqueror’s foundation.

The privileges include freedom from army service and the building of castles andbridges.19 In two portable charters ‘to be taken before courts and other authorities

whenever the abbey’s liberties were in question’,20 it is stated that Henry’s intention was to give the abbey ‘all immunity and power, quittance and liberty that the royalauthority can confer on any abbey’.21 Whether this clause is genuine or not, this

10 Regesta , II, no. 1718 (appendix, no. cclix).11 ‘regali auctoritate’, The Chronicle of Battle Abbey , ed. Eleanor Searle (Oxford, 1980), p. 69; Regesta , II,

no. 1060 ( Fœdera , ed. Rymer et al., new edn, I, 8).12 ‘sicut dominicam meam elemosinam’, ‘sicut dominica elemosina mea’, Regesta regum Anglo-

Normannorum , ed. Bates, no. 14 (versions I and II), II, no. 662; also printed in Monasticon diocesis Exoniensis , ed. George Oliver (Exeter, 1846), pp. 117–18. There is a cruelly ironic end to the tale ofthe exemptions enjoyed by the priory of St Nicholas in Exeter, a cell of Battle to which thesecharters relate; the cell was included in the exemption from bridge-work, but after the dissolutionof the priory in 1536, some stones from the priory buildings were used to repair the Exe bridge;ibid., pp. 115–16.

13 ‘mea dominica capella’ in the second spurious foundation charter of 1156/7; Regesta regum Anglo- Normannorum , ed. Bates, no. 23; also printed in Searle, ‘Battle Abbey and Exemption’, pp. 473–4(nos 4, 10); cp. the requirement that the king’s officers were ‘not to meddle in Battle’s leuga any

more than they would in the King’s own demesne’, Regesta , II, nos 859 (Patent Rolls, Henry VI, ii,173), 1670.14 ‘regie signum corone’, Chronicle of Battle Abbey , ed. Searle, p. 47.15 ‘regiis dignatibus’, Chronicle of Battle Abbey , ed. Searle, p. 69.16 Regesta , II, no. 1060 ( Fœdera , ed. Rymer et al., new edn, I, 8).17 ‘ita liberum et quietum sicut liberius quietius tenui, vel ut rex dare potui’ in the first spurious

foundation charter of 1154/5; Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum , ed. Bates, no. 22; also printed inSearle, ‘Battle Abbey and Exemption’, pp. 469–70 (no. 1).

18 Reading Abbey Cartularies, British Library Manuscripts: Egerton 3031, Harley 1708 and Cotton Vespasian Exxv , ed. B. R. Kemp, I, Camden Fourth Series 31 (London, 1986), introduction, 19–22; see alsoCharles Johnson, ‘Some Charters of Henry I’ in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait , ed. J. G.Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), pp. 137–42.

19 See, for example, Reading Abbey Cartularies , ed. Kemp, I, 33 (no. 1).20 Reading Abbey Cartularies , ed. Kemp, I, 38.

21 Reading Abbey Cartularies , ed. Kemp, I, 37, 52 (nos 2, 21).




69

certainly seems to have been both Henry I’s intention and the abbey’s subsequent

understanding of their founder’s actions.22

The post-Conquest royal foundations were thus able to secure genuine

exemptions from bridge-work.

23

The great pre-Conquest monasteries did not havesuch immunities, but as soon as the principle was established that such exemptions

were possible, the easiest way to attempt to acquire them was by forgery. W. H.

Stevenson suggested that this was a relatively easy task to accomplish, merely by

‘suppressing the exception clauses or by changing a preposition’24 in a genuine

Anglo-Saxon charter. One example of this kind of alteration suggests that the matter

was not as straightforward as Stevenson believed. The charter of King Edgar to St

Werburgh’s, Chester, as it is preserved in the abbey’s fourteenth-century cartulary,25

follows the form of another grant of Edgar to the thegn Wulfric.26 Where the latter

has the absolutely conventional ‘free from every aggravation of secular service and

from every tax except army service, bridge-work and fortress-work ( liberum ab omni

aggravatione secularis servitii et ab omni censu preter expeditionis profectione pontisque constructioneet arcis munitione )’, the Chester charter replaces ‘except ( preter )’ with ‘and ( et )’, thus

reversing the sense of the exclusion clause.27 However, this simple change was not

enough for the compiler of the charter, who felt the need to add a clause specifying

that the grant was made not only for the expiation of Edgar’s sins but also for the

expiation of the sins of ‘my predecessors, namely Edmund renowned king of the

English and my father, and also of Æthelstan of blessed memory most noble king of

22 Brian Kemp feels that the clause is a late-twelfth-century ‘improvement’, but it is ‘not impossible asan epitome of the king’s intentions … and may have been broadly true in practice’, Reading Abbey

Cartularies , ed. Kemp, introduction, I, 20–21.23 Stephen also granted secular immunity to his foundation at Faversham (founded in 1148), however

by then it seems that bridge-work was not an important enough issue to gain explicit mention,perhaps because it had already gone the way of all royal authority; ‘in perpetuam elemosinam,soluta et quieta omni seculari exactione’, Regesta , III, no. 302.

24 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, English Historical Review 29 (1914), 689–703 at 702.25 The Chartulary or Register of the Abbey of St Werburgh, Chester , ed. James Tait, Remains Historical and

Literary connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester printed for the ChethamSociety, new series 79 (Manchester, 1920), pp. 8–10. The great advantage which forgeries offer isthat, in a sense, they are the most honest documents of the Middle Ages: their authors tend to be

wonderfully straightforward in stating exactly what it is they are interested in. The greatestproblem, of course, in dealing with these forgeries is to get an exact sense of the date of theircomposition. The Chester charter is a good illustration of the problems; it purports to be a charter

of King Edgar, granted in 963; however, the earliest copy was added in a later hand onto a blankfolio in the abbey’s cartulary, which dates from the early years of the fourteenth century ( ibid., pp.xxxii–xxxiii). James Tait argues this charter had a genuine basis, ibid ., pp. xvii–xviii, 10–13; I find

Tait’s acceptance of the substance of the charter to be a little too whole-hearted; he asserts that with regard to this charter, ‘there is no motive for forgery’ (p. 12), but elsewhere he uses thecharter as the clinching proof of the abbey’s Anglo-Saxon origins (pp. xvii–xviii), something themedieval monks would have been eager to prove. Moreover, bridge-work at Chester was still a liveissue in the fourteenth century (see above, p. 52); the abbey was involved in long-running litigationto secure immunity from obligations to repair the bridge across the Dee, and it is perfectly possibleto imagine that this charter was invented and inserted into the cartulary in the fourteenth centuryto bolster the abbey’s claim to immunity.

26 B1119 (S723).27 Tait, in defending the charter, suggests that ‘it is possible … that some copyist carelessly or

unscrupulously altered the abbreviation of “preter” … into the sign for “et”’; Chartulary or Register of

the Abbey of St Werburgh , ed. Tait, p. 11.




70

the same people’.28 This clause would be extraordinary in a tenth-century charter29

and was probably added in order to make the immunity plausible. In truth, what the

Chester charter demonstrates is that the task of securing fabricated immunities was

harder than Stevenson supposed, since it was well known that immunities were notlightly granted.30

Instead of the simple substitution of prepositions, the essential method used by

monasteries to claim exemption from bridge-work was to put the exemption in the

context of praise of a king of the past and assertion of his particular favour towards

the house. Only in that context would the grant of such a privilege be credible. In

cartularies and house chronicles, a consistent pattern emerges of forged bridge-work

exemptions becoming common for the first time in the first half of the twelfth

century, at the precise point that bridge-work was both becoming more burdensome

and being undermined elsewhere by royal grant and legal compilations. A few

examples of this practice should suffice to make the point; there are too many

examples for them all to be included here. The first example is St Albans. The claim of St Albans to privileges, including an

exemption from bridge-work, was based on a number of forged twelfth-century

charters. The first two were supposedly granted by Offa, king of the Mercians. This

king was the subject of a hagiographic propaganda campaign conducted by the

school of historians at the house at the same time that the charters were being

written. This campaign can be detected in the differences between the accounts of

Offa’s foundation of the monastery given by William of Malmesbury and Henry of

Huntingdon, writing in the 1120s, and by Roger of Wendover, a historian of St

Albans, writing in the early years of the thirteenth century.31 It has been

28 Chartulary or Register of the Abbey of St Werburgh , ed. Tait, p. 9.29 Chartulary or Register of the Abbey of St Werburgh , ed. Tait, p. 11.30 One other charter should be remarked upon in this context; in his article on the common burdens,

Stevenson notes one pre-Conquest exception to the otherwise consistent rule against explicitexemptions, namely the charter of Crediton Abbey granted by Æthelstan in 930, which grants theland ‘sine expeditionis profectione arcis pontis constructione omnique regalium vel seculariumtributorum servitutis exactione’, B1343 (S405); Stevenson’s puzzling response to this was ‘exceptioprobat regulam’ although it seems to do nothing of the sort. Subsequent work by Pierre Chaplaishas, however, shown this charter to be an early eleventh-century forgery, making this the only pre-Conquest forged exemption and thus making good on Stevenson’s claim: here is the one exceptionto the rule of no explicit pre-Conquest exemptions to bridge-work, and the one example of aforgery simply ‘changing a preposition’ as Stevenson suggests. That only one example of the kind

exists suggests that it was not a successful tactic; Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, p. 702; PierreChaplais, ‘The Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diplomas of Exeter’, The Bulletin of theInstitute of Historical Research 39 (1966), 1–34 at 10–11 (no. 9). There is, I think, a nice symmetry inthe fact that Crediton thus has both the first bridge in a set of charter bounds and the first forgedbridge-work exemption; the traditional identification of Crediton as the birthplace of St Boniface,

whose role as instigator of bridge-work has been discussed in Chapter 1, is a pleasantly spookycoincidence; see Nicholas Orme, ‘The Church in Crediton from Saint Boniface to theReformation’ in The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton , ed. TimothyReuter (Exeter, 1980), pp. 97–131 at p. 97.

31 Roger, who was building on the work of predecessors of a previous generation, was himself onlyone link in the chain; his work was in turn adapted by Matthew Paris, who was to magnify theroyal connection to St Albans by the creation of another Offa, king of Angeln, in the fourthcentury, whose original promise to found a monastery in honour of St Alban provides theinspiration for the actual foundation by the historical Offa; Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris

(Cambridge, 1958), pp. 41–8, 189–95.




71

demonstrated that William and Henry were working independently from an early

account of the abbey’s foundation.32 Both follow the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle33 in

describing how Offa had King (and later Saint) Æthelberht of East Anglia

beheaded,

34

but balance that story of treachery with an account of how he foundedthe abbey and endowed it with many lands.35 William adds the full story of how the

king was led to discover Alban’s relics and build the church by a vision in a dream. 36

Henry adds that because of the sanctity of Alban the church is held in such honour

that it enjoys immunity from Romescot ‘from which no king, earl, archbishop,

bishop, abbot, or anyone else is exempt’.37 When Roger of Wendover came to

rewrite the story, he refashioned Offa as a properly pious founder. He not only

entirely changes the account of the king’s personality, so that Offa refuses the

opportunity to kill King Æthelberht (a deed that is instead performed by Offa’s evil

queen Quendritha38 ), but makes the king travel to Rome personally to secure

privileges for the house, including immunity from episcopal oversight.39 In this

context, Roger repeatedly emphasizes that Offa gave the house great privileges, and,especially, that the king gave the house ‘all royal rights ( omnia jura regalia )’.40 This

grant was made at a council of bishops and nobles, and was repeated by his son,

Egfrid.41 In all these aspects, Roger’s account matches the provisions of the forged

charters. There are charters of Offa, one of which is witnessed by Offa’s son, plus

nine other kings, two archbishops, thirteen bishops and ten duces , and grants freedom

from all works, from expedicio and ‘omni edicto publico’,42 the other of which grants

freedom from works, including the repair of bridges.43 These two charters are

matched by two supposedly granted by Offa’s son, which grant a general immunity

from works.44 These charters are then confirmed explicitly by two spurious charters

of Æthelred the Unready, which confirm freedom from works, as stated in the vetus

cartula of Offa.45 All of these charters are in marked contrast to the apparently

32 Vaughan, Matthew Paris , p. 191.33 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 98-99.34 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings ; ed. R. A. B. Mynors,

R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, I (Oxford, 1998), 120–22; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum , ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), p. 256.

35 William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum , ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton [RS 52] (London,1870), pp. 316–17; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum , ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom,I, 122; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum , ed. Greenway, pp. 246, 624. William admits hispuzzlement that the same king could behave so treacherously and so piously.

36 William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum , ed. Hamilton, pp. 316–17; Henry, by contrast, through

juxtaposing Offa’s foundation of the abbey with St Germanus’ visit to the shrine, gives theimpression that the relics were never lost; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum , ed. Greenway,pp. 622–4.

37 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum , ed. Greenway, pp. 624–5.38 Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum , ed. Henry O. Coxe (London, 1841), I, 249–51.39 Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum , ed. Coxe, I, 251–740 Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum , ed. Coxe, I, 257, 259.41 Roger of Wendover, Chronica sive flores historiarum , ed. Coxe, I, 257, 262; Offa’s son Egfrid’s grant

includes the clause ‘cum omnibus libertatibus regiis, quas liberiores habet, vel alicui ecclesiæconferre potest, suo privilegio confirmavit et ejus donationi, ut perpetuæ firmitatis robur obtineret’,p. 262.

42 B267 (S136).43 B264 (S138).44 B280 (S151), B281 (S150).

45 K672 (S912), K696 (S888).




72

genuine charters of Henry I for the house, which grant fairly conventional customs

and generally refer back in an unspecific manner to the privileges of the house as

they were at the time of the Conquest.46 These charters presumably created both a

need and an opportunity for the kind of forgeries produced later.In the thirteenth century, Matthew Paris, Roger’s successor as house historian,

drew a series of illustrations of the foundation of St Albans Abbey, beginning with

the martyrdom of the saint and continuing through the discovery of the saint’s relics

by King Offa and the construction of the abbey.47 The final illustration runs across

two folios; it shows Offa, watched by his nobles, kneeling to place his foundation

charter on the altar before the abbot, while a servant furiously rings the bells of new

abbey. Immediately below this illustration is the text of the charter that Offa is

placing on the altar, and it is, of course, the spurious foundation charter on which St

Albans based its claim to extraordinary immunity.48 The juxtaposition of colourful

pictures of a royal saint and a legal text was in no way accidental; the hagiographic

preamble was a necessary part of the claim of rights. A second example is Peterborough. In the early twelfth century, the house hired

a professional to secure their claim to immunity: Guerno, peripatetic forging monk

of St Medard,49 produced for them a charter of Wulfhere of Mercia purporting to be

from 664, confirming all their lands and stating that ‘I concede all these things as I

held them royally ( omnia … concedo sicut ego regaliter tenui )’.50 This was supported by a

charter of King Edgar, which recalls the grant of King Wulfhere of ‘royal privileges’,

laments the depredations of the Vikings and re-endows the house to be ‘free in

perpetuity from all secular business and servitude … secure from all worldly yoke

forever’ and to be ‘free from all things except only army work and repair of bridge

and fortress by proportion ( modo rata )’.51 This one concession of common obligation

was to be removed in the next generation by means of emphasizing antiquity,

sanctity and multiple royal privileges. Hugh Candidus in his chronicle of the house

46 Regesta , II, nos 512, 584, 595, 596, 1102, 1203; Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora , ed. Henry RichardsLuard [RS 57], VI, Liber additamentorum (London, 1882), 36–40. A comparison of Matthew’scharters with the full list of donations by Henry I as recorded in the Regesta suggests that Matthew(or more properly the cartulary that he was copying) only included those charters which includedunspecified confirmations of old privileges and not new grants; these unspecified confirmations,

when deliberately placed after the spurious grants of exceptional privilege, look more impressivethan they truly were.

47 Illustrations to the Life of St Alban in Trin. Coll. Dublin Ms. E. i 40, ed. W. R. L. Lowe, E. F. Jacoband M. R. James (Oxford, 1924) (BHL 215–16); the illustrations are now available on a range of t-

shirts, coasters, mugs and tea towels in the abbey’s gift shop.48 Illustrations , ed. Lowe, Jacob and James, nos 53, 54 (ff. 62b, 63a).49 Wilhelm Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 212–20, esp. pp.

212, 218–20.50 B22A (S68). In the thirteenth century, this forgery was expanded and made more explicit. The new

version granted privileges ‘in pure and perpetual a lms ( in puram et perpetuam elemosinam )’, stating ‘weorder that the aforesaid monastery have all liberties and customs which the royal power that conferon any church ( præcipimus ut prædictum monasterium habeat omnes libertates et consuetudines quas regia

potestas liberiores alicui ecclesiæ conferre potest )’. It grants freedom from ‘all works of castles, parks,bridges and walls, and from every carrying service, by cart, pack-animal and boat, and frombuilding-work on royal houses and from any sort of labour service, and their woods are in no wayto be taken for the aforesaid works or for any others ( omnibus operibus Castellorum, Parcorum, Ponciumet de clausturis et ab omni Careio et summagio et navigio et regali domorum ædificatione et omnimoda operatione etsilvæ eorum ad prædicta opera vel ad aliqua alia nullo modo capiantur )’, B22 (S68).

51 B1280 (S787).




73

written in the mid-twelfth century supplies the necessary context for the charters.

According to Hugh, Wulfhere founded the house along with his two brothers, Peada

and Æthelred, also kings of the Mercians, and with the help of their sisters Cyneburh

and Cyneswith, and King Oswiu. The connection of Peterborough to St Peter andthus to Rome is emphasized, and the privileges of the house are explained through

the Roman connection.52 The re-foundation by Edgar is attributed to the influence

of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester who was instructed in a dream to re-found the

monastery.53 Edgar’s re-foundation charter is said to be based on a copy of the old

charter found hidden among the stones and is thus connected to the original

foundation. The re-granting is given the sanction of Archbishop Dunstan of

Canterbury and Archbishop Oswald of York, as powerful a pair of Anglo-Saxon

names as could be conjured, plus ‘omnibus episcopis et abbatibus et ducibus tocius

et optimatibus Anglie’.54 Having supplied this context, Hugh repeats Edgar’s charter

with one further improvement: he simply removes the clause ‘excepta modo rata

expedicione, et pontis arcisve restauratione’, thus making the royal privilegesabsolute.55

A third example is more famous: in the late eleventh century, Hemming, a monk

of Worcester, compiled a cartulary for the Cathedral Priory. In it he included four

forged charters: a charter of Æthelred of Mercia dated 69256 and three charters of

Offa.57 These charters gave broad exemption from public obligations including army

service and unspecified works. The charters of Offa emphasize the perpetuity of the

gift in strong terms and specify that the grant was made with the consent of Offa’s

principes and bishops. The unspecific nature of these charters with regard to bridge-

and castle-work must have worried Hemming, for one of Offa’s charters appears

twice in the cartulary, and in one version a clause has been added after the unspecific

exemption: ‘Ita ut nec pontem nec arcem facere debeant’.58

Worcester had an in-house fabricator in Hemming; Glastonbury had to go

outside to employ William of Malmesbury as their professional hagiographer and

52 Hugh Candidus, The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, a Monk of Peterborough , ed. W. T. Mellows (London,1949), pp. 6–7. To reinforce this connection, Guerno had also forged a bull of seventh-centuryPope Agatho, B48 (72).

53 Hugh Candidus, Chronicle , ed. Mellows, pp. 27–9.54 Hugh Candidus, Chronicle , ed. Mellows, p. 31.55 Hugh Candidus, Chronicle , ed. Mellows, p. 36. The fourteenth-century transcriber and continuator

of Hugh’s chronicle, Walter of Whittlesley, restored the clause, ibid., pp. xix, 36n.56

‘libertatem totius rei puplicæ hoc est in vectigalibus in expeditionibus in operibus et in omnibusrebus’; B77 (S75). Eric John argues that the charter appears to be authentic in all matters except forthe immunity clause, and that since that is not a later formula, the charter and the immunity clauseis genuine, and from this we may conclude that ecclesiastical lands enjoyed immunity from fyrd service before the late eighth century; while his arguments for an authentic basis hold water, it ismore likely that this clause is an interpolation: if the Church enjoyed blanket immunity fromexpeditio in the eighth century (and the granting of a single immunity would seem to prove theopposite), no other charter of this period discusses the duty at all; Eric John, Land Tenure in Early

England: A Discussion of Some Problems (Leicester, 1960), pp. 74–6.57 B235 (S118), B240 (S121), B239 (S120); B235 is also copied into the first (and earlier) half of the

cartulary in a hand contemporary to Hemming’s; N. R. Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary: a descriptionof the two Worcester cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. XIII’ in Studies in Medieval History presented toFrederick Maurice Powicke , ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948), pp.49–75 at p. 54

58 B240n (S121, MS 1).




74

legend-spinner. Both in his history of the house and in his Gesta regum , Williamincluded extensive privileges for the house, which he drew from the cartulary that themonks had recently compiled as part of a campaign to reassert their claims to lands

and privileges.

59

These charters are, by and large, like all the charters discussed in thischapter, more concerned with graver problems of the house than the necessity toperform bridge-work, yet that immunity is included too. In each case, the charter ispreceded by comments about the particular king’s virtue and connection toGlastonbury. At the heart of William’s work are the privileges of Ine and Edgar.Both kings are lauded, in the history of the abbey as well as the Gesta regum , for theirpiety. Ine’s privilege granted that the abbey be ‘quit of all royal exactions and works

which are usually required, including army service and the building of bridge andfort’.60 Edgar’s charter states by way of preamble that ‘it seems fitting that the churchof the most blessed mother of God and eternal Virgin Mary at Glastonbury, as itlong ago attained the highest dignity in my kingdom, should be honoured by us with

a special and singular liberty and privilege’. The charter goes on to include theprovision that the abbey be ‘free from all payment of fiscal burdens ( tributo fiscalium

negociorum )’ so that its lands should be held ‘as free and quit as I hold [my lands] in allmy realm’.61 This promise of immunity equivalent to that of the kings also appears inthe spurious charters of Edmund62 and Cnut.63

Meanwhile, at Westminster Osbert de Clare was performing a similar task. Heforged a series of exemptions for Westminster,64 both from King Edgar and fromEdward the Confessor, whom Osbert was simultaneously transforming into asuitable saint for the abbey.65 The message of the various forged charters was thatthe abbey was the object of exceptional royal privilege, selected to be the specialroyal abbey by Edgar and raised still higher in its re-foundation by Edward theConfessor, who favoured the abbey with his presence and with miracles during hislifetime,66 and chose it as the resting place of his body after his death.67 Thisconnection of monastery to royalty may have been inspired by St Denis, the charters

59 William of Malmesbury, The Early History of Glastonbury: An Edition, Translation and Study of William of Malmesbury’s De antiquitate Glastonie ecclesie, ed. John Scott (Woodbridge, 1981), introduction, p.6.

60 B142 (S250); William of Malmesbury, Early History , ed. Scott, pp. 98–102 at p. 100; see also idem ,Gesta regum Anglorum , ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 817.

61

B1277 (S783); William of Malmesbury, Early History , ed. Scott, pp. 122–6 at pp. 122–4; idem , Gestaregum , ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 244–6.62 B794 (S499); William of Malmesbury, Early History , ed. Scott, pp. 116–18 at p. 116; idem , Gesta

regum , ed. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 230.63 K747 (S966); William of Malmesbury, Early History , ed. Scott, p. 132; idem , Gesta regum , ed. Mynors,

Thomson and Winterbottom, I, 330–32.64 Pierre Chaplais, ‘The Original Charters of Herbert and Gervase, abbots of Westminster (1121–

1157)’ in A Medieval Miscellany for Doris Mary Stenton , ed. Patricia M. Barnes and C. F. Slade,Publications of the Pipe Roll Society, new series 36 (London, 1962 for 1960), pp. 89–110 at 92–4.

65 Osbert de Clare, ‘La vie de S. Édouard le confesseur’, ed. Marc Bloch, Analecta Bollandiana 41(1923) (BHL 2422), 5–131.

66 See, for example, Edward’s dream about the Seven Sleepers which is recorded as having takenplace at Westminster; Osbert de Clare, ‘La vie de S. Édouard’, ed. Bloch, p. 98.

67 For miracles soon after his death, see Osbert de Clare, ‘La vie de S. Édouard’, ed. Bloch, pp. 113-

114.




75

of which were the model for the forgeries directly or indirectly.68 The charter of

Edgar69 quotes a letter from the pope, refers back to the gifts of his predecessors and

calls Westminster ‘the royal seat and place of consecration of kings of old’. Having

established this context, it states ‘for mercy’s sake we concede by our grant to thisholy place whatever from our fisc can be given: we concede all things and we

concede freedom from all things, under a whole and most secure immunity; and this

we confirm forever’. This grant includes freedom from all secular dues, which

includes freedom from the common burdens amongst a long list. The three charters

of Edward the Confessor follow a similar pattern. The First and Second Charters70

are relatively restrained by Osbert’s standards, seemingly more concerned with

ecclesiastical liberties. The Third Charter71 is extravagant: it has the pope call

Westminster ‘the royal seat of old’ and ‘place of royal constitution and consecration’,

refers to the ‘royal excellence of that church’ and states that the king gives the abbey

‘as full a liberty as earthly power can give’. This liberty once again includes immunity

from bridge-work in the long inventory of secular liberties.One final example should be included because it is anomalous in an instructive

manner. Shrewsbury Abbey was founded after the Conquest by Roger of

Montgomery, first earl of Shrewsbury. It did not have a direct connection to the king

until it came under Henry I’s supervision following the forfeiture of the Montgomery

lands after the revolt of Roger’s eldest son, Robert of Bellême, in 1102.72 The house’s

earliest charters are preserved in the house’s late-thirteenth-century cartulary. A

comparison of these charters makes it possible to read through layers of tampering

to see the restrictions imposed upon the abbey by its more distant connection to

royalty. The supposed charter of liberties granted by Earl Hugh, younger son of

Roger of Montgomery, grants the abbey extensive specified liberties, including

freedom ‘from all work of castles and fish ponds and bridges and roads and all

secular works ( ab omni operatione castellorum et vivariorum et pontium et viarum et omnium

operum secularium )’.73 Conversely, a confirmation charter of Henry I, which recites the

story of the foundation of the abbey at length, quotes the charter extensively, but

does not include this long catalogue of privileges. It states instead that Hugh granted

the abbey freedom ‘from every custom of this land which I can forgive’. 74 This clause

must have been overlooked by the compiler of the cartulary because it stands in stark

contrast to Stephen’s confirmation of Henry’s charter, which includes an immunity

68 Bernhard W. Scholz, ‘Two Forged Charters from the Abbey of Westminster and their relationship

with St Denis’, English Historical Review 76 (1961), 466–73, esp. 472–3; Chaplais contends that thesimilarity between the charters is not strong enough to demonstrate direct copying and, in thecontext of attributing the forgeries to Osbert de Clare, suggests that ‘a formulary would haveserved [the forger’s] purpose equally well’; Chaplais, ‘Original Charters’, p. 92.

69 B1264 (S774); it is instructive to compare this forgery with the complementary forged charter ofDunstan, granting the abbey ecclesiastical liberties, which were designed for the abbey’s fight withthe bishops of London; as might be expected, the preamble of Dunstan’s charter emphasizes theabbey’s connection to St Peter, not its royal status, and the liberties granted are of an entirelyreligious nature; B1050 (S1293).

70 First Charter: K824 (S1043); Second Charter: K779 (S1101); the Second Charter does not mentionbridge-work explicitly.

71 K825 (S1041).72 The Cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey , ed. Una Rees (Aberystwyth, 1975), I, x–xii.73 Cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey , ed. Rees, I, 9.

74 Cartulary of Shrewsbury Abbey , ed. Rees, I, 34.




76

from bridge-work. The sequence of events here can be reconstructed in a number of

ways, but it would seem that, between the time that Henry I granted his confirmation

of Hugh’s charter and the inclusion of that charter in the cartulary, the charter was

doctored. The clause in Henry’s confirmation probably represents the original formof Hugh’s charter. It is likely that when Stephen came to confirm his uncle’s charter

in 1138, he was presented with a version of that confirmation with an interpolated

immunity from bridge-work, and it was Stephen’s confirmation that subsequently

provided the basis for the highly altered version of Hugh’s charter which appears in

the cartulary. In any case, the phrase ‘from every custom of this land which I can

forgive’ suggests that the earl understood the right to grant exemption from bridge-

work to be exclusively the king’s.75

Other examples could be listed, including all the monastic houses usually suspect

where forgery is concerned: Evesham included a forged bridge-work exemption in its

twelfth-century cartulary,76 the Pseudo-Ingulf claimed exemptions for Crowland,77

and Ramsey Abbey could produce charters of immunity from Edgar and Edward theConfessor78 also forged by Osbert de Clare, who wrote a charter of Edward for

Coventry Abbey as well.79 The essential pattern to be drawn from all these examples

is straightforward.80 In the twelfth century, the great monasteries of England felt able

to claim exemption from bridge-work, among a great list of other privileges,

confident in the knowledge that by the contemporary understanding of the law, the

king was himself exempt from the common burdens and thus could grant such

immunity to his friends as a special mark of favour. This was in marked contrast to

the law in the tenth century, when the king himself was supposed not to be immune

from the common burdens.

75 It is interesting to note, however, another twelfth-century forgery in this context: the Eveshamcartulary contains a charter which includes the unique stipulation that the common burdens wereowed solely to the king and to no one else; this would seem to suggest that in the twelfth century,someone else was demanding them; K662 (S873).

76 B124 (S79).77 B135 (S82); the date of this charter must, of course, be extremely suspect given the nature of the

chronicle, but a twelfth-century date is most plausible; W. H. Stevenson, ‘An Old English Charterof William the Conqueror in favour of St Martin’s-le-Grand, London, A.D. 1068’, English HistoricalReview 11 (1896), 731–44 at 733n; cp. Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History , ed. Marjorie Chibnall, II(Oxford, 1968), 338. See also Pseudo-Ingulf’s spurious confirmation from Offa, B268 (S135).

78 B1310 (S798), K809 (S1030).79 K916 (S1000); Osbert also forged a charter of Edward for St Peter’s of Ghent for its lands in

England, K771 (S1002); Chaplais, ‘Original Charters’, p. 92.80 That said, an intriguing counter-example should be noted. In the eleventh-century cartulary of

Christ Church, Canterbury, all the charters were doctored at the time of compilation to include astandard immunity clause with the three common burdens excluded from the immunity clause. Inthis case, bridge-work obligations were made explicit in a consistent formula, so as to remove anyquestion as to the house’s rightful claim which might arise otherwise from the apparent irregularityin the charters; Robin Fleming, ‘Christ Church Canterbury’s Anglo-Norman Cartulary’ in Anglo-

Norman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings o f the Borchard Conference on Anglo-

Norman History, 1995 , ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 83–155.




77

The Coronation Charter of Henry I

The great monasteries were not alone in seeking to escape onerous dues. The

Norman kings had to buy the support of their followers; this situation created theopportunity for laymen to bargain for exemptions too. This situation was most

apparent in the early years of Henry I’s reign, when he was struggling to secure his

throne against the challenge of his older brother.

In his Coronation Charter, designed to buy the loyalty of his barons,81 Henry I

granted that ‘To knights who hold their lands by military service, I concede by my

own gift that the lands of their demesne ploughs be quit of all gelds and from all

work ( quietas ab omnibus geldis et ab omni opere ), so that thus relieved from such a great

hardship, they provide themselves well with horses and arms, so that they are

equipped and prepared to serve me and to defend my realm.’82 This promise does

not appear to have been an empty one, but a very precise grant made in response to

a real demand to meet a genuine threat, presumably the anticipated invasion byHenry’s brother Robert. Moreover, as Warren Hollister points out, it is only in this

clause that Henry breaks new ground; most of the charter is comprised of traditional

promises to restore old laws and rights.83 Granting an exemption from the common

burdens, on the other hand, runs contrary to the notional ‘Law of King Edward’

promised elsewhere in the charter.84

As Judith Green’s work on the collection of gelds and Hollister’s observation of

the fate of widows later in the reign demonstrate, however, the rights awarded in the

Coronation Charter were not necessarily permanent: exemptions had to be won and

paid for over and over again.85 Nevertheless, the result was to transform an

inescapable public duty into a mechanism of personal patronage. The insistence on

such duties became harder and harder to justify.86 And, what is perhaps more

important, the Coronation Charter soon became seen as a general charter of liberties

that should be re-issued by each subsequent king at their coronation: Stephen

expanded upon it, and Henry II’s whole ideology of kingship was supposedly based

81 ‘Henry’s charter was the work of a transitory crisis; it was almost an election address in which he was concerned to buy support by denouncing the less popular actions of his predecessors … oncehe was past the point of crisis Henry I conveniently forgot it’, J. C. Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn(Cambridge, 1992), pp. 37–8. Warren Hollister, characteristically, is inclined to see Henry’s charterin a more positive light, accepting that it was intended to ‘strengthen his own precarious hold onthe throne’, but generally focusing on what Hollister views as ‘wrongful policies of Rufus’ reign’; C.

Warren Hollister, Henry I (New Haven, 2001), p. 109. See also Judith A. Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge, 1986), p. 72.82 CHncor. 11; Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 521–3 ( Regesta , II, no. 488).83 Hollister, Henry I , p. 111. Hollister does not comment on this one innovation.84 CHncor. 13.85 J. A. Green, ‘The Last Century of Danegeld’, English Historical Review 96 (1981), 241–58 at 245–51;

idem , Government of England , pp. 72–3, 85; Hollister, Henry I , pp. 111–12. Hollister again apologisesfor Henry: ‘Over a generation, promises tend to fade from memory’, p. 112; yet contemporariesseem to have remembered Henry’s promises better than Henry did, if John of Worcester is in any

way representative: see Alan Cooper, ‘“The Feet of Those that Bark sha ll be Cut Off”: TimorousHistorians and the Personality of Henry I’, Anglo-Norman Studies 23 (2000), 47–67 at 57–8. ForHenry’s methods of rulership in general, see R. W. Southern, ‘King Henry I’ in Medieval Humanismand Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), pp. 206–33, and Green, Government of England , chapter 1.

86 Green, ‘The Last Century of Danegeld’, p. 258; or idem , Government of England , p. 74: ‘exemptions

[from Danegeld] were very much a matter of royal favour’.




78

on the putative example of his grandfather’s good governance.87 Finally, the charter

became one of the inspirations for Magna Carta, which included among its freedoms,

as we shall see, rules about the obligations to build bridges.88

Law Codes

A third set of sources allows us to see the undermining of the idea of bridge-work as

an inescapable and communal due, namely the numerous legal compilations of the

twelfth century. Given the confused state of English law in this period and the

increasing importance of the written word, these manuscripts represent more than

just an innocent recording of past law. Indeed, as regards the particular subject of the

status of bridge-work, there emerges a consistent pattern of the diluting of the

provisions concerning its enforcement.89

The various clauses of Anglo-Saxon law codes that refer to bridge-work werealtered in the early twelfth-century redactions. The clause of II Cnut that specifies

that burhbot , brigbot , scipfor ! unga and fyrdunga are to be performed for the common

good whenever the need arises90 appears faithfully translated and glossed in the

Quadripartitus, which was compiled by someone close to the royal court.91 On the

other hand, the clause is omitted altogether in the Instituta Cnuti and, in the Consiliatio

Cnuti , the bridge-work and the supplying of the army are omitted leaving only the

repair of town walls and the supplying of ships.92 The clause mandating the fines to

be paid for failing to perform the common duties93 is also altered. Again, the clause

appears properly translated and helpfully glossed in the Quadripartitus. Where,

however, the original had specified a fine of one hundred and twenty shillings for the

offence under English law, the Instituta Cnuti suggest forty and, in one manuscript of

c. 1175,94 ten.95 Moreover, in one manuscript written around 1160,96 the phrase ‘vel

pontis’ is omitted, so that only neglect of borough-work and army service are to be

punished.97 Indeed, while the Instituta repeat the provision that the accused may clear

himself by the oath of fourteen men of which he may nominate eleven, it makes

exculpation ever so slightly easier by adding that the accuser himself makes the

twelfth.98 The Consiliatio Cnuti includes this clause faithfully,99 except in one

87 Hollister, Henry I , p. 109. Henry I himself re-issued the coronation charter in 1101 ( Regesta , II, 531).88 See below, pp. 81–3.89

For a similar weakening of the Anglo-Saxon law of the highway in twelfth-century legal compi-lations, see Alan Cooper, ‘The King’s Four Highways: Legal Fiction meets Fictional Law’, Journal of Medieval History 26 (2000), 351–70; for the suggestion that the first half of the twelfth century wasmarked by the general collapse into confusion of various aspects of Anglo-Saxon governance, see

W. L. Warren, ‘The Myth of Norman Administrative Efficiency’, Transactions of the Royal HistoricalSociety , 5th series 34 (1984), 113–32.

90 II Cn. 10.91 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 315.92 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 315.93 II Cn. 65.94 The manuscript is Liebermann’s Di, Oxford Bodleian Digby 13; Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, xxiii.95 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, III, 353; cp. c. 33.2, p. 337 and n.96 Liebermann’s Cb, Paris BN Lat. 4771; Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, xx.97 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 353n.

98 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 353.




79

manuscript100 in which the clause together with those following is omitted

altogether.101 Finally, in the section of the Instituta Cnuti which does not follow the

real laws of Cnut, ‘emendatio fracti pontis in via regia’ is included in the section

concerning breaches of the king’s peace and thus under the customs pertaining to theking.102 If this was intended as a definition of bridge-work, it is a more restricted one

than earlier definitions.103

Anyone attempting to reconstruct the Anglo-Saxon law from these compilations

would think bridge-work a slighter burden that it had really been, which suggests that

the people writing the compilations, with earlier versions to hand, were deliberately

reducing the burden of bridge-work, or doing away with it altogether.

Conclusion

The three sets of evidence – monastic charters, the coronation charter and the legalcompilations – all point in the same direction: bridge-work, imposed and understood

in the tenth century as a communal and inescapable public duty, no longer existed in

that form by the middle of the twelfth century. In its place, there was a plethora of

personal and institutional obligations, exempted through favour, demanded through

malice.

It is therefore perhaps ironic that the twelfth century may have been the great age

of bridge building.104 The bridges of this period, however, were built without

provision for their future repair. When, consequently, the nature of our evidence

changes with the transformation of royal record keeping around 1200, we are

presented with a new picture: many bridges, but no clear and consistent law about

their repair. As a result, as bridges fell into disrepair, new solutions had to be found.

99 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 353.100 The Holkham manuscript; the section containing the Consiliatio Cnuti is dated by Liebermann as c.

1230; Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, xxviii.101 Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 353n.102 In. Cn. III, 50.1; Gesetze , ed. Liebermann, I, 614.103 The previous clause declares that the king collects the fine if his peace has been declared in the

county or the hundred and that peace is subsequently broken; this crime is called grithbrece . Thus,from the context it is possible that ‘emendatio fracti pontis in via regia’ is an error for‘emendationem fractae pacis in via regia’ (i.e., forestel ) by analogy to IV Atr. 4, II Cn. 12 and 15, andECf. 12.

104 See above, Chapter 1.



Chapter 4

Three Solutions

By the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bridges were a common feature of

the English landscape. They were vital to the life of the country. But they were

expensive to maintain and, since the general principle of universal land-based

obligations had disappeared, there was no one system of financing maintenance. Three solutions evolved.1

The first was the enforcement of obligations: this seems to have been going on

quietly, almost behind our sources. Where obligations do enter the record it is usually

the challenging of them. Obligations there were in the late Middle Ages, but they

were not common to all; instead, they were customary and haphazard, and because

they were haphazard they left important and dangerous gaps.

The second approach was the appeal to charity: on the most organised level, this

approach involved the creation of elaborate bridge trusts. These trusts owned

property, the rents of which went to the upkeep of the bridge in question. On a less

complicated level, there were the repeated efforts by kings and bishops to encourage

by example and by granting indulgences the simple giving of alms for bridge-work.

Such alms became part of the accepted canon of good works and were included in

many late medieval wills alongside bequests to chantries and hospitals. On the

simplest level, we see humble hermits performing heroic acts of self-abnegating

bridge-repair. When we hear of this, it is usually because the king grants them his

protection, but the initiative was theirs, and the work already begun.

The third approach to the problem of the repair of bridges was the granting of

pontage tolls. In essence, these grants were extensions of the charitable impulse

connected with roads and bridges; in granting pontage or pavage, the king made a

grant of the right to raise money from his roads. The most revealing feature of the

pontage grants and, indeed, of repair by charitable contribution is their association with many of the greatest bridges of the country. They reveal, in fact, the lack of

obligations and the insufficiency of charity to maintain them.

1 Some of this same ground has been covered independently by David Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society 400–1800 (Oxford, 2004), chapter 11. Harrison is inclined tosee in these solutions evidence that ‘most bridges were in an acceptable state of repair most of the

time’, p. 158.



Three Solutions

81

Obligations

Despite the widespread undermining of the Anglo-Saxon idea of bridge-work

described above,

2

vestiges of it did survive through to the thirteenth century andindeed went through something of a revival in the rare places like Rochester and

Chester where the obligations were part of written record. The operation of bridge-

work was, however, transformed: instead of communal obligations, there were

obligations worked out on an ad hoc basis, established and removed by precedent.

It is not an easy task to establish the legal theory behind the obligations. Given

the prominence and importance of bridge-work in the earlier law codes, the silence

of Glanvill and Bracton on the subject is deafening. Glanvill does not mention

bridges at all; Bracton mentions them only in allowing an essoin in the case of a

broken bridge3 and in using the deliberate breaking of a bridge as an example of a

nuisance done to a neighbour.4 Fleta, on the other hand, in listing the articles of the

eyre, declares that justices should inquire about ‘broken bridges and causeways andcommon transitibus : who ought to repair them?’5 Fleta does not give any background

to this question at all.

As Fleta’s reference to the articles of the eyre attests, however, bridge-work

survived from the earlier period. The most important reference is in Magna Carta:

clause twenty-three of the 1215 charter states that ‘no vill or man shall be distrained

to make bridges at river banks, unless they should do so from of old and by law ( ab

antiquo et de jure )’.6 This clause was included in response to the petition of the barons

that ‘no vill shall be amerced for making bridges on river banks, except where they

were accustomed to stand by law from of old ( de jure antiquitus )’.7 It appeared without

alteration in the re-issues of 1216, 1217 and 1225. However, in the 1217 and 1225

versions, it was accompanied by a clause stating that ‘no river bank shall in future be

put in defence ( defendatur ) except those that were in defence in the time of our

grandfather King Henry, between the same places and same bounds as they were

accustomed to be in his time’.8

McKechnie, in his commentary on the charter, demonstrates that the clause was

aimed principally at John’s abuse of his rights of falconry.9 The king, when setting

2 See Chapter 3.3 Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of England , ed. George E. Woodbine and Samuel E. Thorne, 4 vols

(Cambridge, MA, 1968–77), IV, 72–3.4

Bracton , ed. Woodbine and Thorne, III, 191.5 Fleta , ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, II, Publications of the Selden Society 72 (London,1955), 48.

6 Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, pp. 456–7; in the 1297 re-issue the word liber is interlined in theStatute Roll, so that the text reads liber homo for homo (but the word was subsequently omitted in aCharter of Inspeximus of the same year); The Statutes of the Realm , 11 vols (London, 1810–28), I,116 and note. The Anglo-Norman translation of the 1215 charter reads ‘[n]e vile ne home ne seitdestreiz a faire ponz a rivieres, fors cil qui ancienement e par dreit les devent faire’, J. C. Holt, ‘A

Vernacular-French Text of Magna Carta, 1215’ in Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London,1985), pp. 239–57 at p. 252.

7 Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, p. 434.8 Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, p. 505.9 William Sharp McKechnie, Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John , 2nd edn

(New York, 1958), pp. 299–304. McKechnie follows the interpretation in Stuart A. Moore and

Hubert Stuart Moore, The History and Law of Fisheries (London, 1903), pp. 6–18; the Moores’




82

out with his courtiers, would send ahead to the sheriffs of the counties in questionand order them to put certain rivers ‘in defence’, that is, to exclude others fromtaking the water fowl that were the object of the hunt. The same writs would also

order the sheriff to have the people build bridges to facilitate the king’s hunt. Thecomplaint of the barons suggests that this hunting privilege was also being used by John as a means to raise revenue. Indeed, the subsequent use of the same privilegeby Henry III in numerous writs between 1234 and 1247, ordering the putting ofnumerous rivers in defence and the building of bridges along them, suggests thesame abuse. These include writs of 1234 with regard to all the bridges in Essex,Hertfordshire, Somerset and Dorset, and on the rivers Kennet (Berkshire), Test,Itchen and Avon (all Hampshire); similarly, in September 1235, writs were sent to thesheriffs of Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Berkshire,Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire,Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Nottinghamshire,

Derbyshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Northumberland,ordering the same.10 The general nature of these orders (which were repeated insubsequent writs until 124111 ) suggests that the orders were not connected to realhunting expeditions, but were merely a means of collecting fines for non-compliance.

After 1247, this abuse ceased.12 However, the most spectacular example of the kinggenuinely demanding the right comes from 1277, when an inquiry was held into thefailure of the men of Hertfordshire and Essex to provide adequate bridges forEdward I and his men in a falconry expedition along the River Lea. The writ, in thiscase, derives from after the hunt in question and expresses great personal outrage,13 suggesting that a real expedition was involved.

There is no evidence, however, that clause twenty-three was intended to be

limited solely to bridges erected for falconry, nor that the bridges would be, asMcKechnie puts it, ‘otherwise useless’.14 The Articles of the Barons make the king’sright to have bridges built conditional upon the bridges’ existence, rather than uponthe existence of the obligation,15 which suggests that the bridges were permanent,not temporary structures thrown up against the king’s coming. Moreover, given thedemands for the re-issue of Henry I’s Coronation Charter in the crisis of MagnaCarta,16 it is possible that clause twenty-three was intended to be the equivalent ofthe freedom from works apparently guaranteed by the earlier charter. Thisinterpretation is suggested most strongly by the so-called ‘unknown charter’.17 Thischarter, preserved only in French archives and not known to English scholars until

1893, takes the form of a charter of liberties of King John of which the first half is a

principal object is to demonstrate that the original idea behind clause twenty-three of Magna Carta was not related to fishing, but to falconry.

10 Moore and Moore, History and Law of Fisheries , p. 8.11 Moore and Moore, History and Law of Fisheries , p. 9.12 Moore and Moore, History and Law of Fisheries , p. 9.13 ‘The lord king and his men could scarcely make a crossing without danger, to the great shame of

the lord king’; PRO JUST 1/323, m. 38.14 McKechnie, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, p. 301.15 Cp. Articles of the Barons, c. 11 and Magna Carta, c. 23; Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, pp. 434, 456–

7.16 Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, pp. 222–8.

17 For discussion and text of this charter, see Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, pp. 418–28.



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confirmation of Henry I’s charter. In this version, the clause freeing demesne landsfrom work is repeated, but with an extra clause added which states that the grant wasmade because ‘as my generosity is more forthcoming to them, so they are faithful tome’.18 Aside from being a statement of Norman and Angevin principles far toohonest to be included in any genuine charter, this clause suggests that by 1215 HenryI’s grant of immunity to the barons was regarded as a permanent one.

Indeed, use of the clause in Magna Carta in subsequent years was not limited tothe narrow understanding suggested by McKechnie.19 When, for example, in 1318the abbot of St Augustine’s, Canterbury was required to build a bridge at Sturryacross a stream widened by his mill, he protested that such a requirement wascontrary to Magna Carta.20 Regardless of this appeal, he was forced to take on theobligation to repair the bridge, because it was his mill that had made the bridgenecessary in the first place.

This case is one illustration of the manner in which bridge-work was established byprecedent and by litigation from the thirteenth century on. It may thus serve to leadus into a discussion of the practical functioning of bridge-building obligations in late-medieval England. The background to the kind of litigation seen in the Sturry casemay be found in the compilation of English law known as Britton (c. 1290). Brittonsuggests that the assumption of the royal courts was that there was someoneresponsible for the repair of all roads and bridges until it was discovered otherwise.In its description of the proceedings of a general eyre it states

let inquiry be made of bridges and causeways and common roads whichare broken or otherwise poorly maintained, and of those who are

supposed to repair or amend them. Those that are named shall beattached to come by personal distresses. And if it is found on theirappearance in court, that any of them hold tenements of us,21 for [theservice of] repairing the said roads, let the tenements be taken into ourhand, and the sheriff be charged to answer to us for the revenues and torepair the damages. And in the case that no tenement is held from us forthe performance of such services, we wish that those people who arebound to such things and have not done what they should have done, bein our mercy. And let the sheriff be commanded to have them distrainedby their beasts and chattels, and to retain the distresses until they haverepaired the defects every time that it is necessary.22

18 Holt, Magna Carta , 2nd edn, p. 426 (c. 11).19 For the understanding and use of Magna Carta in general, see J. R. Maddicott, ‘Magna Carta and

the Local Community, 1215–1259’, Past and Present , no. 102 (February 1984), 25–65.20 PRO KB 27/257, m. 98; see above, Chapter 1; the abbot knew the language of the 1297 re-issue

since he referred to no ‘liber homo’: the enrolled 1297 re-issue of Magna Carta added the word‘liber’ to the clause, so that it read ‘no free man or vill’; Statutes of the Realm , I, 116.

21 Britton is written in the king’s first person.22 Britton , ed. Francis Morgan Nichols (Oxford, 1865), I, 78–9. An echo of Anglo-Saxon law is found

in one of the manuscripts of Britton (Nichols’ F, a late-fourteenth-century manuscript), which

reads chasteaus (castles) for chauceez (causeways).




84

The two-stage process, first seeking those holding particular tenements, and then

turning to others bound to perform the repairs, suggests the two-way distinction in

Magna Carta, that ‘no man or vill’ shall be required to repair bridges without

precedent.Nevertheless, moving from the theory of the law books to the practical working

reality of obligations, things – unsurprisingly – become messier. As Britton and Fleta

both describe, itinerant justices and sheriffs performing their tourn would ask about

roads and bridges that were in a bad state and attempt to discover who was

responsible, so cases about bridges appear in court rolls.23 These cases are necessarily

connected to moments of dispute, which may be misleading in trying to understand

the everyday functioning of obligations. Liability for the repair of small bridges does

appear briefly, however, in manorial surveys and shrieval records. Unfortunately,

such records only survive in a fragmentary or intermittent fashion.24 Nevertheless,

between these various records, a picture can be constructed. As Britton would have

us believe, both the justices and the sheriffs assumed that the nearest villages andlandholders were responsible. Beyond that assumption, however, the first impression

is of enormous complexity and of a tremendous knowledge on the part of sheriffs

and people alike of long-standing and detailed obligations. This impression is

misleading, though: people may have claimed to know and understand their

obligations, but there were gaps and contradictions. Moreover, the obligations were

not static, but were being created and destroyed all the time.

The centre of the system was the sheriff, who routinely asked about bridges on

his tourn.25 The liability of a village – or, to use the more accurate legal terminology,

a township or vill ( villata ) – for a bridge was organised through the frankpledge

system, and view of frankpledge occurred as part of the sheriff’s tourn.26 There are

cases in which a villata is judged liable, and the tithingman ( decennarius ) is summoned

23 William Alfred Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), p. 219; Helen Cam,‘The Community of the Vill’ in Law-Finders and Law-Makers in Medieval England: Collected Studies inLegal and Constitutional History (London, 1962), pp. 71–84 at p. 72. For example, in 1201, the justicesamerced Thomas le Viel for not making a bridge as he had been ordered to on a previousoccasion; Pleas before the King or his Justices, 1198–1202 , ed. Doris Mary Stenton, II, Publications ofthe Selden Society 68 (London, 1952), 61. See also The Mirror of Justices , ed. William Joseph

Whittaker, Publications of the Selden Society 7 (London, 1895), p. 40.24 And what are we to make of a unique reference in one of the earliest Curia Regis rolls of a ‘plea of

bridges and causeways ( placitum poncium et calcearum )’? It might seem to hint at an established

procedure for handling cases about bridges. Unfortunately, the roll gives us no hint of what itmight mean (except that it appears to be connected to the settlement of a dispute over land), butpresumably the plea was in some way connected to the landholders’ obligation to repair bridgesand causeways; Curia Regis Rolls of the reigns of Richard I and John , I, Richard I–2 John (London, 1922),93; the case, which occurred in 1199, seem to be connected to a settlement between Earl RogerBigod and his half-brother Hugh over land, the settlement of which is recorded right before thereference to this plea. The case is between Earl Roger and his stepmother Countess Gundreda. SeeC. T. Flower, Introduction to the Curia Regis Rolls, 1199–1230 A. D., Publications of the SeldenSociety 62 (London, 1944), p. 331: this case is the only one of its kind that Flower cites (and hedoes not explain it).

25 Helen M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls: An Outline of Local Government in Medieval England (London 1930), 120; for examples of cases arising out of the sheriff’s tourn, see Public Works in

Mediaeval Law , ed. C. T. Flower, I, Publications of the Selden Society 32 (London, 1915), 191–4,219–27, 230–33, II, Publications of the Selden Society 40 (London, 1923), 200–206.

26 See William Alfred Morris, The Frankpledge System (London, 1910), esp. pp. 126–30.



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along with the people.27 Or, sometimes, the record simply says that the tithing was

responsible. The bridge at Marshwood (Dorset) was broken ‘by default of the

tithing-men and the whole tithing’ of the village.28 In Kent, the borrows (the Kentish

equivalent of tithings) and their borsholders (the equivalent of tithingmen) wereaccused of not fulfilling their obligation to repair Aylesford Bridge, but they

challenged the accusation and won.29 In one case, it is possible to see the question of

repair being raised at a view of frankpledge: ‘by the borrowheads ( per capitales plegios )

and all the tithingmen ( decannarios )’ it was stated in the court of the prior of Christ

Church, Canterbury, that a bridge at Walworth (Surrey) should be repaired by the

prior of Bermondsey.30

The answers to the questions asked by the sheriff in these sessions depended on

local knowledge. The details in the specifics given about a particular bridge are often

impressive. The bridge at Stoke Ferry (Norfolk), for example, was supposed to be

16ft wide, but had been narrowed by 7ft; at the same time, it had been lowered by

1!ft.31 Such a diminishment of the space under the bridge would obviously be anuisance to boatmen, so it was probably the cause of the dispute about the bridge. In

another case, jurors declared that the bridge at Sleaford (Hampshire) could be

repaired for 26s 8d.32 Similarly, jurors asserted that not even £1500 would be

sufficient to repair the bridge of Newcastle upon Tyne, because of problems with the

foundations and the superstructure and the consequent need for ‘stone, lime, sand,

iron, lead, pitch, timber for centring, wages of workmen, boats and other transport,

etc.’.33 Such local knowledge may be explained in some cases by the inquisition

having taken place at the site of the bridge in question,34 not to mention the

testimony of those who lived and worked around the bridge.

The extent of the jurors’ knowledge is what probably lies behind the very

simplest cases in which a plaintiff is accused of not having repaired a bridge, quietly

accepts the obligation and is amerced. These occur especially when the duty seemed

obvious to all involved. For example, a bridge at Badgeworth (Gloucestershire) was

broken, and the people of the village accepted responsibility without cavilling.35

Small obligations might, indeed, be accepted without comment. In one such case,

one Lawrence Dru accepts that he was responsible for the repair of a bridge near

Reading. This case is exceptional in that he claimed to have repaired the bridge

satisfactorily between the time of the presentment and the verdict, and was thus

amerced for the original negligence. It is possible that he was willing to accept the

fine because he was simultaneously denying responsibility for the adjoining road.36

27 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 178–9.28 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , IV (London, 1957),

172.29 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 211–13.30 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 151–62.31 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , I (London, 1916), 435.32 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , III (London, 1937),

214.33 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 271–2.34 e.g., Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 391, 393–4.35 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 113–14. Similarly, the examples of Tewkesbury and Saul (both

Gloucestershire); ibid., I, 121–5.

36 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 17–19. See also ibid ., I, 65–6.




86

When working out these liabilities, the simplest assumption made by sheriffs and

jurors alike was that if a lord held land at both ends of a bridge he was liable for it.

For instance, the bridge at Feering (Essex) was assumed to be the responsibility of

the abbot of Westminster, because he and his predecessors were ‘lords of the soil oneach side of the aforesaid bridge ( domini soli ex utraque parte pontis predicti )’.37 The same

assumption lies behind the attempt of the jurors of Lincolnshire to assign

responsibility for the bridge at Brigg to the nearest landholders when the bridge had

been declared to be the product of charity.38 And, again, when a court tried to assess

if the bishop of London should be held responsible for a bridge near Guildford, the

jurors were asked if he held land adjoining the bridge on both sides.39 One

anomalous case suggests, however, that such assumptions were not necessarily

universally shared. A muddle over the repair of the bridge over the River Wissey at

Stoke Ferry in Norfolk seems to have been caused by one of the king’s justices in

eyre ordering that two hundreds repair the bridge ‘as is usual’.40 Not only does he –

or the sheriff – seem to have chosen the wrong hundreds,41 but he does not seem tohave checked whether any obligations existed. What is most surprising, however, is

the idea that the hundreds should be responsible, rather than local lords or villages.

This is speculation, but it is possible that the justice, thinking on a national level,

mistook the significance of the bridge and assigned an inappropriate solution.

Nevertheless, the case does suggest that there were different possible ways in which

obligations were expected to operate.

In other cases, responsibility was attached to particular lands; for example,

Robert Bacoun accepted that he should repair a bridge near Buttsbury (Essex),

because of four acres of meadow that he held nearby.42 A presentment of 1375

asserted that the abbey of Barlings (Lincolnshire) was liable to repair a bridge

because of a particular field and a windmill received as a gift.43

In fact, however, responsibility for the repair of many, if not most, bridges was

split between several parties. Such division could make enforcement difficult. For

example, the earl of Suffolk acquiesced in the repair of half of Widford Bridge

(Essex), but claimed that the people of Widford were responsible for the other half.

He claimed, moreover, that his half was in good condition.44 Presumably, therefore,

the bridge – or half of it – remained useless while the case dragged through the

courts. And, after all, half a bridge is no bridge at all.45

37 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 67–72.38

Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 288–90. It might be expected that these putative obligations werechallenged, as obligations were in similar circumstances when a jury tried to assign novelobligations, although it is possible that in the case at Brigg the fact that there had been a footbridgeon the site before the charitable act allowed the jury to assign responsibility: cp. ibid., I, 72–4.

39 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 200–206.40 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 435.41 The sheriff had been distraining upon Launditch Hundred which is nowhere near the bridge; the

inquiry into the dispute stated that the king’s justice had told him to distrain upon Grimeshoe, which is the neighbouring hundred to Clackclose, where Stoke Ferry is situated; Calendar ofInquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 435.

42 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 75–6.43 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 265–7.44 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 74–5.45 See also the grant of a pontage toll for repair of half the bridge of Boston: Patent Rolls, Edward

III, i, 248.



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More straightforward situations permit some sense of the procedure for handling

the case of a broken bridge. In a rare complete record of a case, that is, one that

includes the final judgment, a presentment by a jury accused William Burser of

failure to repair a bridge near Hatfield Broadoak (Essex). He came before the king at Westminster and asserted that he was not liable. A new jury was collected, and it

disagreed, claiming that the lords of a manor he held had always been responsible for

the said bridge. William was amerced 20s.46 This case might be held up to show that

the system could work.

Indeed, once the obligations had been determined, the sheriff could proceed to

act against those who had failed to live up to their duties. The best example occurs in

connection to one of the ‘county bridges’: the sheer complexity of the obligations

allow the procedure to be seen better. In 1372, the sheriff of Huntingdonshire was

ordered to take steps to compel payment for Huntingdon Bridge. In running through

the list of townships and individuals who had not paid up, the sheriff first set aside

those townships in the liberty of Ramsey Abbey and left the matter to the bailiff ofthe liberty. There follows in the record a list of sixteen places that had been

distrained upon for payment. These settlements were spread across three of

Huntingdonshire’s four hundreds. The sheriff had seized goods and was still

endeavouring to sell them to raise money. Then there is a list of twenty other

townships, spread across the same three hundreds. For each of these, two individuals

are named, whom the sheriff had ‘warned’.47 Here we see the sheriff acting

deliberately. As befits the structure of the county-wide obligations, he thought by

hundred, working through the three hundreds that were still liable (presumably the

fourth had already paid its share). He had distrained upon townships where

appropriate and had warned other townships, probably through recognized

representatives. With a bridge of such importance and in a situation where the

obligations were well known, the process of insisting on payments seems to run

along a well established path. That said, it is also striking just how much of the

county was in default.

Nevertheless, the procedure was rarely so straightforward. There were a number

of difficulties and confusions that impeded the work of the sheriff. The first point of

confusion was the division between tenurial and territorial obligations. As noted

above, Britton and Magna Carta both suggest that the powers-that-be would first

look to see which town and which lord might be responsible for a bridge. In the case

of a bridge at Chigwell (Essex), the issue in dispute was whether the responsibility

fell upon all the people of the village or whether it merely fell on those people in the village who were the tenants of the manor of Wulhampston.48 In another case, to do

with a bridge at Wotton (Gloucestershire), the abbot of Gloucester was charged with

responsibility; he accepted some responsibility but only because the people of the

nearby village were responsible, and he held lands there.49 Likewise, when charged to

repair the bridge at Corse (Gloucestershire) with her neighbour, since the bridge lay

between their lands, Lady Despenser was able to claim successfully that she shared

46 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 88–90.47 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 313–14.48 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 83–6.

49 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 104–9.




88

the responsibility not just with her neighbour but with the whole village.50 In both

cases, the defendant claimed that obligations were those of someone holding land in

a jurisdiction that was communally responsible, not those of a lord holding particular

lands connected to a bridge. The same case also highlights the division of responsibility between a lord, who

might be responsible for the materials, and the tenants, who might be responsible for

the labour. Such a situation, which was quite common,51 could also cause confusion

for the sheriff. In 1355, a bridge between Acton and Notting Hill was broken. The

bishop of London was charged with its repair. The jury found that he was only

responsible for supplying materials – which he had done – and that the people of the

Acton and Fulham were responsible for actually repairing the bridge, so the bishop

was cleared. When the sheriff subsequently brought suit against the people of Acton

and Fulham, they were able to state perfectly honestly that the bridge was in good

repair, presumably because the delay caused by the erroneous charge against the

bishop had given them time to do the work. They were thus acquitted too. In short,no-one was found guilty of failing to repair the bridge, and, what is more, the whole

case took five years to settle.52

Another complication in the procedure arose from one of the standard defences

against the charge of neglecting bridge-work. In the case of the bridge between

Billericay and Chelmsford, which the abbot of Stratford admitted his house was

supposed to repair, the abbot claimed that the bridge was in perfectly good repair.

The jurors found that the bridge was in a good state, but had not been when the

presentment was made, so the abbot was amerced.53 It seems therefore that the

abbot had the bridge repaired upon hearing of the charges and tried to claim that

there had never been a problem; this ruse did not work.54 In a more straightforward

case, the abbot of Westminster, the bishop of London and one John Bowun were

charged for failing to repair their shares of three bridges near Chelmsford. They

accepted responsibility, but claimed the bridges were in good repair. The jurors

found that two of the three bridges were really broken, but the third was intact.55

This case again suggests the extent of the knowledge of the jurors, but it also raises

the possibility of a real difference of opinion about what constituted a broken bridge.

Indeed, there are other situations where such differences of opinion might have been

magnified. Sometimes, it was specified not that a bridge was broken but that it was


For other examples of such a division of responsibility, see Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 97–9, II,36–7, 142–6. See also ibid., II, xliii–xliv.52 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 29–31.53 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 57–8. See also ibid ., I, 60–62, 63–4.54 The people of Toppesfield (Essex) tried the same thing, but once their attorney had been brought

to court ‘by grand distress ( per magnam districcionem )’, they too were amerced; Public Works , ed.Flower, I, 83. See also the case of the bridge at Cobham (Surrey); when the earl of Hereford triedto escape a charge of failing to repair the bridge by saying it was in good condition, the jury made apoint of stating that the bridge had been repaired in the fifteen days before the judgment, and theearl was amerced; ibid., II, 185–6. In another case, the abbot of Gloucester insisted clearly that thebridge he was accused of neglecting was in good repair not just at the time of answering thecharge, but at the time of the presentment (as opposed to another bridge which he had repairedsince the presentment, for which he was amerced); ibid., I, 104–9.

55 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 66–9. Similarly, jurors finding a bridge to be in good repair against the

argument of the king’s lawyer, Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 110–12.



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dangerous in winter.56 Or, similarly, it might be asserted that it was dangerous in the

rain.57

The quality of the bridge could also be a point of contention with regard to

whether it should be suitable merely for pedestrians, for horses, or for carts. In 1337, Thomas de Cobham was accused of having removed timber from a bridge that he

was supposed to repair so that whereas it had once been suitable for carts, it was

now only suitable for foot traffic.58 And, at the simplest end of the scale, the prior of

Harmondsworth (Middlesex) was cleared of liability to repair a bridge for horses and

pedestrians, because the bridge had merely been a plank across a ditch. Furthermore,

at another place, even through the road in question was a regia via , the bridge was just

a ‘path made of planks ( chiminum factum per plankes )’, and again the prior was able to

claim successfully that his contribution had merely been an occasional charitable

contribution of materials for its repair.59 In another case at Eresford Bridge on the

borders of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, ‘a single wooden plank’ was not

considered a bridge at all.60 Question could even arise as to which bridge was at issue. In 1387, the people of

Elmstone Hardwick (Gloucestershire) seem to have tried to escape responsibility for

the upkeep of a bridge called ‘Loudelowesbrigge’ by pointing out that there was

another bridge nearby with the same name, which lay in another hundred and had,

besides, been built on a site where there had been a ford until only forty years

previous and had been built by alms. They further claimed that another village was

solely responsible for the first bridge. The frustration of the king’s lawyer at such

obfuscation almost breaks through the formal language of the record: the claims of

the village were denied in all points.61

Another nice point of interpretation occurred in connection with a river crossing

at Norton (Gloucestershire). According to the king’s lawyers, there were three

bridges called Stonbrigge, Nortonbrigge and Stendebrigge. The prior of St Oswald’s,

Gloucester, who was held responsible for them, disputed the basis of the claim,

saying that the three bridges were rightfully one long bridge, Nortonbrigge, and he

was not responsible for it. The jury agreed with his interpretation and found him

obliged for the repair only inasmuch as he held land in the village and thus was

responsible along with everyone else.62

Another difficuly for the sheriff might be identifying whom to charge with

responsibility. In Chigwell (Essex), a mill pond was overflowing and making a

causeway impassable; the sheriff charged a citizen of London who was supposedly

responsible for the pond and causeway. The citizen was able, however, to assert thathe was merely the bailiff and that ultimate responsibility lay with his lady, Alice

Perrers.63 Similarly, when a bridge near Aveley (Essex) was in disrepair, suit was

initially brought against someone who had held part of a manor during the minority

56 e.g., Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 101, 103, 147, 151.57 e.g., Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 61–3.58 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 195–7; see also ibid., I, 131–3.59 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 25–8.60 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 391.61 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 143–6.62 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 138–40; subsequently, however, the village denied responsibility too.





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of an heir, but who was able to bring letters proving that he no longer held any lands

there.64

A related grounds for dispute might be the status of a landholder. John de

Bronston was accused of liability for the bridge in Staverton (Gloucestershire) as lordof the manor. He, however, denied that he was lord of the manor and claimed that

he merely held lands in the village as part of another manor.65

These confusions might be compounded, because, since obligations attached to

certain lands, it seems that some landholders could acquire land without knowing of

the obligations. This seems to be what lies behind a case concerning a bridge near

Hatfield Broadoak (Essex); the prior of Hatfield denied responsibility for the bridge,

and it almost seems that the jury had to remind him that the duty was attached to

lands that had belonged to one Wysot atte Forde.66 Presumably the priory had

obtained the lands – perhaps by bequest – and had thereby received the obligations

too.

Another complication that could cause arguments was a situation in which abridge was on the border between jurisdictions. Such bridges could have split bridge-

work responsibilities attached to them, which could be difficult for the sheriffs to

oversee. For example, responsibility for Waldebrigge on the border of Essex and

Hertfordshire was split between the abbot of Bury St Edmunds and the countess of

Pembrokeshire. So, when the bridge was broken and the sheriff of Essex brought

suit against the abbot, the abbot was able to escape the charge altogether because his

half was on the Essex side.67

Beyond the efforts of the sheriff as a matter of routine, the king’s government

also sent out special commissioners to inquire as to the obligations for particular

troublesome bridges. These might be relatively simple matters, such as the bridges at

Sturry (Kent)68 or Bradley (Yorkshire).69 On a number of occasions, commissioners

were sent out to survey all the bridges and causeways on the king’s highway in

Nottinghamshire, such had been the complaints from travellers.70 More often,

however, they were connected with the same great bridges that were falling into

disrepair as a matter of course because of a lack of obligations or a failure of such.

The usual suspects – objects of repeated inquisitions – include the Trent Bridge at

Nottingham71 and Rochester Bridge.72

There was one other routine way in which bridge-building obligations were

overseen. From the late thirteenth century on, there were frequent and repeated

commissions de walliis et fossatis . Justices were sent into coastal districts to check on

dikes and drainage ditches, but they were also concerned with bridges in such areas. The first of these commissions was given to Henry de Bathonia in 1258 after

Holland in Lincolnshire was flooded. His mandate was to inquire as to who was

64 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 91–4.65 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 151–4.66 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 88–90.67 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 63–5.68 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 127, 312.69 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 601.70 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 311, 430–31, 502–3.71 e.g., Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 365.

72 e.g., Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 331.



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obliged to repair the ‘dikes, bridges and walls of the sea and marsh’.73 A similar butdifferent inquiry took place in 1279: a commission of oyer and terminer wasinstructed to inquire about the obstruction of the drains in Holland, which had

caused a flood, but also to inquire ‘concerning the destruction of the bridges of thoseparts by reason of a contention between John de Britania earl of Richmond andRobert de Greley as to the metes and bounds of the said marsh’.74 From the earlyfourteenth century, commissions de walliis et fossatis appear regularly on the dorse ofthe Patent Rolls. For example, in 1308, a commission of this kind was made for thecoast of Norfolk, and, in this case, it was explicitly concerned with ‘the banks,sewers, bridges, causeys and weirs along the sea-coasts and adjacent parts’.75

Such commissions would presumably produce long lists of obligations. Somelists of this kind exist for other cases not related to the coasts. They show thetremendous complexity of obligations in some places. In 1252, for example, thesheriff of Berkshire was ordered to make inquiry as to what the bridge-building

obligations of the abbot of Abingdon were. He found that the abbot was responsiblefor the upkeep of eighteen bridges. The responsibilities for most of these eighteen

were shared with various named individuals. Most complicated of all, the abbot andseven men were responsible for two bridges below Cumnor.76

A similar picture of complexity is found in the list of bridges that should be builtin the Lea Valley according the inquest that followed Edward I’s ill-fated huntingexpedition of 1277.77 The jurors of Hertfordshire and Essex found that there were107 small bridges that should have been in good repair before the king’s arrival. Theylist the obligations, those liable, land upon which the obligations fell and the lengthand width of the bridges. A couple of bridges were supposed to be 30ft long, but the

vast majority were 10ft or less in length; one was supposed to be 20ft wide, but most

were between 5 and 8ft. Those liable include the abbot of Waltham, who wasresponsible for many bridges, either because of lands he held himself or because ofland that others held from him. There does not seem to be any correlation betweenthe amount of land held and the obligation attached to it; in fact, it seems thatobligations applied to a particular parcel of land, rather than being meted out byproportion. For many of the bridges the responsibility is split into a duty to providematerial and a duty to do the work. The most complex obligation required nineteenpeople to build one bridge: in this case their holdings consisted of the right topasture anything from twenty-four to four animals.78 Finally, the jurors found thatthree men held their land for the service of riding round all the sites mentioned

before the king’s arrival to make sure the bridges were serviceable. It all sounds veryimpressive, except, of course, it didn’t work: the king was shamed in front of hisguests, and fines were handed out all round.79

There is another point to note about the complicated cases of Abingdon’sobligations and those in the Lea Valley. In neither case is there any indication of the

73 Patent Rolls, Henry III, iv, 660.74 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 348.75 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 86.76 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 50.77 See above, p. 82.78 The animals are all in even numbers, suggesting haulage teams.

79 PRO JUST 1/323, m. 38.




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origin of these obligations; they are simply stated to exist. Indeed, because of the

logic of the law of bridges, canonized in Magna Carta, the rhetoric surrounding late-

medieval bridge-work always suggested that new obligations could not be created. In

fact, however, there were methods of pleading that were used to establish andremove obligations.

Obligations could be created in a number of ways, the first of which was

nuisance. The most common kind of nuisance that created obligations was

watermills. They seem often to have created the need for a bridge and therefore the

obligation to build and repair one. The example of the mill of St Augustine’s,

Canterbury, at Sturry has been mentioned above.80 The crux of the matter was that

the creation of a mill-race had made a small stream into a fast dangerous one that

needed to be bridged. The knock-on effect of building a mill seems to have been

recognized, and the obligations arising from such impact accepted.81 A similar case is

found in one of Hugh Bigod’s rolls from 1258. The villages of Birling and Burham in

Kent complained that Roger de Leybourne had blocked their right of way by makinga stream. Roger, while not conceding that the villagers had a right of way except by

his gift, promised to restore it by building a bridge for horses and pedestrians. The

entry on the roll concludes by stating that the bridge will be maintained by Roger and

his heirs and that the sheriff is ordered to distrain upon Roger to see it done.82 By

contrast, in one case, the destruction of a watermill rendered a previously useable

ford dangerous, so, in a similar fashion, the nuisance created an obligation.83

Another way in which nuisance could create obligation was if a bridge was seen

to have been misused. Misuse could take various forms. One example of a complaint

about heavy traffic comes from a case of 1259, when the county of Huntingdonshire

complained that the burgesses of Huntingdon were hauling heavy loads of corn and

manure across the bridge to and from their fields at Godmanchester. The county

objected to having to pay for the repair of such a busy and important bridge when

the townspeople, who were using – or misusing – it most were exempt from the

pontage toll taken on the bridge and from the land-based obligations. The court

recognized the injustice and ordered the burgesses to pay the toll.84 Another form of

misuse might be to do with the type of traffic. In 1367, the abbot of Kirkstead was

required to repair some bridges in Lincolnshire because his cattle had damaged them

80

See above, pp. 20–21.81 Such a situation is probably suggested by the connection asserted between tenure of a watermilland liability for two bridges in Winchester; Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 183–4; for another case(Deptford, Kent) of bridge-work obligations because of tenure of a mill, see ibid., I, 209–10. Seealso another case of a watermill making a bridge necessary, but the charge of obligation resisted (inthis case by the bishop of London), ibid., II, 199–203. Finally, Chesford Bridge (Warwickshire) wasmade dangerous by the miller of an adjoining mill blocking the stream so that it backed up aninundated the bridge; ibid., II, 219–22. For millers supervising the repair of bridges, see JohnLangdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy: England 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004), p. 157.

82 The 1258–9 Special Eyre of Surrey and Kent , ed. Andrew H. Hershey, Surrey Record Society 38(Woking, 2004), p. 188.

83 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 195–7.84 Placitorum in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio, temporibus Regum Ricardi I, Henrici

III, Edwardi I, Edwardi II (London, 1811), p. 148. See also James Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and

Markets: Inland Trade in Medieval England, 1150–1350 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 200.



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in crossing. He replied, however, that his cattle had done no more damage than

anybody else’s cattle, and the jury believed him.85

The second way in which obligations could be created was by precedent. This is

the rationale for liability in the simplest judgments. For example, Henry Aucher wasdeclared responsible for a bridge in High Laver, ‘because all his ancestors and all

others who have held the manor of [High Laver] from time beyond memory have

been accustomed to repair it’,86 and the men of the tithing of Kingsley were found

responsible for the bridge at Sleaford (Hampshire), ‘and so have been so used to do

from time immemorial’.87 Of course, taken at face value, such cases do not show the

creation of obligations at all, rather their stability. In truth, evidence for obligations

being created in this manner is entirely negative: the anxiety to claim that a bridge

had been repaired, but not in such a way as to create a precedent, shows how one-off

acts could be regarded as creating an obligation for the future. Medieval people were

very cautious about having an action drawn into precedent.88 In some cases, villages

fought against the assertion by a jury that they were liable to repair a bridge, knowingthat if the liability was accepted once, it was accepted forever. For example, the

bridge at Biddenham (Bedfordshire) was the subject of a dispute in 1383. The

inquest found that four nearby villages were jointly ( coniunctim ) responsible for its

upkeep; one of the four, however challenged this verdict on the basis that it had

never been responsible for the bridge.89 The most common way of resisting a new

obligation, however, was to plead that no precedent existed, since the construction of

the bridge in question had been financed solely by alms. In 1346, the abbot of

Peterborough protested that, although his predecessor had built the bridge over the

Nene near the town some thirty years before, he had only done it out of charity.

Thus, when the abbot had repaired the now ruinous bridge out of honour to the king

and his mother whose arrival was expected, he had done it solely out of charity, not

out of any obligation.90 In 1365, the prior of Stoke by Clare claimed that he and his

predecessors had only repaired the bridge at Bures from their alms and at their own

volition, and the jurors accepted the claim.91 Likewise, Peter de Bergefeld

complained to the king that a bridge his father had had built and then widened was

built purely out of charity and a concern for those crossing, so that the carpenter


Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 512.87 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 214.88 Perhaps the best example of this caution is an early-medieval, Continental one: when Charles the

Bald ordered the people who were obliged to build fortresses on the Seine to repair two bridges onthe Oise and the Marne, they agreed (because of imminent danger of Viking attacks), but only ‘oncondition that this was treated as a special case of urgent need and that the men who would nowrepair these bridges should never at any future time suffer any disadvantage through performinglabour services on this particular job’; Annales de Saint-Bertin , ed. Félix Grat, Jeanne Vielliard andSuzanne Clémencet (Paris, 1964), pp. 122–3; The Annals of St-Bertin , trans. Janet Nelson(Manchester, 1991), p. 127. Examples of such caution might be multiplied through the EnglishMiddle Ages.

89 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 1–3.90 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vii, 87.91 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 95–7. For other examples of the claim of a charitable origin working

for defendants, see ibid., I, 211–13, II, 217–19, 225–8.




94

whom the king had sent out to repair the bridge had no right to compel him to pay

for it.92

Such claims and counter-claims relied on an appeal to memory. It was usual in

cases about bridge-work for the presentment to claim that the obligations existedfrom before the time of legal memory.93 When the abbot of Beaulieu (Hampshire)

was challenged as to his house’s responsibility to repair the causeway between Radcot

Bridge and Faringdon (Berkshire), he was able to claim that the house had been

founded within legal memory and, thus, in the absence of special reason found to

connect the house to so distant a public work – the causeway in question is over

sixty miles from Beaulieu – there was no claim to be answered.94 In other words, an

obligation of this apparently arbitrary sort might be asserted through ancient

precedent, but that was out of the question here.

Another way that obligations could be created was through charity. If lands or

rents were donated to someone or – more often – a religious house in order to pay

for the upkeep of a bridge, it was expected that the person or institution live up tothat obligation indefinitely. This state of affairs existed nearby in connection with the

bridges at Stratford. There some rents assigned for the repair of the bridge were a

point of contention between the abbeys of Barking and Stratford in the early

fourteenth century. It was claimed that Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I, had given

lands for the upkeep the bridges which she had built altruistically, and, thinking that

religious institutions we more stable than families, had given the land to the nearest

religious house, which at the time was Barking.95 In a similar case, the abbot of

Waltham, for example, was found to be responsible for the repair of the bridge at

Sanford (or Stamford), Middlesex, because he had been donated rents in London for

its repair.96

So obligations could in some limited circumstances be created. It is not

surprising, however, given the onerous nature of the obligations that the destruction

of obligations is much more common. People found many ways of getting out of

obligations, and, in so doing they left bridges without mechanisms for maintenance.

First of all, of course, if a new bridge was financed by alms, then no obligations

attached to it. An inquest of 1357 found, for example, that ‘Sottesbridge’ on the

borders of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire had been financed in this way, and

therefore no-one was obliged to repair it.97 By extension, however, obligations could

also cease when a bridge was rebuilt on a new site. In an inquest of 1255 into the

obligations of the abbot of Waltham for the bridge at Sanford, the changing site of

the bridge was recited: there had been a bridge in one place, but it collapsed, andabbot built a new one on a new site. When that bridge was in turn washed away, a

merchant named William Sperling built another new one on another different site to

92 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 408.93 e.g., Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 24 (‘a tempore cuius contrarii memoria non existit’), 25 (‘a tempore

non extat memoria’).94 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 4–7.95 R. C. Fowler, ‘Religious Houses’ in The Victoria History of the County of Essex , II, ed. William Page

and J. Horace Round (London, 1907), 84–201 at 116.96 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 72–3. In this case, the jurors, as if anxious to secure the point,

note that the abbot had built a bridge on a nearby site years before, which bridge had been sweptaway, creating the need for the current bridge, which had been built on a new site out of alms.

97 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 104.



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the west of the previous one. The point of such details was to emphasize that theabbot had no obligations by way of precedent: his bridge had been built on a newsite out of charity, breaking all connections to pre-existing obligations, and it had

been superseded by another, for which he had no responsibility because again it wasin a different place.98 If the most common way to escape obligations was to assert that one had

nothing to do with a bridge and that it had only ever been maintained by charity, andmoreover, if there was a danger of actions being drawn into precedent, the safest wayto make a claim of charitable origin was to concoct a narrative about the bridge inquestion that attributed its origin to an outside party who could not possibly be heldto account. In truth, of course, some of these pleas sound fishy. When the people ofRedbridge in Hampshire were challenged about obligations connected to theirbridge, they announced that it had been built by a charitable passing merchant namedNoel;99 this convenient story served to spare them from the obligation of

maintaining the bridge. In a similar vein, when charged with repairing the causewayat Egham, the abbot of Chertsey claimed that there was no causeway before the timeof Henry III, and then a merchant named Thomas of Oxford built one so that hecould carry his wool better, and subsequently it had only been repaired by alms ofpeople thereabouts – although, naturally, the abbots had always been happy to help

when they could. The king’s lawyers did not accept the story on this occasion,100 butthrough such claims, obligations could cease to exist.

Part of these claims that a bridge had been built through charity might sometimesbe the detail that the bridge had been built recently, often where there had been aford (as if to emphasize that if the bridge were to collapse not that much would belost) and by a named individual. For instance, just forty years before the inquest into

the subject, John Walsale had built a bridge called Lodelowebrigge in Gloucestershireout of his own alms where there had been a ford, in such a way that the local people

were not responsible at all. Or so the local people claimed.101 Similarly, in 1388 Johnde Bronston claimed that Reynold atte Townsende built a bridge at Staverton(Gloucestershire) of his own alms to replace a ford in 1324/5. 102 That both of theseclaims were in some sense small-scale foundation myths is suggested not just by theflat refusal of the king’s lawyers to accept them, but also by the way in which thedefendants felt the need to bolster the stories with other separate claims of non-liability too. In another case, the bishop of London, in attempting to evaderesponsibility for a bridge near Guildford that his own mill had made necessary,

claimed that the bridge had been built by alms. In the first version of the story (toldin 1356/7), the bridge had been built by a previous bishop and his neighbours out ofcharity during the reign of Edward I. In a second version (summer 1382), the bridge

was repaired by alms of men of the country, but King Edward I and the bishops ofLondon occasionally responded to the requests of the people with donations. Athird, fuller version (Autumn 1382) made the story more personal: once whenEdward I was crossing the bridge and again when Bishop Michael de Northburgh

98 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 72–3.99 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 103.100 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiv, 236.101 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 143–6.





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was doing the same, they each saw fit to give alms, but never in such a way that a

liability was created.103 This well crafted narrative succeeded in sparing the bishop

from future exactions.

These claims of charitable origin might be tested by the question of whether abridge had been built solely out of charity or for the advantage of the builder. For

example, Henry de Cobham built a bridge near Penhurst (Kent) ‘at his own cost and

of his alms’, but as the land on both sides of the bridge was his, and since he only

built the bridge because the demolition of a watermill of his made a ford impassable,

the jury found his sons liable to restore the bridge.104 Likewise, the abbot of Netley

was responsible for the bridge at Mainsbridge (Hampshire) because the ground on

both sides of it was part of his manor, and he had the easement of carrying loads

across the bridge.105

Another way in which people could dispute the validity of obligations was

through challenging whether the bridge was public. The status of the road crossing

the bridge was one of the first facts that had to be ascertained in any case. In adispute about the bridge-building obligations of Reading Abbey, the jurors made a

statement up-front that the bridge in question was on the regia via and leading to the

bridge was a ‘common road for travel and haulage ( communis via ad transeundum et

cariandum )’; moreover, as a consequence the ruinous state of the bridge was ‘a serious

nuisance to the whole country travelling there ( ad grave nocumentum tocius patrie ibidem

transeuntis )’.106 In the same way, a bridge called Cocker Bridge in Nottinghamshire

was on a road that was ‘the king’s highway and common’.107 And the bridge at

Marshwood (Dorset) was stated to be in the ‘common street ( strata ) leading from

Exeter to Salisbury’, so that its condition was causing ‘no small hurt to the whole

country’.108

By contrast, the abbot of Abingdon tried to excuse himself from repairing a

causeway on the basis that it was not ‘royal or high ( regia nec alta )’. It should be added,

though, that this case seems to show the difficulty of such a plea as the abbot went

on to assert that the causeway had been repaired by alms, a claim that was not

accepted at face value.109 The countess of Pembroke escaped obligations for the

repair of a bridge more successfully by claiming that it had been built to serve her

mill and was therefore her easement ( aysiamento ),110 not a common way. And a knight

called William de Wauton was able to argue that a bridge near Aveley (Essex) had

been built by a previous tenant who had held land at both ends of the bridge and,

consequently, had built the bridge solely for his own use.111 In 1340, one of the

several points of disagreement between the sheriff of Middlesex and the bishop ofCoventry was whether a bridge at Hanworth was – as the bishop claimed – a little

bridge by a mill for the use of the miller and those coming to the mill or – as the

103 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 199–206.104 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 195–7.105 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 190.106 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 9–10.107 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 360.108 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , IV, 172. Marshwood is a few miles east of Axminster and the

Fosse Way, on what is now a small B road.109 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 13–17.110 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 60–62.




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sheriff claimed – ‘a royal road and common crossing for the people of the country

( via regia et communis transitus hominum patrie )’.112 A somewhat different case occurred in

connection to two bridges on the North Norfolk coast. A wooden bridge at Cley

next the Sea and a stone one at Wiveton were in disrepair. But a jury stated that they were not on the king’s highway and had, moreover, been built out of charity less than

a hundred years previously, so the son of the builder was alive to testify as to the

facts. Before the bridges were built, people had been able to use the path on which

they now stood at their own risk at low tide. All in all, the jury concluded, ‘if the

bridges were not to be repaired in future, it would not be to anybody’s damage’.113

Indeed, another question that seemed relevant in determining liability was whether

there was another suitable bridge nearby. If there were, this fact could help draw

proceedings to a close.114

Another way in which obligations could cease to exist was through the kinds of

claims of exemption studied above in chapter three. In 1350, for example, an inquiry

was held into the state of the bridges on various roads running south out of Londoninto Surrey. When the priors of Bermondsey and Merton were accused of failing in

their obligations to maintain several bridges, they asserted that they had charters

exempting their houses from any such obligations. The prior of Bermondsey claimed

that his was from William II, the prior of Merton that his was from Henry I. The

king’s lawyer did not accept the charters and sought to put the case before a jury.

Unfortunately, there the record ceases.115 A similar case from 1360 is more complete,

however. The abbot of Glastonbury claimed that he was not responsible for a bridge

at Marnhull (Dorset), because a charter of Henry III gave his house immunity from

all such work (and many other things to boot). This claim was eventually accepted,

although the evidence seems to have been greeted with healthy scepticism.116

Indeed, because obligations were enforced by the sheriff, they were susceptible to

being undermined by the usual arguments employed by the rich and powerful. When

the sheriff of Middlesex tried to argue that a bridge on a manor of the bishop of

Coventry should be repaired by the bishop for the common good, he was first

amerced for failing to supply all the requisite details, then ordered to bring four men

from the nearest settlements to the bridge – something he was unable to do in the

time given – and finally, when the bishop was able to argue that the bridge was on

the border of two liberties and that therefore the sheriff had no jurisdiction, he was

amerced again for overstepping his authority.117

In the context of these situations in which obligations could be destroyed, it is

important to remember the general belief that obligations could not be created. Thisbelief is illustrated by a few intriguingly anomalous cases, the inconclusive results of

which suggest doubts about the ideas expressed. One occurred in connection to the

bridge between Bradwell and Wolverton (Buckinghamshire). Even though the jurors

112 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 1–6. See also the description of a bridge near Mildenhall (Suffolk) asbeing ‘in communi transitu’; ibid., II, 141.

113 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , IV, 76–7.114 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 216–19.115 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 169–76.116 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 52–6. Flower notes the oddities in the written evidence produced and

comments that the justices may initially have been unsatisfied with the evidence (p. 56).

117 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 1–6.




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accepted the assertion of the neighbouring villages that they had never been

responsible for its upkeep and that the bridge had been repaired by alms, the jurors

still found the villages to be liable for the bridge in future. The logic of this

apparently curious finding is not made explicit, but it seems to be connected to thejurors’ insistence that the bridge was on the territory of the villages ( super solum

predictarum villatarum ). The phrase ‘super solum’ is repeated, as if the jurors felt it was

the important point.118 Nevertheless, the villages contested the decision, and we do

not know the eventual outcome; it might be suspected that the attempt to impose

novel obligations was unsuccessful. This suspicion might be confirmed by

comparison to a somewhat similar case. Jurors stated that no-one was obliged to

repair a bridge near Great Waltham (Essex), because it had always been repaired by

alms. When pressed on the question of who should be held responsible if such

charity failed, they added that the men of the three villages initially charged with

negligence should undertake the repairs ‘for their own advantage and easement … as

the bridge is on their soil ( pro commodo et aisiamento suo eo quod situates est super solum )’.Such confusion of explanations clearly worried the justices, and they adjourned the

session because they did not yet feel ready to give a judgment ( curia nondum advisatur

ad iudicium inde reddendum ).119

All of these efforts to argue a way out of liability for bridges created gaps in the

system of obligations – if that is not too grand a word for something that was

anything but systematic. A simple example – one repeated many times – is the case

of a bridge called ‘Tasdardesbrigg’ in Huntingdonshire. The sheriff on his tourn

found the abbot of Warden liable, but he challenged this finding, and a jury agreed.

The judgment records no other person or persons as liable for the bridge, and,

moreover, the case took over four years to move from the tourn to the final verdict,

in which time – presumably – nothing was done to repair the bridge.120

Such delays appear repeatedly in the record. One sad example occurs in

connection to a foot and horse bridge over the River Brent in Middlesex. There it

was alleged that the bridge had been in disrepair for twenty years and that, moreover,

three people had died as a result. The abbot of Westminster, accused of negligence

with regard to the bridge, claimed his predecessors had built the bridge simply to

provide access for themselves to a windmill, and, when it broke, they had removed it

rather than repair it, as was their right. The jury disagreed and found the abbot

liable.121 What is striking about this case, however, beyond the twenty years that the

bridge had been broken and the lives lost as a result, is that it took a further three

years for the verdict to be reached. There were more serious problems than just delays, though: the logic of

obligations and the consequent assumption of precedent placed permanent limits on

innovation with regard to bridges. This problem may be seen in the case of the

bridge over the River Witham at Claypole on the borders of Lincolnshire and

Nottinghamshire. The river had swept the bridge away, and the sheriff of

118 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 22–3.119 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 72–4.120 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 191–4. The question of the abbot of Kirkstead’s responsibility for some

bridges supposedly damaged by his cattle took over five years to be settled, because of numerousdelays; ibid., I, 256–60.

121 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 6–9.



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Lincolnshire had taken it upon himself to build a new bridge on a different, and

presumably better, site. This effort to improve the road by bending it slightly – the

new bridge was only 40ft from the site of the old one – caused the local landowners

to cry foul, claiming that their land had been impinged upon. And, moreover, thepeople of the neighbouring village of Balderton had taken matters into their own

hands and destroyed the new bridge (perhaps because they feared that the diverted

road to Newark would by-pass their village). An inquest ordered that everything be

restored to its former state: a new bridge should be built on the site of the original

one, and the costs should be paid by the people of Claypole.122

A corollary of this consciousness of precedent was a fierce determination to

resist what people saw as unjust obligations. In 1291, the hundreds of Launditch and

Clackclose refused to repair the bridge at Stoke Ferry because, they asserted, it had

only ever been repaired by alms. An inquiry into the matter admitted ignorance as to

whether there were any obligations attached to the bridge.123 Similarly, the people of

Westerham in Kent seized back from the king’s bailiff a horse and five cows that hehad taken from them by way of distraint for payment for Rochester Bridge;124 as

Nicholas Brooks as shown, Westerham is one of the anomalies in the pattern of

obligations at Rochester, and the people of the village may have been felt – perhaps

quite rightly – that their obligations were of questionable origin.125

What was perceived as an excessive burden caused by overlapping obligations

could also cause resistance. The people of Eyhorne Hundred (Kent) tried to argue

their way out of their duty to maintain a local bridge because they were responsible

for part of Rochester Bridge; they suggested that people not so burdened should be

responsible for it instead. The jury did not listen to their complaint.126

Problems caused by delays and an exaggerated sense of precedent were only

compounded by contradictions between interpretations of liability. These

contradictions give the lie to the apparent stability of the obligations as well as to the

seeming omniscience of the jurors. A complicated case in Hampshire shows how

obligations could shift between different parties over time, despite explicit judgment

and even – in this case – written documentation. The bridge at Mansbridge being

broken in 1336, a jury found that eight different villages as well as Henry Imbred and

his tenants in Redbridge were responsible for its repair. In 1363, however, a new

inquest was ordered into the repair of the same bridge. The jurors this time found

that the abbot of Netley was liable. He produced an exemplification of the first

122

Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 307–8; the sheriff did at least have to remove the remains of his newbridge at no cost to the villagers. See also Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 480.123 Calendar of Inqusitions Miscellaneous , I, 435. The place-name suggests a relatively recently built bridge

and that the claim by the hundreds may therefore have been truthful. That said, there is somethingcurious about this record; Stoke Ferry is in Clackclose Hundred. Launditch Hundred is in themiddle of the county and is not even contiguous with Clackclose. The inquiry into the disputereported that the king’s justice in eyre had ordered the sheriff had to distrain upon the hundreds ofClackclose and Grimshoe – not Launditch – which makes more sense, Grimshoe being the nexthundred nearest to Stoke Ferry (but, even then, there are other cases in which people object torepairing bridges outside their hundred).

124 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , II (London, 1916), 26.125 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Church, Crown and Community: Public Work and Seigneurial Responsibilities

at Rochester Bridge’ in Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages: Essays presented to Karl Leyser ,ed. T. Reuter (London, 1992), pp. 1–20 at p. 15.





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judgment, which showed, among other things, that the judgment had been made when the villagers, tenants and Henry Imbred himself had failed to show up.Perhaps, because of this fact, the new jury reversed the previous judgment and held

the abbot responsible on the simple basis that the lords of his manor, from beforethe time he acquired it, had always repaired the bridge. Consequently, despite his written proof of non-liability, the abbot was distrained upon.127

At Stroud (Gloucestershire) in 1367/8, the jurors again apparently demonstrateda knowledge of well known local obligations. The bridge was constructed of threearches; only one was broken, but the king’s lawyer held that the village of Stonehouseshould repair all three. The village accepted responsibility for the broken arch, whichthey were already repairing, but not the other two, which they claimed were theresponsibility of other villages. The jurors accepted the claim. The same bridge wasin dispute eleven years later, however, when the middle arch was broken. In theearlier case, the people of Stonehouse had claimed that the villata of Bisley should be

responsible for this arch; the point was moot since it was in good repair. Now, in1378, it was asserted that the hundred of Bisley – including twelve villate – wasresponsible. The bridge was consequently the object of repeated presentments, thelast of which returns to the idea that just Bisley itself should be held responsible. Bythat time, however, the presentment states that the bridge had been broken for threeyears.128

Similar contradictions occur in the case of the bridge carrying the Roman roadacross the River Blackwater at Stratford, between Braintree and Coggeshall (Essex).In 1284, an inquest concluded simply that no-one was bound to repair it, because –once again – it had always been repaired by alms.129 Fourteen years later, however,another inquest declared that the abbot of Coggeshall was responsible.130 Such

contradictions stand alongside local circumstances that make little practical sense. InEssex, no-one was bound to repair the bridges and causeways between Stratford-by-Bow (modern-day East London) and West Ham except for ‘Chaveresbregge’.131 Thisdeficiency of arrangements meant that the main road out of London to the east

would have been routinely in a wretched state, no matter how well ‘Chaveresbregge’ was maintained. Similarly, as the story went, one Thomas of Oxford noticed that thecauseway that carried the king’s highway between Staines (Middlesex) and Egham(Surrey) was ‘a nuisance’, so of his own volition he built a new causeway to replace it.

A century or so later, however, the causeway needed repair, and, supposedly becauseof his charitable impulse, there was no-one obliged to repair it, so the main road

from London towards Salisbury and Winchester was also rendered impassable without arrangements in place for its repair.132 Indeed, the bottom line is that many of the claims of non-liability left bridges

without anyone obliged to repair them at all. Some of these bridges were bridges ofreal importance, and every broken bridge was an inconvenience if not a genuinehazard to life and limb. For example, the prior of St Bartholomew, London, asserted

127 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 173–81.128 Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 117–20.129 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 388.130 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 1.131 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 521.

132 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 18.



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successfully that he was not liable to repair two bridges, one at on the regia via at

Edgware, the other at Smithfield Bar, because they had always been maintained by

the alms of people of the country and of passers-by.133 From the context it seems

likely that both bridges were on one of the main roads leading out of London to thenorth, and yet after this verdict there was no provision for their repair except for the

hope of future charity. Indeed, the bridge at Edgware had, according to the

presentment, already been in disrepair for a year.134 Other cases lament the very real

dangers caused by disputes over bridge building obligations. When a dispute between

the lord of Bungay (Norfolk) and the people of the nearby villages stopped the repair

of bridges near Bungay, heavy rains swept the bridges away, leading to the death by

drowning of two women and a man.135 In another case, the bridge at Stretford near

Market Drayton (Shropshire) was broken because no-one was obliged to repair it. As

a result an unknown traveller was drowned there.136 No such tragedy is recorded at

Warwick, but there half of the bridge, maintained only by alms, was ‘in ruins and

almost broken down to the ground’.137 In other words, the result of a situation, in which the law might assume that people living nearby were responsible for the

upkeep of a bridge, but in which the people might deflect such responsibility by

claims of precedent, charity and others’ obligations, was, in short, a muddle.

Further insight into the logic behind late medieval bridge-work obligations can be

gained from observing the various ends of the systems of obligations attached to the

six great bridges discussed in chapter two.

The system of obligations at Rochester was to end with the final collapse of the

Roman bridge. Through the fourteenth century, with increasing frequency, inquests

were sent by the king to discover the reasons for the continual failure of the bridge

and the names of those obliged to repair it, and to force them to do so; inquests took

place in 1332, 1344, 1350, 1354, 1355, 1359, 1360, 1363, 1364, 1369, 1377 and

1382.138 On more than one occasion, the bridge was replaced by a ferry, the profits

of which were supposed to be used to repair the bridge.139 This ferry was not a

satisfactory solution, slowing the journey as a matter of routine, and, on one

occasion, in 1311, proving fatal to its passengers as ‘several men of the town crossing

133 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 49–52.134 For similar examples of claiming of charitable repair accepted without question and leaving no

definite plan for future repair, see Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 151–9, 176–8, 216–19, 225–8.135

Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 142–6.136 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 179. The result of this inquisition was that pontage wasgranted: Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 309.

137 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 333. Again, the result was a grant of pontage: Patent Rolls,Edward III, xv, 429.

138 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 425, vi, 425, viii, 526, x, 67, 230, xi, 280, 485, xii, 444, 543, xiv, 343,Richard II, i, 53, ii, 136. The first inquest, however, was in 1280: Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 414. In1340, there was also an inquiry into the failure of several communities to pay for the upkeep ofone of the piers; Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 203–9

139 See, for example, Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 232; the exclusive grant of the ferry to Otto Ferre, theking’s yeoman, is recorded twice on the membrane, the first time being vacated because the kingchanged his mind and decided that Ferre (is the name a coincidence?) should at least beresponsible for providing the barge to be used. Other occasions on which a ferry replaced thebridge and its profits were used for the bridge’s repair were in 1339 and, after the final demise of

the old bridge, in 1383; Patent Rolls, Edward III, iv, 323, Richard II, ii, 235, 240, 241.




102

the river in a boat have been submerged’.140 It may be indicative of the lack of faith

that travellers had in the ferry that the mid-fourteenth-century Gough Map does not

show Watling Street as the route between London, Canterbury and the coast, leaving

instead a puzzled blank. The endless, and apparently futile, inquests to endeavour to force the Kentish

estates to pay their dues were obviously necessitated by the repeated failure of the

bridge. Repeated collapse must have made the obligations more onerous, which

presumably made people less willing to pay, which must in turn have rendered the

bridge still more fragile. Problems were exacerbated by increased traffic and bad

weather. In June 1366, the sheriff of Kent was commanded to make an inquest into

the state of the town of Strood on the London side of the Medway bridge ‘through

which is the common passage of magnates, pilgrims, and others visiting the shrine of

St Thomas of Canterbury and returning therefrom, [and which] for lack of paving

and through the negligence of the inhabitants, is now so deep and heavy for horse

and foot that great peril may arise therefrom’.141 But it was not just the number oftravellers, but also the weight of their transportation. From the thirteenth century on,

the increasing use of large, horse-drawn wagons placed a greater and unaccustomed

strain on old bridges like the one at Rochester. In 1311, after one of the first costly

efforts at repairing the bridge, the king appointed ‘Simon Potyn of Rochester and

Robert Bettlescombe to be supervisors and keepers of the bridge of Rochester,

recently restored at great expense to those who are bound to keep it in repair, and to

prevent wagons too heavily laden from crossing it’.142 Presumably, the stress was also

beginning to tell on the Roman stone piers that were not included in the

maintenance obligations.

At last, in February 1381, the old bridge was swept away for a final time by

floods caused by the melting of the ice of a harsh winter,143 galvanizing the locals

into the building of a new bridge, on a more advantageous site. This move to a new

site meant the death of the old system of obligations and the birth of the Bridge

House Trust, to be discussed below.144

A similar process took place at Chester. The final collapse of the Roman bridge

there was, like that of the one at Rochester, accompanied by the final demise of the

system of obligations. By 1346, a new bridge was being built, a little up-river from

the Roman bridge.145 In the years that followed, it became clear that the system of

140

Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 331.141 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiii, 256.142 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 348; this was the same repair for which the ferry’s profits had been

appointed, but it is noteworthy that the repair was still ‘at great expense’ to those obliged to repairthe bridge.

143 Nicholas P. Brooks, ‘Rochester Bridge, A.D. 43–1381’ in Traffic and Politics: The Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993, ed. Nigel Yates and James M. Gibson (Woodbridge,1994), pp. 1–40 at p. 40.

144 See R. H. Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’ in Traffic and Politics: The Construction and Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993, ed. Nigel Yates and James M. Gibson (Woodbridge,1994), pp. 41–106, esp. pp. 50–59.

145 The Black Prince ordered ‘the workmen of the bridge of Dee not to do any damage to the Prince’s weir and fisheries there, but to make the br idge according to the advice of Henry de Snelleston, theking’s mason’; Register of Edward, the Black Prince, preserved in the PRO , ed. M. C. B. Dawes, 4 vols

(London, 1930–33), I, 83; quoted in T. J. Strickland, ‘The Roman Heritage of Chester: The



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obligations had failed to provide the money necessary for the total rebuilding that the

Black Prince and his officers deemed necessary. In 1351, the Prince stated that the

bridge was too damaged for people to cross to the great damage of the city and

country around it and ordered those responsible to contribute to its repair.

146

As aresult, an agreement was reached between the Prince’s officers and the

representatives of the county: ‘it is agreed that the country and all those who were

bound to make the said bridge, and their heirs, and the abbot and convent of St

Werbruge, Cestre, and their successors, shall be discharged for ever by the prince’s

patent from the said charge, provided they complete the bridge properly this once’.147

Instead of the system of local obligations, a pontage toll was to be taken on the

bridge, from which all those who had previously contributed were to be exempt.148

Two months later the patent was drawn up, to be held until the work was

satisfactorily completed.149 Nevertheless, it was a number of years before this was

achieved. In 1357 and 1358, the Prince issued orders for the city to stop delaying the

completion of their end of the bridge, the county having completed its section.150 Wehave cause to be grateful for their delay, however, since one of the orders for them

to hurry refers to the requirement of the work to be of stone, confirming that the

bridge was indeed being wholly remade;151 similarly, we learn of the necessity of

raising the causeway to the new bridge.152 This new bridge still stands; with its

completion, the Cheshire bridge-building obligations come to an end.

The old London Bridge survived until the 1170s when the wooden bridge had

truly fallen down. The new stone bridge – to be discussed below – was built on a

slightly different site and as a consequence the old obligations lapsed. London Bridge

was henceforth maintained by charity.

In Cambridge also, the obligations lasted as long as the bridge stood; in this case,

until 1754. In the inquest of 1338–39, it is possible to see the sheer complications of

the obligations. On the one hand, Henry de Bokesworth was charged with holding

land connected to the bridge and not paying for its repair; Henry replied that this was

the case, but that many others were similarly responsible and had not paid their

share. As a result, many more people had to be summoned to answer for their

obligations in an ever increasing muddle. That said, when summoned, each

acknowledged their default. On the other hand, a ‘manifest error ( errorem …

manifestum )’ occurred elsewhere in the county, connected to a squabble over who

actually held specific lands connected to the bridge.153 In such a situation of

confusion and claim and counter-claim – all, it must be added, against a back-drop of

everyone acknowledging that the obligations existed and that they were tied to

Survival of the Buildings of Deva after the Roman Period’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 67 (1984), 17–36 at 27.

146 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 9.147 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 15; the record of this agreement was entered in

the Register on the same day as the Prince’s order, suggesting that the Prince’s order was a hard-line negotiating position in discussions about the repair of the bridge.

148 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 17.149 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 19.150 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 275, 298.151 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 298.152 Register of Edward, the Black Prince , ed. Dawes, III, 209–10.





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certain lands – it is not surprising that there was inquest after inquest to determine

liability. Over the years, the burden became more and more onerous. Nevertheless,

the obligations endured into the eighteenth century, despite various efforts to change

the system. Finally, in 1754 the bridge was to be entirely rebuilt by publicsubscription, which raised £1327 9s 6d, i.e., almost exactly three times as much as the

levy had raised two years before.154 And with this rebuilding, the obligations came to

an end.

The exception to the rule that the building of a new bridge meant the end of the

old obligations is Huntingdon. In truth, at Huntingdon, the system of obligations

seems to have been noticeably ineffective. Whether this was because the dispute

between town and county frustrated successful operation of the maintenance

obligations, or whether it was resentment against the resources of this small county

being required to keep up a major bridge on the Great North Road, or whether the

failure was for another reason altogether cannot be established. But, suffice it to say,

the resources were inadequate; thus, in 1279, Edward I granted pontage, the right tocharge toll for the repair of the bridge, to the bailiffs and men of Huntingdon, for

three years.155 In 1293, after a flood partially destroyed the bridge, the bishop of

Lincoln intervened, offering indulgences to those contributing to its repair; one of

those contributing was the king, who gave twenty-four oaks for the bridge’s repair a

few years later.156 By 1329 the bridge was again ‘in a ruinous state, in many places

broken through and at one part threatening to fall’. This parlous state of affairs had

caused several bequests to be left for the repair the bridge; because there was no-one

appointed to supervise their collection, however, nothing had been done. Therefore

the king appointed ‘Philip de Ravele, chaplain, as keeper of the bridge, to receive the

aforesaid legacies from the executors of the testators, with other offerings hereafter

to be bequeathed or made out of charity for repair of the bridge, to apply the same

to that purpose, and out of any surplus that may remain to build a chapel on the

bridge in honour of St Thomas the Martyr and St Katherine the Virgin, wherein a

chaplain, to be found out of the alms of those coming to the bridge, shall daily

celebrate divine service for the faithful departed’.157 At this point the bridge must

have been rebuilt substantially out of stone, as it would be unusual to find a chapel

built on a largely wooden bridge.158 Moreover, in 1331–32, Adam, the master of the

hospital of St John, who had been appointed warden of the bridge, petitioned the

king for permission to build a causeway from Godmanchester to the bridge across

the king’s land, and a bridge ‘beyond the floods of the Ouse’.159 Indeed, the costs of

such a conversion to stone may explain why these alms were still insufficient, and in1344 Edward III once more turned to a grant of pontage in an effort to sustain the

bridge.160

154 Annals of Cambridge , ed. Charles Henry Cooper, IV (Cambridge, 1852), 292.155 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 331.156 William Page and S. Inskip Ladds, ‘Huntingdon Borough’ in The Victoria History of the County of

Huntingdon , ed. William Page, Granville Proby and S. Inskip Ladds, II (London, 1932), 121–48 at125.

157 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 379.158 Page and Ladds, ‘Huntingdon Borough’, p. 125n.159 Inquisitions ad quod damnum , I, PRO Lists and Indexes 17 (London 1904), 306.

160 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vi, 252.



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Nevertheless, despite all these alternative provisions for repair, the idea of the

county-wide obligation was not entirely lost. In 1443, the bridge once more being ‘in

a ruinous state’, the keepers of the peace of Huntingdonshire were commissioned to

‘cause the bridge to be repaired and contributions thereto to be made and to appointgood wardens of the works to pay the workmen’s wages and other expenses herein’.

The contributions in question were to come from ‘the commonalty of the whole

county, to wit, by the hundreds of Touleslond, Leghtonston, Normancrosse and

Hirstryngston, as appears by a process before the justices in eyre of Edward III’.161

While the building of a new bridge occasioned the end of the obligations at Chester,

Rochester, London, even at Cambridge in 1754, the new bridge at Huntingdon was

to be supported by the county-wide obligations, perhaps because the bridge was built

on the same site as the old one.

These great bridges are, however, as in so many things, the exceptions. It is larger

bridges that tend to be the subject of genuine argument. This contrast was probably a

matter of expense, as well as the complications caused by the more far-flungobligations. Nonetheless, when one compares the functioning of the obligations

connected to the small bridges with those connected to the great county bridges, one

observes the same tendencies of argument and delay, the same cessation of

obligations, and the same insufficiency of charity.

Before drawing conclusions about the functioning of late-medieval bridge-building

obligations, one word of caution is required. It has been argued here that medieval

people were very conscious of their rights and resisted any effort to impose new

obligations on them. Yet, by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was

commonplace for sheriffs and the officers of the crown to inquire as to broken roads

as well as bridges.162 The question was not just whether someone had blocked a road,

but also whether anyone had failed in his duty to repair a road. As has been noted

above,163 there is no evidence of an obligation to repair roads in the Anglo-Saxon

period. So either a new obligation had been created or some other explanation needs

to be found. The jurist Blackstone, writing in the eighteenth century, assumed that

obligations for the roads was implied by bridge-work, but was only able to prove this

point by reference to Roman law.164 It is possible that Roman law was used to justify

the duty in the thirteenth century, as it was to justify the king’s rights to tolls on the

road, but, if so, we have no evidence of it.165 It is also possible that the duty arose out

of the provisions of the Statute of Winchester (1285), one of the most interventionist

statutes of the Middle Ages, which stipulated that all vegetation and ditches becleared back to 200ft from major roads.166 Perhaps the simplest way of

161 Patent Rolls, Henry VI, iv, 202.162 See, in addition to the references given for the sheriff’s inquiry into bridges (above, nn. 23 and 25),

the Statute of Wales (1284), which was intended to bring some aspects of English governance into Wales; when discussing the office of the sheriff, it declares that he should inquire ‘Of Hindrance,Restraint, and narrowing of the Highway. Of Walls, Houses, Gates, Ditches, and Marlpits raised ormade near unto the publick Way ( iter publicum ), to the Nuisance of the same Way, and to theDanger of Passengers’; Statutes of the Realm (as n. 6), I, 57.

163 See above, pp. 40–41.164 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, 1860), I, 356.165 See below, pp. 131–2.

166 Statutes of the Realm , I, 97.




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understanding this problem is that the repair of roads was not regarded as very

onerous, and thus the obligation to keep them clear gradually transformed into the

duty to maintain them. It is striking in this regard that the duty generally seems to

have been to maintain the drainage ditches on either side of the road rather than theroad itself.167

Nevertheless, returning to bridge-building obligations, it may be stated simply

that by the thirteenth century, bridge-work was very different from the model

envisaged by the West Saxon kings of the tenth century. Obligations might now arise

through complaints of nuisance or inadvertent establishment of precedent and might

disappear because of the rebuilding of the bridge on a new site or by the challenging

of the obligations using stories of varying dubiousness. To call the obligations of the

late Middle Ages a system would be to distort the reality: numerous bridges were

nobody’s responsibility at all and were, at the same time, missed by potential charity.

A list of such bridges would include major bridges and bridges on some of the most

important roads of the kingdom. Other bridges were the subject of tedious disputesthat dragged on for years while the bridges themselves were dangerous to those

crossing. Above all, once again it is the rich, powerful and well connected who seem

best able to weasel out of paying for bridges near their land. The resulting uneven

pattern of communal obligations – a result of conscious efforts to escape burdens

and the increasing need for bridges in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries – was a

gap that kings whose power was based on feudal right and obligation were unable to

fill in a permanent and creative manner.

Charity

When obligations failed for whatever reason, charity might take their place. That this

is not an obvious solution may be illustrated by a modern example. A few years ago a

new foot-bridge across the River Thames was opened. The imaginatively named

Millennium Bridge was intended to link St Paul’s to the new Tate Modern on the

South Bank. The bridge was briefly a sensation. When lots of people walked across

it, it wobbled. The English, with the constructive and energetic spirit for which we

are justly famed, quickly discovered that the wobble could be increased by either a)

marching in step, or b) standing on the edge and – well – wobbling. The bridge

became a tourist hot spot. I can tell you that my mother wanted nothing more that

summer for her seventieth birthday than a trip to the Wobbly Bridge. At last Londonhad something to rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Then, of course, killjoy engineers

closed the thing for a year and reopened it wobble-free.

My reason for telling this story is simple: finance. The foot-bridge was financed

by a charity called Bridge House Estates. This charity can trace its origins back to the

thirteenth century. When the new stone bridge of London was finally completed in

1209 after fifty years of struggle, its repair was paid for by charity. What were initially

ad hoc contributions gradually evolved into more substantial grants of land and rents,

which were supervised by the bridge wardens. By the time the new foot-bridge was

suggested in the 1990s, the charity was already responsible for replacing the

167 e.g., Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 7, 27–8.



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thirteenth-century structure twice and for building three further bridges across the

Thames; it had assets of £400 million and was looking for ways of spending this

fortune. When the idea that the charity might supply the paltry £5 million needed for

the new bridge was suggested, it was initially blocked by the Charity Commission, thebody that oversees British charities, as not being a suitable charitable activity. It took

some legal wrangling before the money was made available.168

The perplexity of the Charity Commission when faced with what seems

intuitively to be a straightforward issue is my starting place. It seemed inappropriate

to the Commission that an eight-hundred-year-old charity established to pay for a

bridge should fund the building of a bridge. Their perplexity shows the change in

attitudes towards what constitutes charity. In the High and late Middle Ages, it was

perfectly standard for a will to contain provisions for money to buy candles for the

parish church, to give alms for the poor, to endow masses for the soul of the dying

person, and to repair local highways and bridges.169 Similar ideas are found in

literature. In the late-fourteenth-century allegorical, moralizing poem, Piers thePloughman , Truth instructs the merchants to ‘repair the hospitals and help folk in

trouble – to get the bad roads mended quickly and rebuild the broken bridges – to

enable poor girls to marry or enter nunneries – to feed the poor and the men in

prisons – to send boys to school or apprentice them to a trade, and to assist

Religious Orders and give them better endowments’.170 When Thomas More wants

to demonstrate the religious piety of the Utopians, he says ‘they believe that the only

way to earn happiness after death is to spend one’s life doing good works. Some of

them look after invalids, while others mend roads, clean out ditches, [and] repair

bridges.’171 If the idea was a commonplace in the late Middle Ages, however, it is not

now.172

Medieval Christian notions of charity 173 derived from a number of biblical

passages. Corporal charity, that is to say good works as opposed to spiritual charity –

168 ‘800-year-old charity could fund vital footbridge across the Thames to the new Tate’, Art Newspaper , no. 39 (June 1994), 23. The Commission initially suggested that the bridge could only befunded by the Bridge House Estates if use of the bridge was limited to the elderly and thehandicapped.

169 Michael M. Sheehan, The Will in Medieval England from the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to the End ofthe Thirteenth Century (Toronto, 1963), p. 262; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: TraditionalReligion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 367–8; R. N. Swanson, Religion andDevotion in Europe, c. 1215–c. 1515 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 129–30, 212, 214.

170 William Langland, Piers Plowman: An Edition of the C-Text , ed. Derek Pearsall (Berkeley, 1979), ix.30–

36; translation from William Langland, Piers the Ploughman , trans. J. F. Goodridge, rev. edn(Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 92.171 Thomas More, Utopia , trans. Paul Turner (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 122.172 Changing notions of charity may be seen in a landmark court case of 1805. In Morice v. Bishop of

Durham, next of kin challenged the legality of a bequest to the bishop for ‘such objects ofbenevolence and liberality’ as the bishop might deem worthy. The problem was the word‘liberality’ which seemed to include more than just charitable objects. Counsel for the bishopfound himself arguing that the preamble of the Statute of Charitable Uses (1601) – an act aimed atprotecting funds intended for charity from fraudulent uses – includes objects of ‘ liberality’, which

were not objects of ‘charity’ properly defined. One of his principal examples of such an object wasthe repair of bridges. See Gareth Jones, History of the Law of Charity, 1532–1827 (Cambridge, 1969),pp. 122–5 and appendix C.

173 On charity in genera l in the Middle Ages, see Swanson, Religion and Devotion , pp. 206–25; MichelMollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History , trans Arthur Goldhammer (New

Haven, 1986), chapters 3 and 6, esp. pp. 92–3; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval




108

caritas – which underpins all Christian belief, derives principally from Matthew 25, in

which Christ describes the Last Judgment, the separation of the sheep and the goats,

in which those who have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, taken in the

stranger, clothed the naked, or visited the sick and imprisoned are admitted toHeaven and those who have not are cast into hell-fire.174 In this context, travellers

may be viewed as a sort of artificial extension of the category of pauperes for whom

good works must be done. In this sense they may be considered analogous to

widows, orphans, and – in the closest connection to Matthew 25 – prisoners, who,

though they may not necessarily be either impoverished or weak, are powerless

because of their status.175 Just as monasteries provided guest lodgings and hospitality

to travellers, and just as it was a charitable act to endow a hostel for travellers, so it

was a charitable act to provide safe passage for them by repairing roads and bridges.

The fact that many of the travellers were expected to be pilgrims only strengthened

the charitable impulse.

The duty of the well-to-do to provide for travellers extended from an early dateto kings. In the eighth century Bede tells the story of good King Edwin providing

drinking cups by springs near roads for the good of passers by 176 (a story that was

adapted for various kings over the years177 ). The king was by biblical injunction to be

the protector of the defenceless. This notion underpinned the Anglo-Saxon law of

the highway about which I have written elsewhere.178 The idea was, moreover, shared

and indeed initially developed by the Carolingian rulers on the Continent.179

Nevertheless, the chronology of charity specifically connected to bridge building

in England is a tricky one. There are, as far as I am aware, no references to the kind

of bridge-building charity that I will describe below before the second half of the

twelfth century.180 That said, the records that give us the best evidence for such

Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 54–98. For some introduction to medieval English legal notionsof charity, see Jones, History of the Law of Charity, chapter 1. See also W. K. Jordan, Philanthropy in

England, 1480–1660: A Study of the Changing Pattern of English Social Aspirations (London, 1959), pp.47–8, 275–8, 372 (note particularly Jordan’s comment that ‘one tends to forget how narrowlysovereignty defined its frontiers of responsibility in this earlier age’, p. 275).

174 Matthew 25:31–46.175 Swanson, Religion and Devotion , pp. 206–7, 210.176 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the Engl ish People , ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford,

1969), p. 192.177 William of Malmesbury reports that King Alfred demonstrated the quality of the peace he created

by having golden bracelets hung up at crossroads, knowing that no-one would dare to take them;

William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: the History of the English Kings ; ed. R. A. B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, I (Oxford, 1998), 188–90.178 Alan Cooper, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Saxon Law of the Highway’, Haskins Society Journal

12 (2002), 39–69.179 Cooper, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 44.180 Ranulf Flambard, in his capacity as bishop of Durham, did build a bridge across the Wear in his

city, and one of his successors added a second fifty years later; these works should, however, beunderstood in the context of their role as lords of the city, not as charitable works: indeed, Symeondescribes Flambard’s bridge alongside the castles he had constructed; Symeon of Durham, Libellusde exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, Tract on the Origins and Progress of this the Churchof Durham , ed. David Rollason (Oxford, 2000), p. 276; David Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England ,p. 112. The other candidate to be the earliest bridge supported by charity are two bridges over theLea at Stratford-by-Bow, which were supposedly built by Henry I’s wife, Matilda, who ‘consideringthat a religious house was more durable than any family and more likely to fulfil its obligations

than laymen bestowed certain lands for the support of these bridges upon the abbey of Barking,



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activity only commence c. 1200. Nevertheless, as described above, the issue of bridge

maintenance was being handled in a completely different way in the earlier centuries.

It would have been utterly antithetical to the Anglo-Saxon ideology of the common

burdens for bridges to be the subject of charity. It is only with the collapse of the Anglo-Saxon system in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the possibility of such

a solution arises.

The same pattern can be seen on the Continent, but the chronology is different.

Bridge building appears as an object of charity much earlier on the Continent,

occurring in the early eleventh century alongside the Peace Movement. The Peace

Movement, beginning in the South of France, took its rationale from the collapse of

royal power in West Francia. It was, in essence, an attempt by the ecclesiastical

authorities to step into what they quite reasonably perceived as a power vacuum.

Their main aim was simply to restore the peace, but, in so doing, they adopted the

categories of royal power developed by the Carolingians. This may have included the

building of bridges. Marjorie Nice Boyer in her work on French bridges is inclined tosee a direct connection between the Peace Movement and bridge construction,

especially in cases in which agreements to build bridges stipulate that the bridge

never be fortified and be free from tolls for the good of the poor. Her earliest

examples are from the first half of the eleventh century in southern France181 and the

Loire Valley.182

In England, the first evidence is later, which would make sense given the

different chronologies for the establishment and decline of royal power. The

chronology in England has been confused, however, by misreadings of the evidence

connected to London Bridge, so in order to see the emergence of charity as a means

of financing bridge repair, an excursus on London Bridge is required.

The history of London Bridge is essential to an understanding of the history of

bridge building in the Middle Ages. Because of its importance, London Bridge was a

pioneer in two ways. It was the first major, medieval English bridge to have stone

arches,183 and it was the first major, medieval English bridge to be supported by a

permanent charitable endowment, one which eventually became an established

which was at that time the nearest monastery to Bow’; Fowler, ‘Religious Houses’ p. 116 (as n. 95). The evidence for this story comes, however, from a dispute of the early fourteenth centurybetween Barking and Stratford Abbey; the story of good Queen Maud – recited by the jurors fromMiddlesex and Essex – perceiving the dangers of the old ford and building two new stone bridges

and a causeway between them has the ring both of anachronism and pious foundation myth;Placitorum in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio (as n. 84), p. 316.181 Marjorie Nice Boyer, Medieval French Bridges: A History (Cambridge MA, 1976), pp. 32–3; Boyer

refers to an agreement between the abbeys of Aniane and Saint Guilhelm-le-Désert to build abridge, which she says was drawn up ‘in the presence of laymen of the region’, as ‘an assembly’ (p.32); in fact the conventientia only refers to six named laymen; Recueil de texts relatifs à l’histoire del’architecture et à la condition des architectes en France au moyen âge , I, ed. Victor Mortet (Paris, 1911), 109– 11. She also notes that the charitable foundation of the bridge at Albi was put into place at the timeof Bishop Amelius, who was active in the Peace Movement, and refers to an assembly there too(Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 33). In both cases, her argument for a direct connection betweenthe Peace Movement and bridges seems a little forced; her best evidence is the prohibition offortifications, which is only included in the former agreement.

182 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 34.183 For other possible stone bridges earlier (esp. at Oxford, Durham and York), see Harrison, Bridges of

Medieval England , pp. 110–11.




110

institution, and thus the first bridge trust. These two elements – rebuilding in stone

and the establishment of an endowment – are related. In order to understand the

process that they represent, it is necessary to pick apart the chronology and test the

evidence very closely. Partly because the events happened early, the sources are weaker than might be hoped on key points; but precisely because of this weakness,

the quality of each piece of evidence needs to be assessed before conclusions can be

drawn.184

There was a Roman bridge at London. And there was a late Anglo-Saxon bridge

at London. These were probably one and same thing, patched up over the years one

way or another.185 In the twelfth century, however, a new bridge was built. When,

where and how it was built are critical questions here.

The Register of Trinity Priory states that in the year 1163 the bridge was rebuilt

in elm by Peter Colechurch,186 but it is unclear exactly what this means. If

comparison is made to other sites where we know more (particularly Rochester), the

likelihood is that by the early Middle Ages the bridge consisted of old Roman stonepiers, with a wooden superstructure. The Romans probably built three bridges on the

184 Let me state before going any further that ‘London Bridge is Fall ing Down’ and the idea that‘London Bridge was built on wool-packs’ have no probative value whatsoever. It should not benecessary to say such a thing, but, given the nonsense that is written about London Bridge, it is.London Bridge has attracted numerous studies by antiquarians. In particular, there is a fabulousbook by Richard Thomson (published under the name ‘An Antiquary’), which is written in theform of a dialogue between two men meeting in a pub: Mr Postern tells Mr Barbican the entirehistory of the bridge and slips into his discourse extremely useful bibliographic references. MrBarbican chivvies the description along. Mr. Barbican would not be keen on the present work:‘“Why, truly, Mr. Postern,” said I, rubbing my eyes, “tax gathering is always dull work; and I verily

thought we had lost sight of the Bridge in the paying for it”’; [Richard Thomson], Chronicles ofLondon Bridge , 2nd edn (London, 1839), p. 52. The standard antiquarian work on the bridge remainsGordon Home, Old London Bridge (New York, 1931); Home gathers all the relevant material aboutthe bridge but often lacks the scepticism and the comparative framework to make sense of it.Recently, there appeared Patricia Pierce, Old London Bridge: The Story of the Longest Inhabited Bridge in

Europe (London, 2001), which, at least for the period at hand, is cribbed from Home and full ofmisunderstandings. Finally, and more usefully, there is Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and TonyDyson, ed., London Bridge: 2000 Years of a River Crossing , Museum of London Archaeology ServiceMonograph 8 (London, 2001), which is very useful on the archaeology and, thanks to thecontributions of Vanessa Harding, very good on the late-medieval Bridge Trust, but for the periodaround 1200 relies rather too much on an uncritical reading of the sources. Incidentally, thearchaeologists, whose work is usually so sober, continue the tradition of trying to use ‘LondonBridge is falling down’ as a historical source; Tony Dyson and Bruce Watson, ‘“London Bridge is

Broken Down”’ in London Bridge: 2000 Years of a River Crossing , ed. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brighamand Tony Dyson, Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph 8 (London, 2001), pp.128–39 at p. 128; cp. [Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge , 2nd edn, pp. 106–13; Home, OldLondon Bridge , pp. 66–9; Pierce, Old London Bridge , pp. 63–4. See also Ruth Eaton, ‘From Medieval

Times to the Eighteenth Century’ in Living Bridges: The Inhabited Bridge, Past, Present and Future (London, 1996), pp. 35–82 at pp. 46–51, which, as a book composed to accompany an exhibitionat the Royal Academy of Arts, has very good illustrations.

185 See above, pp. 48–9 and works cited there.186 Stow repeats this information: John Stow, A Survey of London , ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford

(Oxford, 1908), I, 22; Home, Old London Bridge , p. 19. Home cites Guildhall MS 122, which is anineteenth-century transcript of the register. The original manuscript, which was used by JohnStow, is now owned by the University of Glasgow; it was partially transcribed and calendared forthe London Record Society, but this line about the bridge was not included. See The Cartulary ofHoly Trinity Aldgate , ed. Gerald A. J. Hodgett, London Record Society Publications 7 (London,

1971), pp. xi–xii, xx.



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site over the years, the third of which had masonry piers and a complex timber

superstructure.187 The superstructure may have been in disrepair as early as the

fourth century when the evidence of coin finds declines, but there are numerous

ways of interpreting this evidence.

188

Whenever the decline set in, however, the earlymedieval bridge presumably lacked the complexity of the Roman one: instead, beams

and transverse planks would have been laid across the spans. Such arrangements

require constant repair, as the loads crossing the bridge are not distributed as they are

in a arched bridge, putting great stress on the beams and planks. If Peter Colechurch

did ‘repair the bridge of elm’ he probably repaired the superstructure, a task that

must have been done every few decades. The task of building a whole new bridge,

including new piers, was a massive one, one that is difficult to assume on the basis of

one late source. If this interpretation of events removes the claim of Peter

Colechurch to be an engineering genius, it does allow the possibility that such a

wholesale repair of the bridge taught the warden the costs involved in such an

undertaking and caused him to look for a new solution to the bridge’s problems.Such a solution existed on the Continent. The French had learned how to build

stone bridges. This was the solution undertaken, but exactly when the decision to

build a new bridge in stone was made is unclear. The date usually given is 1176. That

date comes from three sets of annals: those produced at the priories of Southwark,

Merton and Waverly, all in Surrey. These are not independent sources, however. The

manuscript tradition is immensely complicated, and there may be a lost source that

was used by all three,189 but it is likely that this information came first from the

Southwark Annals. In the older of the two manuscripts of those annals, which was

written in one thirteenth-century hand up to 1207 and then in several up to 1240,190

the line ‘1176 – in this year the stone bridge of London was begun by Peter, chaplain

of Colechurch’ is added at the foot of a page in a later hand.191 When the annals were

copied around 1300 and when the information passed into the later Merton and

Waverly Annals, the information was included in the text.192 The traditional date and

the association of the work with Peter Colechurch are not attested until the

thirteenth century. That is not to say that it is completely unreliable, but the details

may be slightly suspect. Let us leave it that the bridge was begun some time in the

second half of the twelfth century. If the date is accepted, however, then the bridge

took thirty-three years to build, a testimony to the difficulty of the task, but also,

frankly, to the ignorance of the English builders and thus presumably of Peter

Colechurch. It was not going to be Peter who would finish the bridge.

187 Brigham, Trevor, ‘Roman London Bridge’ in London Bridge: 2000 Years of a River Crossing , ed. Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson, Museum of London Archaeology Service Monograph8 (London, 2001), pp. 28–51, esp. pp. 44–9.

188 Brigham, ‘Roman London Bridge’, p. 36.189 Martin Brett, ‘The Annals of Bermondsey, Southwark and Merton’ in Church and City, 1000–1500:

Essays in honour of Christopher Brooke , ed. David Abulafia, Michael Franklin and Miri Rubin(Cambridge, 1992), pp. 279–310; see also M. Tyson, ‘The Annals of Southwark and Merton’, Surrey

Archaeological Collections 35 (1924), 24–57.190 Brett, ‘Annals’, p. 280.191 Brett, ‘Annals’, p. 302; Tyson, ‘Annals’, pp. 33–4.192 Brett, ‘Annals’, pp. 281, 302; Annales monastici , ed. Henry Richards Luard [RS 36], II (London,

1865), 240.




112

Some support for such a long, drawn-out process of construction comes from a

fragment of archaeology. In 1730, a short-lived newspaper, The British Journal ,

reported in a list of happenings around town that ‘Last Week was discover’d in a

Cellar next Door to the Golden Still on London Bridge over the Water Works, acurious Piece of Stone of great Antiquity; in the Arch Work of which is in a very

legible, tho’ old Character, in Basso Relievo, Anno Domini 1192, being 17 Years

before the finishing of the said Bridge with Stone, in the Reign of Richard I and 538

Years since’.193 The location of the stone – over the Water Works – places it right at

the northern, or City, end of the bridge.194 It certainly does not suggest rapid

progress on the bridge, although it does give some confirmation that the bridge had

been commenced in some shape or form in the second half of the twelfth century.

Suddenly, at the beginning of the thirteenth century we are on much surer

ground, as the nature of our evidence changes. In 1202, there is an entry in the

Patent Roll. It orders

Considering how the Lord in a short time has made the bridges of

Saintes and La Rochelle through the care of our faithful clerk Isembert,

master of the scholars at Saintes, a man both learned and honourable,

we, with the counsel of our venerable father in Christ, Walter,

archbishop of Canterbury, and others, have requested, instructed, and

even compelled him to build your bridge with care and diligence for your

benefit and that of others. And we trust in the Lord that this bridge, so

necessary, as you know, to you and all passers-by, can soon be

completed through his hard work and by the Lord’s hand.195

The language of the letter seems surprising forthright, even impatient: ‘we stronglycommand you to receive kindly and honour the said Isembert and his men … But,

should any injury be offered to the said Isembert or his men, which we do not

believe will happen, see that it be redressed as soon as you hear of it.’196 It may be

drawing too much into the language of such a formulaic document, but, whether out

of frustration or not, it seems that King John was calling in the experts after the

natives had failed to get the job done. Our London Bridge antiquarians try to

disappear Isembert: Colechurch, the Englishman, must be the hero of the story.197 I

fear the reality is different: we hear little about Isembert because he got on with the

job and completed it expeditiously. Isembert is surely the man to whom the building

of the stone bridge at London should be attributed. We know about his track record

on the Continent, and it is very suggestive of what may have happened at London. As John states in his letter, Isembert had built the bridges at Saintes and La Rochelle.

Indeed, events subsequent to the construction of the bridge at La Rochelle make

Isembert appear to be something of a bridge entrepreneur, a bridge-builder on the

193 British Journal , no. 134, 25 July 1730 [p. 3, column 1].194 Pierce, Old London Bridge , pp. 148–50, and illustrations, pp. iv–v.195 Patent Rolls, John, 9.196 Patent Rolls, John, 9.197 [Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge , 2nd edn, p. 54; in Thomson’s case, it is all the more

necessary for the author to play up Peter Colechurch, because it turns out that Mr Barbican, thestoryteller, is Peter’s ghost, p. 498. Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 342–4; Home’s book is dedicated

to ‘the memory of Peter of Colechurch, the builder of Old London Bridge’.



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make. He built the bridge out of the ‘alms of the faithful’, but then transferred the

bridge to the brothers of an alms house and the brothers of the Temple there; this

transfer, although presented as a pious donation, seems actually to have been in

return for a payment.

198

When John called Isembert in to help with the situation atLondon, he explicitly compares the work needed in London to that accomplished at

La Rochelle. Perhaps we can conclude that Isembert was an expert, who came in,

achieved the task effectively and was paid well for it.

It seems likely that under Isembert’s direction the work was finished quite

quickly. The traditional date for completion is 1209. The date derives from the

Bermondsey Annals, which are a little muddled at this point.199 There is solid

agreement, however, that the buildings on the bridge were damaged by fire in

1212,200 and that the fire spread across the bridge from Southwark to London,

suggesting that the bridge was complete by that point.

Turning to the other way in which London Bridge was unique, the Bridge Trust,

the important questions are when this came into being and how. The key period isthe second half of the twelfth century and the first decade of the thirteenth. In this

period a new bridge was built across the Thames at London. In some of the rather

fanciful histories of London Bridge, it is suggested that the endowment existed

before the rebuilding. This rests on very few pieces of evidence; more importantly, it

rests on utter misreadings of the evidence. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,

in 1097, ‘many shires whose labour was due at London were hard pressed because of

the wall that they built about the Tower, and because of the bridge that was nearly all

carried away by a flood, and because of the work on the king’s hall, that was being

built at Westminster, and many a man was oppressed thereby’.201 It appears therefore

that the system of land-based obligations established by the Anglo-Saxons202 was still

operating at the end of the eleventh century. The only hint that any other system of

finance was in place before the new stone bridge was built comes from the fifteenth-

century annals of Bermondsey Priory. In language and using names which look

suspiciously fifteenth-century, it claims that one Thomas Ardern and his son gave a

church, some tithes, and ‘land of London Bridge rendering five shillings a year ( terram

de ponte Londoniæ quinque solidos per annum reddentem )’.203 This reference has to be taken

with a large pinch of salt, coming as it does from such a late source and serving to

bolster a property claim of the house that produced it.204 But more than that, it

198

Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , pp. 57–8.199 Annales monastici , ed. Henry Richards Luard [RS36], III (London, 1866), 451; Brett, ‘Annals’, p.306n.

200 Brett, ‘Annals’, p. 306; confirmation of this date is provided by a reference in the Patent Rolls tothe hiring of a boat to carry the king’s wardrobe from Westminster to Lambeth because the bridge

was broken; Patent Rolls, John, xliii.201 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, version E, a. 1097; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation , ed. and

trans. Dorothy Whitelock and David C. Douglas (London, 1961), p. 175; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , ed. Thorpe, I, 98–9.

202 See above, Chapter 2.203 Annales monastici , ed. Luard, III, 433.204 Christopher Brooke commented of the Bermondsey Annals that ‘these annals are among the most

unreliable of such records; but they occasionally deviate into accuracy’; Christopher N. L. Brooke,London 800–1216: The Shaping of a City (Berkeley, 1975), p. 110; see also Antonia Gransden,

Historical Writing in England , II, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, 1982), 390–91 and notes.




114

makes no logical sense in the way that it has been used by the antiquarians.205 If ‘de

ponte’ is to be read as ‘belonging to the Bridge’, or part of the bridge’s endowment,

then how can Thomas have given it to Bermondsey? If the grant has any basis in fact

– and I doubt it – it is more likely to mean ‘pertaining to London Bridge’

in the sensethat the lands were among those upon which the bridge-work at London fell. In this

context it is worth mentioning Henry I’s charter (dating from between 1100 and

1125) exempting Battle Abbey’s manor at Alciston in Sussex from this work.206 This

charter demonstrates how far afield the lands pertaining to the bridge could be, and

also suggest how important it might have been to specify the connection in land

grants, thus giving a possible explanation for the Bermondsey story.207

So why did these obligations not continue? Why were the same lands that were

responsible for the upkeep of the bridge not responsible for financing the new one?

The answer is almost certainly that the stone bridge was built on a new site.208 One

sixteenth-century source is adamant about this, saying that the bridge was built ‘neare

vnto the Bridge of timber, but some what more towardes the west’209 but thearchaeologists have been surprisingly reticent.210 It would make sense for the new

bridge to be built alongside the old one – it seems hard to imagine that the old bridge

was demolished at the start of the work and that London went without a bridge for a

third of a century without anyone remarking on the fact. If the bridge were indeed

built on a new site, then the obligations would have ceased: as discussed above, 211

this was a common defence in trials about obligations connected to lesser bridges in

the later Middle Ages.

Regardless, if the obligations had vanished, new ways of paying for the bridge

had to be found. Some of the modern writers who have written about London

Bridge claim that the Bridge Trust had its origins in a grant of a toll on wool by

Henry II for the upkeep of the bridge. There is no evidence whatsoever for this

story, and it seems to be concocted out of the myth that London Bridge was ‘built on

wool-packs’.212 It is conceivable that Henry II might have tried granting a temporary

tax to be taken while the bridge was rebuilt; in 1162 he had made a grant of tolls to

the monks of Saint-Florent so that they might rebuild the wooden bridge recently

205 Stow, Survey of London , ed. Kingsford, I, 22–3; [Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge , 2nd edn, p. 39;Home, Old London Bridge , p. 19; Pierce, Old London Bridge , pp. 31–2; Thomson is responsible for the

idea repeated by the others that 5s was an immense sum.206 Regesta , II, no. 1060; Fœdera, conventiones, litteræ et cujuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Angliæ et aliosquosvis imperatores, reges, pontifices, principes, vel communitates , ed. Thomas Rymer and Robert Sanderson,new edn, I (London, 1816), ed. Adam Clarke and Fred. Holbrooke, 8.

207 Home reprints the charter as an appendix, Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 338–9. Oddly, theappendix is entitled ‘Charter of Henry I … imposing a tax for the repairs of London Bridge andanother for the maintenance of Pevensey Castle’. This title must have given rise to Pierce’snonsensical statement that ‘In the reign of Henry I a charter imposed one tax to raise funds forrepairing London Bridge, and another tax for repairs to Pevensey Castle’; Pierce, Old London Bridge ,p. 30.

208 See above, p. 58n.209 Stow, Survey of London , ed. Kingsford, I, 23.210 There is no explicit statement about this vital issue in Watson et al., London Bridge: 2000 Years .211 See above, pp. 94–5.

212 e.g., Pierce, Old London Bridge , p. 36.



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built at Saumur out of stone.213 That said, the monks in this case never fulfilled theirpart of the bargain,214 so perhaps the king became disillusioned with the wholeconcept. In 1282 Edward I twice granted London temporary pontage tolls,215 which

were by then becoming established as the new method to deal with problems ofbridge repair. The initial tolls were simple,216 but when new tolls were granted in1299, the list of items to be taxed is complex and includes the hides of sheep andlambs,217 so it seems implausible that the bridge should already have had apermanent toll on wool. But, to repeat, the short answer about this aspect of thestory is there simply no evidence for it.218

Another explanation of the origin of the bridge’s endowment comes from thesixteenth-century antiquarian John Leland. Leland was a poet and a scholar, a servantof Henry VIII, and a collector of information about manuscripts and antiquities ofall sorts. He travelled through England, initially on the king’s business, and gatheredall the information he could about the places he visited, with the intention of turning

it all into an enormous book about the king’s realm that he would present to theking. The result is a marvellous source for the state of England at the time of theReformation, especially because he showed a keen and admirable interest in bridges.Unfortunately, the Itineraries are, for the most part, fragmentary, because Lelandsoon lapsed into insanity, to which the scale of the work he had undertaken, as wellas the death of the king, may have contributed.219 One of the sections that is missingfrom the work as it survives is the section on London. This is especially unfortunatebecause Leland was a Londoner and spent most of his life based there. In the sectionat the end of the manuscript, however, among the miscellaneous notes that he neverhad a chance to work into coherent form, is a note about London Bridge:

A cardinale (Drapar) and archepisshope of Cantorbyri gave a 1000.markes or li. to the erectynge of London bridge.Kynge John gave certeyne vacant places in London to builde on forbuildinge and reparation of London Bridge.

A mason beinge master of the bridge howse buildyd à fundamentis thechapell on London Bridge à fundamentis propriis impensis .220

213 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 37. In this case the tolls were granted to compensate the monksfor the loss of ferry fees caused by the building of the wooden bridge; this complication mayexplain why the king’s grant did not bring about the intended result.

214

Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 96.215 Patent Rolls, Edward I, ii, 10, 30.216 PRO C66/101, membranes 18 and 9.217 PRO C66/119, membrane 29.218 The closest we can come to evidence is a grant by King John in 1214 that earnest-pennies taken

from foreign merchants be given to the bridge; Rotuli litterarum clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati ,ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy, I (London, 1833), 140, 159. For the aid provided by King John in 1202,see below, p. 117.

219 John Chandler, John Leland’s Itinerary: Travels in Tudor England (Stroud, 1993), introduction;Gransden, Historical Writing , II, 472–8. On the value of Leland’s work, see also Caroline Brett,‘John Leland and the Anglo-Norman Historian’, Anglo-Norman Studies 11 (1988), 59–76: Brettcomments that when looking at the Anglo-Norman period ‘in Leland’s source-criticism, his lack ofa sense of anachronism is evident’, p. 64.

220 John Leland, The Itinerary , ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, V (London, 1910), 6. The word ‘Drapar’ is

interlined.




116

The second of the two stories makes perfect sense and fits with what we know from

more reliable sources, as we shall see below. The story of the cardinal and the

archbishop has been much repeated, but has the look of a local tradition rather than

reliable evidence. The hesitation about whether the two men gave 1000 marks or£1000 suggests that Leland did not get this story from reliable documentary

evidence. Given the connection of the bridge to Canterbury that was secured

through the establishment of the bridge chapel in honour of Thomas Becket, it is

easy to understand how such a story might grow up. The third story about the mason

is so vague as to be little use. The bridge chapel probably existed on the stone bridge

from the beginning – Peter Colechurch was buried in it – and there is nothing

unusual in the notion that it might have been built by an individual out of his own

expenses. Above all, however, it is important to remember that the story is again a

three-hundred-year-old tradition by the time it gets to Leland, so it does not help us

much. After these three comments, Leland leaves a blank page; this was his practice

when he could not find out more about the subject,221 so this evidently was theextent of his knowledge about the origins of London Bridge.

Leland was followed in his endeavours by John Stow. Stow was an antiquarian at

the time when it was becoming dangerous to be an antiquarian. In the second half of

the sixteenth century, antiquarian societies were banned and individuals, including

Stow, fell under suspicion that their interest in old things might be connected to

Catholic sympathies.222 Stow, like Leland, was a Londoner, and is now most famous

for his Survey of London . He has more to say about the origins of the bridge, and has

become the major source for antiquarians that have followed. He had read Leland

and follows him in part, enlarging on what he found, but had other sources too. He

gives the name of the archbishop as Richard and adds that the cardinal in question

was a legate in England.223 This extra information has allowed more recent

antiquarians to identify the two people as Archbishop Richard of Dover (1173–84)

and Cardinal Hugo of Petraleone, who was sent to England as legate in 1176.224 All

this fits happily with the date of 1176 given in the Annals (and repeated by Stow) for

the start of work on the stone bridge. Little confidence should be placed in this

formulation, however, as it rests entirely on Leland’s ambivalent repeating of local

tradition.225 Stow also adds that ‘this worke to wit, the Arches, Chaple & stone bridge

ouer the riuer of Thames at London , hauing beene 33. yeares in building was in the

yeare 1209. finished by the worthy Marchants of London , Serle Mercer, William

221 Chandler, John Leland’s Itinerary , p. xxxii.222 Chibnall, The Debate on the Norman Conquest (Manchester, 1999), pp. 32–4; David C. Douglas,

English Scholars (London, 1939), pp. 130–31; Gransden, Historical Writing , II, 470, 476–7. Stowhimself was twice accused of treason: Tudor England: An Encyclopedia , ed. Arthur F. Kinney andDavid Swain (New York, 2001), pp. 675–6.

223 Stow, Survey , ed. Kingsford, I, 23. He does not give the cardinal’s name as ‘Drapar’, which suggeststhat the interlined name in Leland’s manuscript was added after Stow’s time.

224 [Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge , 2nd edn, p. 46.225 Stow’s unreliability can be shown in other ways; he states that while the stone bridge was being

built ‘the course of the riuer, for the time, was turned an other way about by a Trench cast for thatpurpose, beginning as is supposed East about Radriffe , and ending in the West about Patricksey , nowtermed Batersey ’; Stow, Survey , ed. Kingsford, I, 23; this engineering miracle was quite beyond theabilities of twelfth-century engineers and does not accord with what is known of the construction

of the bridge in its finished form; see Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 34–6.



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Almaine , and Benedict Botewrite , principall Maisters of that worke’.226 These names,associated with some of the great families of London, are otherwise unconnected tothe bridge, but again we may be hearing local tradition.227 Perhaps, however, the

most we can be confident in saying is that by the time we get to the early thirteenthcentury it seems that the bridge was the object of charitable donations by citizens.In fact, it was Isembert of Saintes who brought with him a solution for the future

financing of the bridge, just as he brought the technical know-how to get the jobdone. As the king’s letter states, ‘we will and grant that the rents and profits of thebuildings that the masters of scholars shall build on the bridge shall be used torebuild, complete, and sustain the bridge in perpetuity’.228 Isembert had constructedhouses on the bridge at La Rochelle to pay for that bridge,229 and this was a methodused routinely already in France where stone bridges were becoming the norm.230 Weknow, moreover, that one of the buildings erected on the bridge was a chapel.References to the fire of 1212 in several sources refer to the damage done to it.231

The building of a chapel confirms that the stone bridge was an object of charity. We also see King John acknowledging this fact. When he informed the Londoners ofhis appointment of Isembert to the work at London Bridge, he also states that bridge‘cannot be completed without the help of you and others’.232 Again, John wasfollowing the practice he had learned on the Continent. The same bridges thatIsembert had built on the Continent, at La Rochelle and Saintes, had been built bythe ‘alms of the faithful ( de elemosinis fidelium )’ encouraged by John.233 The chapel onthe bridge would serve, as chapels did on bridges across Europe, as the clearing-house for such charity, and the priest or priests employed there would serve as apermanent staff for the raising, collection and expending of such alms.

Where does this leave the antiquarians’ hero, Peter Colechurch? While I have

downplayed his role here, understanding his position is crucial to understanding theorigins of the bridge endowment. Beyond the late and fragmentary references toPeter in the annals mentioned above, there is more solid evidence about him. Thisevidence suggests that Peter’s role was not that of master builder, but rather ofmaster fundraiser.234 In 1205, by letters close and patent King John transferredcustody of the bridge to a monk called Wace, his almoner, and others appointed by

226 Stow, Survey , ed. Kingsford, I, 23.227 Home, Old London Bridge , p. 332.228 Patent Rolls, John, 9.229 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 75; the phrase used in the La Rochelle document is ‘circa pontem’

(as opposed to the unambiguous ‘super pontem’ in the London document), but we know that LaRochelle as well as other bridges had houses upon it, so it is reasonable to conclude that is what ismeant; Patent Rolls, John, 9; also printed in Recueil de texts relatifs à l’histoire de l’architecture et à lacondition des architectes en France au moyen âge , II, ed. Victor Mortet and Paul Deschamps (Paris, 1929),194.

230 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , pp. 75, 166.231 Brett, ‘Annals’, p. 306.232 Patent Rolls, John, 9.233 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 37; Patent Rolls, John, 9; Receuil , II, ed. Mortet and Deschamps,

194.234 The sources never refer to Peter as an engineer or as a mason or of anything of the sort. This is in

marked contrast to a passing reference to ‘Geoffrey Ingeniator’ who was paid for repairing twoarches of the bridge in 1129/30; Magnum rotulum scaccarii vel magnum rotulum pipæ de anno tricesimo-

primo regni Henrici Primi , ed. Joseph Hunter (London, 1833) [reprinted as The Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I,

Michaelmas 1130 (London, 1929)], p. 144.




118

the mayor of London. The letters refer explicitly to Peter Colechurch, suggesting that Wace hold the bridge in the same way that Peter had held it. The letter patent refersto Peter as ‘warden of the fabric of the bridge ( custos operis predicti pontis )’.235 The

phrase opus pontis is that same phrase that was used in France at the time in grants ofland for bridges.236 And, indeed, we know that charitable activities had been going onin connection to the bridge long before Isembert became involved in the project.

The Pipe Roll for 1179/80 mentions (without, of course, any explanation) five gildae

de ponte , each with a named alderman.237 Similarly, there exists a grant of indulgencefrom Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London 1163–87, for those contributing alms for therepair of London Bridge.238 It is probable then that Peter, as chaplain of St Mary’s,Colechurch, a church near the bridge, sought to raise alms for the new bridge andthus became the first warden of what was to become the Bridge Trust.239 In the end,the Waverly Annals tell us that Peter died in 1205 and was buried in the BridgeChapel. This information is an addition to the manuscript at the foot of a page, so

may once again be a late tradition,240 but that Peter was buried in the chapel couldhave been confirmed by travellers who visited the chapel and saw his tomb.241

As far as the trust is concerned, we are on firm ground already by the middle ofthirteenth century. The records of the Trust itself, as constituted in the later Middle

Ages, look back to the early thirteenth century.242 From the middle of the thirteenthcentury, wills survive recording substantial grants to the bridge.243 The existence of acorporation holding these lands is confirmed once and for all by politicalshenanigans. After the Barons’ Revolt of 1258–65, Henry III removed the

wardenship of the bridge from the hands of the citizens of London as a punishmentfor their political choices. He granted the wardenship to his queen, Eleanor ofProvence, who had been pelted with rotten food and stones from the bridge as she

tried to go from the Tower to Windsor a few years earlier.244 The grant of the bridgeto the vengeful queen stands almost alone in my knowledge as an attempt to use an

235 Patent Rolls, John, 58. The Close Roll does not give a title, but says that Wace and the others‘custodiant pontem’; Rotuli litterarum clausarum , ed. Hardy, I, 49.

236 Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , p. 18.237 The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twenty-Sixth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 1179–1180 ,

The Publications of the Pipe Roll Society 29 (London, 1908), pp. 153–4.238 The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot , ed. Z. N. Brooke, Adrian Morey and C. N. L. Brooke

(Cambridge, 1967), no. 418; the person collecting the alms is named only as R, and one manuscriptadds the causeway of Stratford; both of these facts suggest that this might have been a modelgrant, but this point does not affect the evidence that alms were being gathered for London Bridge

in the second half of the twelfth century.239 This re-interpretation of Peter’s role thus ends up being strikingly similar to Marjorie Nice Boyer’sre-assessment of the role of the ‘bridgebuilding brotherhood’ at Avignon: ‘The crucial function ofthe brothers, nevertheless, was the collection of funds. The solitary bit of evidence that Bénézet orthe fratres pontis ever had anything to do with the architectural end of the bridge is the statementthat he laid the first stone’; Marjorie Nice Boyer, ‘The Bridgebuilding Brotherhoods’, Speculum 39(1964), 635–50 at 640.

240 Brett, ‘Annals’, p. 305 and note; Annales monastici , ed. Luard, II, 256–7 and note.241 There are no contemporary references to his tomb, but see Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 300, 342;

and illustration in Watson et al., London Bridge: 2000 Years , p. 111.242 Brooke, London 800–1216 , p. 110. London Bridge: Selected Accounts and Rentals, 1381–1538 , ed.

Vanessa Harding and Laura Wright, London Record Society Publications 31 (London, 1995), pp.xxiv–v.

243 Home, Old London Bridge, p. 48.

244 Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 54–5, 60–62.



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English bridge for profit: in England, bridges, unlike ferries, were a liability, not an

asset, something to be shunned, not sought. The bridge by 1265 seems to have held

rich rents, so the wardenship was potentially a lucrative gift. The rents were,

however, designated for the repair of the bridge, so, if the profits were siphoned offfor other uses, the bridge would fall into disrepair. This is what quickly happened

once the bridge was in the queen’s hands, and it naturally became a sore point in

relations between the king and his capital.245 In the Hundred Rolls, the Londoners

complain that the bridge should be in the hands of the Londoners, but the queen is

holding it without warrant, and the bridge is in disrepair.246 Eventually, in 1281–82,

Edward I returned the wardenship to the Londoners and allowed some empty plots

in London to be built on in order to provide rents for the bridge.247 Such additional

funding was necessary, for in 1281 the king had granted his protection to alms

collectors travelling through the country on behalf of London Bridge. The reason

given was that the bridge had fallen into ‘a ruinous state, to the great danger of the

almost innumerable people dwelling thereon’.248 It seems, in other words, that it tooka while for the endowment to reach the levels needed to sustain the bridge;

nevertheless, the groundwork had been set for a permanent solution to the problem

of finance.

In short, the stone bridge at London was completed on the initiative of the king,

who drew from the knowledge he had gained in his French possessions, using a

French builder who employed French building techniques and introducing a French

method of financing the bridge. If this story of foreign involvement does not sit well

with the antiquarians, it does demonstrate the ways in which London was a

trailblazer in England.

The London model was followed, for example, at Newcastle upon Tyne. After the

old bridge was destroyed by fire in 1248, the bishop of Durham, who was

responsible for one third of the bridge, and the burgesses, who were responsible for

the other two thirds, appealed broadly across the kingdom for charitable

contributions in order to rebuild the bridge of stone. The result was a great variety of

charitable donations, including gifts of land and rents that were managed by a

guardian who was also master of the chapel on the bridge dedicated to Thomas

Becket.249 By 1364 rents bequeathed in the town amounted to twenty marks of which

one was paid to the chaplain and his clerk and the other ten to the master mason.250

245 De antiquis legibus liber. Chronica maiorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum , ed. Thomas Stapleton (London,1846), pp. 141–2; Gwyn A. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), p.86; Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 61–2.

246 Rotuli hundredorum temporis Henrici III et Edwardi I in Turri Londinensi et in Curia Receptae ScaccariiWestmonsterii asservati , I (London, 1812), 408, 410.

247 Home, Old London Bridge , pp. 63–4; Patent Rolls, Edward I, ii, 23–4; Dyson and Watson, ‘“LondonBridge is Broken Down”’ (as n. 184), p. 129.

248 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 422.249 Henry Bourne, The History of Newcastle upon Tyne: or, the Ancient and Present State of that Town

(Newcastle, 1736), pp. 127–31. See also, Eaton, ‘From Medieval Times’ (as n. 184), p. 37.

250 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 271–2.




120

The endowment was thus clearly insufficient and had to be supplemented by

numerous grants of tolls from that point on.251

A similar state of affairs occurred at Rochester. The bridge trust there came into

being after the old Roman bridge over the Medway finally collapsed in 1381. Thatsaid, as at London, it was King John who was the first to establish some kind of

permanent charitable endowment for Rochester Bridge. In response to an appeal for

aid from the bishop of Rochester, he gave 40s that the bishop used to build houses,

the rents from which financed the bridge.252 Although these houses were not on the

bridge itself, the solution offered by John looks like the one at London and, by

extension, like the Continental model that Isembert brought with him from La

Rochelle. In the case of Rochester, however, this modest endowment had proved

woefully inadequate, in part because it was not accompanied by a complete

reconstruction of the bridge. The old bridge, as we have seen, was in a parlous state

for most of the fourteenth century.

The first response of Richard II’s government after the collapse of the bridge inthe harsh winter of 1381 was to establish an inquest to seek to establish who had

been responsible for the upkeep of the bridge and to order them to do their duty.253

Such inquests had been established on several occasions through the fourteenth

century, the last one being in 1377.254 This time the impossibility of restoring the old

bridge was recognized. In March 1383 a decision was made to begin a new bridge on

a new site. The new bridge would be of stone, up-river at a more suitable site, and –

because of the change of location – longer.255 The king seems to have taken a

particular interest in the project: he specifically allowed those in charge of the inquest

to start the work of forcing people with timber for the rebuilding to hand it over,256

and in 1383 he directly ordered the collection of workmen for the new bridge.257 To

pay for this new structure, the king awarded the profits of the temporary ferry on the

site,258 ordered that moneys previously collected but not expended should be turned

over,259 and granted pontage tolls to be taken on the old bridge which had been

temporarily reconstructed as a foot-bridge.260 A new element was introduced,

however: soon after the decision to build from scratch, the king gave his protection

to alms collectors travelling to raise charitable contributions to pay for the new

structure.261 These efforts at spreading the word about the plight of the famous

bridge on the route to Canterbury and the Continent may well have attracted the

attention of Sir Robert Knolles, a knight from Cheshire, who became the chief

251

Patent Rolls, Edward III, viii, 556, xii, 29, xiv, 261, xv, 154, 326, 442, Richard II, i, 169, 326, ii, 342,485, iii, 367, iv, 204, 359, v, 387, vi, 149; Bourne, History of Newcastle , p. 130.252 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 315. 253 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 136.254 Patent Rolls, Richard II, i, 53; Brooks, ‘Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1381’ (as n. 143), p. 38.255 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’ (as n. 144), p. 44.256 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 221.257 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 239. The importance of the bridge is sufficient reason for the interest

of the king and his government, but it is intriguing to note that the king’s own tutor, Simon Burley, was one of the commissioners involved in the project; Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 240, 241, 506, iii,79.

258 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 5, 221, 235, 240, 241.259 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 262.260 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 308; Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, p. 44.

261 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 273, 275.



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benefactor and seems to have become involved with the project in a purely

disinterested manner, having no local interests.262 Knolles was joined as main

overseer of the project by Sir John Cobham, a local Kentish landholder, who had

been the lead commissioner on both the 1377 and 1382 inquests

263

and thus musthave long understood the practical problems of financing the work.

The bridge was completed by the 1390s.264 When the question of financing repair

of the new bridge was raised, it seems that appeal was made to those villages that had

been responsible for the up-keep of the old bridge, and the king was asked to agree

to such a request. The overseers of the project even developed a schedule by which

responsibility for the new bridge wad divided along similar lines to the old Anglo-

Saxon division. Although the contributors did initially provide some funds, after

1400 these sums disappear from the records of the bridge. The fact that the

overseers had to appeal to the king for several reconfirmations of these arrangements

between 1391 and 1399, and their terminations soon after, however, suggests that the

new division of responsibility was not popular.265 R. H. Britnell in his account of thebuilding of the bridge suggests that the re-imposition of the responsibilities was seen

as politically unwise in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt,266 and he is probably

right in a general sense; I would suggest, however, that the building of the bridge on

a new site meant that the local people felt that they had good grounds to refuse an

obligation that they would reinterpret as novel rather than customary.

Instead of the new bridge being maintained by obligations, it was maintained by

charitable donations to a bridge trust, or – more properly – a commonalty

established with the permission of the king. Britnell describes this process as

‘extending concepts more commonly associated with town government’.267 In 1399,

Richard II granted that the previous contributors should form a commonalty who

would elect wardens for the upkeep of the bridge.268 As the obligations in effect

lapsed shortly thereafter the responsibility for the appointment of the wardens and

the running of the bridge seems to have fallen instead on various interested local

gentry, although the process of appointing the early wardens is not clear.269 The king

continued to be involved, because under the provisions of the Statute of Mortmain

he had to grant permission for the new organisation to hold property. In 1395 he had

already granted to the contributors the right to acquire £200 worth of rents even

before the legal loose ends were tied up with the establishment of the fictive

commonalty. In the same grant, Richard II also allowed John Cobham to found a

chantry in the chapel that was built at one end of the bridge.270 The bridge quickly

acquired an endowment over the next few years,271

which is the basis of the Bridge Trust that survives to this day.

262 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, pp. 45–6.263 Patent Rolls, Richard II, i, 53, ii, 136.264 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, p. 47.265 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, pp. 50–51.266 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, p. 51.267 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, p. 53.268 Patent Rolls, Richard II, vi, 454.269 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, p. 56.270 Patent Rolls, Richard II, v, 550; Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, pp. 49–50.

271 Britnell, ‘Rochester Bridge, 1381–1530’, pp. 54–9.




122

Other bridges that were the subject of well organised charities include by the

fifteenth century the bridge over the Trent at Nottingham, on which stood a chapel

dedicated to St James, the wardens of which collected substantial bequests and sent

out alms collectors when needed.

272

Another example would be Bedford, which was to witness an unsavoury fight

between king and town in the early fourteenth century over the presentment of a

chaplain, so lucrative had the position become. In 1332, Edward III appointed John

de Derby as chaplain of the bridge of Bedford. The sheriff and two men-at-arms

were instructed to install him (which makes one wonder if they were expecting

trouble from the outset), but they were greeted by the townspeople, who, summoned

by the town bell, resisted the installation.273 What lay behind this little riot was a

dispute over who should appoint the chaplain. The town asserted that the

townspeople had built and endowed the bridge chapel, dedicated to Thomas Becket,

and consequently by custom and right, as they saw it, had appointed one John de

Bodenho to be the chaplain and warden of the bridge, with full control over thechapel’s rents and funds. John de Bodenho, after the events of 1333, brought a writ

of novel disseisin against John de Derby, alleging that he had usurped his position. John

de Derby’s answer was straightforward: it was the king, not the people of Bedford,

who appointed the chaplain. In 1336, an inquest was commissioned to get to the

bottom of it, and none too soon, because the people’s devotion towards towards the

chapel was understandably failing and, of more immediate importance, the bridge

was beginning to collapse for lack of repair while the parties squabbled.274 In 1340,

the king appointed another of his clerks, William de Abberbury, to be the chaplain,

replacing John de Derby.275 The argument was not at an end, however: in 1342,

another inquisition was commissioned on almost identical terms, except that this

time it is said that ‘the bridge is likely to become dangerous’.276 Later that year

William de Abberbury was declared the winner and was awarded £22 10s in damages

from John de Bodenho, which was deemed to represent the value of the

appointment for the two and a quarter years William had been excluded. Indeed, the

records of the case make clear what had been at stake. The chaplain controlled two

messuages, seventeen shops, three acres of land and 6d of rent.277 This judgment was

still not the end of the matter: in 1344, yet another inquisition was commissioned to

find out the particulars of the dispute, the only new detail being that the king insisted

that wished ‘to do justice’ for the people of Bedford, which suggests that their

intransigence about custom had made the king realise that compromise was

272 The bridge-wardens’ accounts of 1457–61 are reprinted in Records of the Borough of Nottingham being aseries of extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Nottingham , II, King Henry IV to King Richard III,1399–1485 , ed. W. H. Stevenson (London, 1883), 220–22, 244–6, 364–8; for the appointment bythe town of alms collectors for the bridge in 1467, see ibid., ii, 264–6.

273 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 351. In October of the same year, an unnamed warden receivedprotection for the collecting of alms for the bridge; presumably it was John de Derby who was thatunnamed warden, given that he was the king’s appointee and the king was granting protection:ibid., ii, 360.

274 Patent Rolls, Edward III, iii, 361–2.275 Patent Rolls, Edward III, iv, 448.276 Patent Rolls, Edward III, v, 447.

277 Patent Rolls, Edward III, v, 522–7.



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necessary.278 Over the next few years the king continued to appoint chaplains for the

bridge.279 In 1349, the chaplain requested and received a grant of both pontage and

pavage to be collected by the people of the town at the chaplain’s advice, 280 which

sounds as if relations between chaplain and town had improved. It is unfortunate tosee that ten years later the king had to repeat the grant of pontage (not the pavage)

because nothing had been done about the first grant.281 It is possible, however, that it

was the Black Death rather than continuing bad feeling that caused such inactivity. A

hint that things were still not running smoothly occurs in 1366. In August, the king

appointed one of his clerks, Richard de Bedyk, to replace John of Tamworth, the

younger, who had been chaplain since 1348. The mayor and bailiffs of the town were

ordered to install him. Two weeks later, however, another order was sent out, this

time to the bishop of Lincoln, instructing him to install David de Wollore in the

chapel, after he had exchanged benefices with Richard de Bedyk. Then, in October,

the king appointed John of Tamworth, son of John of Tamworth, the younger, to

the position, David de Wollore having resigned.282 In 1368, John of Tamworth, theyounger, was reappointed; this time the grant specifies that the appointment was for

life and was accompanied by another mandate to the mayor and bailiffs. 283 Of

course, such changes of personnel may have many reasons, but it might not be

stretching the evidence too far to suggest that the people of Bedford continued to

harbour some resentment against the king’s appointees long after the king had won

the legal battle.284

Despite such fracas, the necessity of such an appointment is evident. Without

someone deputed to handle money and arrangements for repair, charity, however

well meaning it might be, could be useless. In 1316, an inquest was taken into

Kegworth Bridge on the borders for Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire: gifts of

timber and money had gone to waste because no-one was supervising repairs.285

And, moreover, trusts not only allowed a measure of permanence to charitable

repair efforts, but allowed charity to be applied to bridge repair in a less local manner

through the work of alms collectors. In the Patent Rolls, there are many grants of

protection for agents of one trust or another travelling across the country seeking

alms for the work.286 The agents would appear in churches during services with

episcopal permission to appeal for funds. Bishops, moreover, granted indulgences to

those who gave alms. A study of bishops’ registers suggests that the appeals were not

confined to narrow regional spheres, but spread out across the country: the register

278

Patent Rolls, Edward III, vi, 404. In 1345, the warden again received protection for the collectingof alms; ibid., vi, 547. 279 Patent Rolls, Edward III, viii, 214, x, 476.280 Patent Rolls, Edward III, viii, 254.281 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xi, 252.282 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiii, 307, 317.283 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiv, 149. It is difficult to know whether there is some confusion in the

rolls or in the calendars between the various Johns of Tamworth (but a better argument for clericalcelibacy, I haven’t seen).

284 The king was appointing to the position in a routine way again by the end of the century: PatentRolls, Richard II, vi, 145.

285 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 55; the failure of charitable efforts at repair led to grants ofpontage instead: Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 394, 511, iii, 150.

286 e.g., Patent Rolls, Henry III, iv, 120, 125, 213, 449, 468, 651; Edward I, i, 396, 422; Edward II, 314,

401, 502, iv, 134, v, 61.




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of John Waltham, bishop of Salisbury, 1388–95, for example, includes not only

indulgences for several bridges inside in diocese, but also indulgences for a bridge at

Warton-in-Kendal, Lancashire,287 and Shincliffe, County Durham.288 The former

indulgence requires parish priests to allow the alms collectors to explain the plight ofthe bridge during Sunday Mass, other festivals ‘and at other times and places when

most of the fold were present’, superseding sermons by friars.289 What is more, the

clergy were to ‘promote business by word and example’.290 What would the alms

collectors say to the parishioners? Presumably they would have made good use of the

letters of protection and indulgence from king and bishop. But, beyond that, they

must have told harrowing stories of the perils of the bridge in question and appealed

to a real sense of pious concern about endangered travellers.

Here perhaps we are in the most foreign territory. We might like to ask why did

the congregation, when faced with such appeals, not feel a righteous indignation

against the people who lived near the bridge, who were not repairing it as they

should; or why they did not ask why the king did not take such projects under hisdirect supervision. In the Patent Rolls, there are right next to each other apparently

contradictory orders. One day the king is granting his protection to alms collectors

for one bridge, the next day he is ordering an inquest to demand why the people of a

district have not repaired their bridge; on the third he is granting tolls for the repair

of another bridge. The three bridges may be very close to each other, of similar

construction and usefulness, but the rules are different. For example, on 30 August

1328 Edward III granted pontage for the Trent Bridge at Nottingham;291 the very

next day he ordered an inquisition into the obligations to maintain another bridge in

Nottinghamshire, that over the River Idle on the main road to the North between

Blyth and Tuxford.292 The answer to this apparent paradox may lie in medieval

people’s extraordinary awareness of their own obligations; if bridge-building

obligations existed people knew about them, and, if not, no-one would happily be

compelled to pay. And, of course, it lies in a whole-hearted acceptance of bridge

repair as a proper act of charity.

Bridge trusts were the most complex form of charity connected to bridges, but it

should be remembered that they existed amid much simpler forms. On the simplest

level, hermits undertook to repair bridges, or even to build them from scratch.293

This could be a large undertaking, involving many people: in 1335, a hermit named

John le Mareshcal was granted protection from the king while he sought alms to pay

287

The Register of John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, 1388–1395 , ed. T. C. B. Timmins, The Canterburyand York Society 80 (London, 1994), no. 40.288 Register of John Waltham , ed. Timmins, no. 266. This grant specifies that it ratifies indulgences

granted by other bishops, suggesting a concerted effort on the part of the bridge warden to musterhelp across the country; see also the case of Hail Bridge on the borders of Bedfordshire andHuntingdonshire, for the repair of which there were indulgences ‘of divers bishops’; Calendar ofInquisitions Miscellaneous , IV, 23.

289 On the role of sermons in parish life, see Katherine L. French, The People of the Parish: CommunityLife in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), 177–80.

290 Register of John Waltham , ed. Timmins, no. 40, cp. no. 17.291 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 318.292 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 350.293 Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914), pp. 57–65. And for a brief

discussion of a hermit repairing a road, see Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval

England (Berkeley, 1985), pp. 209–10.



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for the causeway he was building between Blyth and Mattersey (Nottinghamshire),

the money not just being to keep himself but also all the other men employed in the

work.294 Likewise, Peter de Whitteleye, another hermit, was in charge of the repair of

the causeway between Beckingham and Newark.

295

The next year similar protection was given to Thomas, hermit of Skitbrig, ‘who has expended large sums for the

repair of the bridges and causeys across the moor of Hessay’.296 The line between

solitary hermits acting out of enthusiasm and more organised charitable bridge-work

could therefore be quite fine: in 1344, a hermit was given custody of the chapel on

the bridge at Stratford-by-Bow 297 and presumably he acted as bridge warden,

supervising the distribution of alms for repair just as more conventional chaplains

did elsewhere. In other words, the hermits might in effect be the wardens of little

bridge trusts. In one case, such a small endowment of this kind was given by the

king: in 1384, Richard II gave custody of a bridge over the River Dart in Devon plus

some land next to it for a house to Robert Carlel, who was inspired to rebuild the

bridge.298 And, just as other forms of charity could be abused, so some hermits wereregarded with suspicion: the hermitage at the far end of the Dee Bridge at Chester

became known as a den of thieves, and William Langland, who elsewhere urges the

charitable good of repairing bridges, lambastes false hermits who have abandoned

honest labour in the name of repairing roads, but in truth to live off the alms.299

Another simple form of charity came from the other end of the social scale: at

times the kings granted materials directly for the repair of bridges. In 1329, 1380 and

again in 1383, the people of Hereford were allowed to take stone from the king’s

quarry for their bridge.300 In 1329 they were also allowed to take twelve oaks from

the king’s forest for the work.301 The king also allowed those building the new bridge

at Rochester to take lime for the making of cement.302 In 1363, the king ordered the

sheriff of Nottingham to collect masons, carpenters, sawyers and others for the

repair of the Trent Bridge at Nottingham and also ordered the foresters of Sherwood

Forest to provide all necessary timber.303

As mentioned above, people left money in their wills for the repair of bridges.304

Such legacies meant that it was not just hermits who became involved. Widows turn

294 Patent Rolls, Edward III, iii, 72; Swanson, Religion and Devotion , pp. 129–30.295 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 553.296 Patent Rolls, Edward III, iii, 337.297 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vi, 352.298 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 380.299

Langland, Piers Plowman: An Edition of the C-Text , ed. Pearsall, ix.203–13 (as n. 170); Clay, Hermitsand Anchorites , pp. 61–2.300 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 472, Richard II, i, 563, ii, 225.301 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 472.302 Patent Rolls, Richard II, iii, 377.303 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 314–15. This order constitutes possibly the most active intervention

by a king in the late Middle Ages; it is perhaps therefore not surprising that two months later theking seems to have changed his mind and instead ordered the sheriff to ask the builders if theythought that building a bridge on a new site was a good idea; he furthermore ordered the sheriff tofind out what had become of the bequests made for the repair of the bridge and to spend thatmoney on it – no mention is made of the king’s timber; Patent Rolls, Edward III, x ii, 365.

304 e.g., the will of Robert Squire of Nottingham in 1411, which includes a provision for 20s to bedonated to the bridge over the Trent; Records of the Borough of Nottingham , II, ed. Stevenson, 82. Seealso the examples in Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , pp. 193, 226, 249, 252, 268, 271, 278, 306–

7, 311.




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up in the records in charge of bridge repair, presumably as the executors of their late

husbands’ wills.305 This is good news because it means that this section of my story

has a heroine. Alice Palmer led the extremely complicated project to repair the Trent

Bridge outside Nottingham and, indeed, to build a further bridge and causeway tothe south.306 This was one of the major bridges of the kingdom, carrying one of the

most important north-south routes across the largest river of central England.

Palmer appears in the record because she was the recipient of repeated grants of

royal protection that enabled her to carry out her work and to seek alms for it, as well

as grants of tolls, not to mention a personal exemption from royal taxation in

recognition of her good work.307 Palmer’s work seems to have brought her into

conflict with the burgesses of Nottingham. Tolls taken on the bridge were

overlapping with similar tolls taken to repair the walls of the town,308 and there were

suggestions that the tolls were being misappropriated.309 Tension probably also arose

from the fact that the Trent Bridge adjoined a smaller bridge over the River Leen,

right next to Nottingham itself. The smaller bridge was maintained – from timeimmemorial – by levies taken on the whole county.310 This system was a source of

endless discord, and the sight of charity and royal protection being given to the work

on the other bridge must have caused questions to be raised. Tension also arose over

tolls that the burgesses had been granted for the repair of the town’s wall, which

overlapped with the bridge tolls and had to be suspended until the bridge was

completed.311 It is difficult to reconstruct the arguments that must have occurred,

but Palmer continued the work for thirty years, surviving a royal investigation into

the finances312 and eventually passing the job on to others.313

Alice Palmer’s work, coordinating charity and seeking the king’s involvement in

the form of protection and of tolls, shows how charity might be a solution to the

problem of financing bridge repair, but also how flawed a solution it was. Palmer

provided continuity, and the fund-raising seems to have been energetic and not

unsuccessful in itself: the project of building a new causeway is evidence enough of

that. Nevertheless, the whole process was marked with discord and confusion. And,

in the end, the bridge was still in disrepair and without sufficient funds for its

upkeep. Within thirty years of the end of Alice Palmer’s work, the bridge collapsed

completely.

305 See Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 55 (not a widow acting for a deceased husband in thiscase, but a widow executing a will and repairing a bridge for the sake of the soul of the departed).

306 Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 115; Patent Rolls, Edward II, iv, 381.307 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 169, 344, iii, 1, 378, iv, 129, 262, Edward III, i, 188.308 Patent Rolls, Edward II, iii, 600, iv, 49. A similar problem had occurred in London some years

before, and there too murage took precedence over pontage; Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 495–6, ii,295.

309 Patent Rolls, Edward II, iv, 381, Edward III, i, 221.310 See above, pp. 50–51, 54–6.311 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 273.312 A new grant of pontage followed both investigations, so Alice must have been exonerated; Patent

Rolls, Edward II, v, 62, Edward III, i, 318.313 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 455 (protection for those collecting alms for the bridge without

mention of Alice).



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Pontage

The third and final solution that was used in the Middle Ages for the repair of

bridges is one that is familiar to us today: tolls. Behind such apparent familiarity,however, lie logic and methods that are peculiarly medieval and show the limitations

of royal action and the legal devices to which kings had to resort in order to get their

way. In order for the functioning and purpose of pontage tolls to be understood

properly, they must be placed alongside their counterpart for roads: pavage tolls.

They were granted on the same underlying logic; they were applied in the same way;

and between them they served as the most creative means at the disposal of the king

in repairing the medieval road network. What follows will therefore draw from

examples of both.

The fifteenth-century Ballad of Robin Hood and the Potter opens with Robin and his

merry men standing on a nice summer’s day, when a ‘proud potter’ comes hastening

into sight.

‘Yonder comet a prod potter’, seyde Roben,

‘That long hayt hantyd this wey;

He was never so corteys a man

One peney of pawage to pay’.314

Robin then takes it upon himself to demand the proper pavage from the potter. As

in other tales of Robin Hood, this is, of course, a humorous pretext for Robin to rob

a passer-by; but why is it funny? Why did the audience of this ballad appreciate

Robin’s motives? What, in short, was the pavage that Robin demanded?

The simplest definitions of pontage and pavage are simple indeed; pontage andpavage were, respectively, tolls taken for the repair of bridges and paving. They are

two examples of a range of such tolls levied in late medieval England to finance

building work – the most common others being murage for the repair of walls and

quayage for the repair of harbours; the rarest being barbicanage granted on a unique

occasion to Southampton for – guess what – the repair of a barbican.315

There are a number of qualifications that have to be made to these simple

definitions of pontage and pavage, however. In the case of pontage, there are two

areas of possible ambiguity: first, the word pontage has also been used to mean the

monetary realization of land-based bridge-building obligations. It is in this sense that

early modern writers use the word in talking of the pontage lands of Cambridgeshire,

the estates that owed dues for the upkeep of the Great Bridge of Cambridge. 316 Thesecond ambiguity of the word pontage comes from its use to mean the dues from

wharves or gangways for the loading and unloading of ships. It was in this sense that

Richard Englys was granted the pontage of the port of Calais in 1347. 317 Neither of

314 ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’, l. 20; Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren (Kalamazoo, 1997).

315 In 1341 an inquest was instructed to look into the distr ibution of funds collected from this toll, which had been awarded by Edward II; Patent Rolls, Edward III, v, 312.

316 e.g., Annals of Cambridge , ed. Cooper, iv (as n. 154), 150, citing a dispute of 1718.317 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vii, 558. For the early use of pontaticum and other related words on the

Continent, and for the possible meanings of the word, see Alain J. Stoclet, ‘Immunes ab omni teloneo’:




128

these meanings of the word is of interest here. Pavage, on the other hand, has beenused to mean not only tolls for the paving of city streets, but also tolls for the repairof cross-country highways.318

The first pontage grant was for the bridge at Ferrybridge in 1228;

319

the firstpavage grant was to Beverley in 1249.320 766 grants of pontage and pavage weremade by the kings of England before 1400; 371 of pontage, 395 of pavage, of whichlatter group 325 were for city streets and 70, predominately after 1350, for highways.

They are listed in the patent rolls, the Chancery rolls that record the letters patentsent out by the king on matters that were of public concern. The words pontage andpavage do not appear in the grants themselves, but only in the titles appended in themargins of the rolls; the word pontagium first appears in this context in 1279;321 the

word pavagium in 1286.322 The grants were made to towns and cities collectively in thepersons of their bailiffs and good men, to named individuals and to lords of towns,both ecclesiastic and lay. In a few cases, however, the tolls were not granted but

simply ordered to be taken. These tolls were granted by the king for a fixed period oftime.323 The grants are very formulaic; they record the circumstances of the grant – in the

case of pontage, the fact that the bridge in question is in need of repair for thegreater safety of passers-by, in the case of pavage that the town needs to beimproved; they record the items to be taxed and the rates; finally, they order thecollectors to take the tolls under the terms set out for the period stated. The items to

étude de diplomatique, de philologie et d’histoire sur l’exemption de tonlieux au haut moyen âge et spécialement surla Praeceptio de navibus (Brussels, 1999), pp. 149n, 163, 169n.

318 On the history of tolls on the Continent, see François L. Ganshof, ‘À Propos du Tonlieu à

l’Epoque Carolingienne’ in La Citta nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di Studi del Centro italiano di studisull'alto medioevo 6 (Spoleto, 1959), pp. 485–508; idem , ‘À Propos du Tonlieu sous lesMerovingiens’ in Studi in onore di Amintore Fanfani , I, Antichità e alto medioevo (Milan, 1962), 291–325;and Stoclet, ‘Immunes ab omni teloneo’ .

319 Patent Rolls, Henry III, ii, 173.320 Patent Rolls, Henry III, iv, 46.321 PRO C66/98 (7 Edward I), membrane 4. The word pontagium could mean ‘bridge toll’ before this

date: in a writ of 1155, Henry II refers to the thelonium , passagium and pontagium taken atBoroughbridge; cited in Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 207; in a charter of c. 1254 Simonde Montford gave up the right to take pontagium or ‘Bridgesilver’ on the bridges of Leicester inreturn for some land and rents given by the burgesses of the town; Records of the Borough of Leicester,being a series of extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of Leicester, 1103–1327 , ed. Mary Bateson(London, 1899), pp. 46–9.

322

PRO C66/105 (14 Edward I), membrane 19.323 Again, there are a couple of qualifications to be made here. In a couple of known cases, pontage was taken without the king’s warrant (at least as far as it is possible to know). One, at Bungay(Norfolk), is revealing. There the responsibility for some bridges was split between the lord andlocal villages; the lord was, however, taking pontagium on goods for sale, according to the villagers.

The lord acknowledged that he was liable to provide timber for the bridges, but claimed that the villagers were responsible for collecting the timber and affecting the repairs, in return for whichthey were quit of toll (‘quieti … de tolneto’) in the town. The villagers had, however, had refusedto do the work. What is unsaid in the record, but seems to be implied, is that the villagers felt thatthe lord, because of his toll, should be required to do everything – in other words, it seems thatthey thought that the toll was illegal. The final judgment found in favour of the lord withoutmentioning the toll, but did specify that he find the timber from his own woods, as if suggestingthat he should absorb the costs himself; Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 142–6. A second example issimpler: there is a record of pavage taken near Aylesbury apparently by grant of Richard II, but

there is no record of it in the Patent Rolls; Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 25–7.



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be taxed and the rates at which they were to be taxed are too formulaic to permitmuch analysis of individual grants: it would not be safe, for instance, to postulate theexistence of a thriving trade in squirrel skins in Droitwich from the taxing of their

sale in the town,

324

since squirrel skins are taxed in many of the grants. Thus, onlythe most general remarks can be made about the terms. For example, the place withthe most elaborate list of spices to be taxed was London, which would seem to fit

with London’s more cosmopolitan nature.325 The types of loads specified – cart-loads versus wain-loads versus pack-horse loads – tend to confirm John Langdon’sobservations about the earlier dominance of horse-drawn carts in the South-East.326 Only in an early grant to the Irish town of Drogheda is mention made of man-loads.327 In this context, mention may also be made of peculiar subjects of taxation;in the 1280s a number of grants include tolls on passing Jews.328 Similarly, the city ofCarlisle took special pontage from Scots.329

The tolls are of a dizzying complexity. The grants vary from ninety-six classes of

items to be assessed in London in 1305330 to the simple provision for Nantwich in1277 that half a penny be taken from each passing cart.331 The average grant hassome thirty or so items. The grants show no sign of becoming simpler as time goesby. It is difficult to imagine how most the tolls were collected. Lists of items to beassessed seem to require an expertise on the part of the collector in determining thedifference between kinds of spices, between kinds of fish, between kinds of clothand so on. The complexity of the terms must have precipitated incessant argument,negotiation and compromise between toll collector and toll payer: when roof nailsare taxed at a different rate from ordinary nails, when herring are taxed by thethousand,332 there must be room for interpretation and disagreement. In one aspectat least the tolls are consistent: they are on goods for sale or to be sold, 333 and the

quantities are such as to indicate that the tolls were aimed at merchants, not at thesmall-scale customers. This too, however, could lead to disputes. Were goods for saleor were they not? For instance, in 1315, the borough court of Nottingham had todecide a case between William Bathley and William Metel, as to whether Metel hadthe right to take pontage on Bathley’s carts, the question hinging on whether there

was any merchandise amid the wood in the carts.334 The tolls also seem to have been

324 e.g., PRO C66/145 (9 Edward II, Part II), membrane 15.325 PRO C66/153 (14 Edward II, Part I).326 John Langdon, ‘Horse Hauling: a Revolution in Vehicle Transport in Twelfth- and Thirteenth

England?’, Past and Present , no. 103 (May 1984), 37–66; idem , Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation:

The Use of Draught Animals in English Farming from 1066 to 1500 (Cambridge, 1986).327 PRO C66/148 (11 Edward II, Part I), membrane 12.328 PRO C66/98 (7 Edward I), membrane 4; C66/100 (9 Edward I), membrane 29; C66/103 (12

Edward I), membrane 8. (The last of these grants was in 1294 after the expulsion of the Jews, which further suggests the formulaic nature of the terms).

329 PRO C66/327 (12 Richard II, Part II), membrane 19.330 PRO C66/127 (34 Edward I), membrane 25.331 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 233.332 e.g., both the distinction among nails and the counting of herring by the thousand may be found in

the pavage grant for Atherstone, 1343: PRO C66/209 (17 Edward III, Part I), membrane 42.333 Once the tolls fall into a consistent formula, almost all of the grants include the stipulation that the

goods in question should be for sale in their preamble; even before the formula is established, eachitem in the list to be assessed is specified as venalis .

334 Records of the Borough of Nottingham being a series of extracts from the Archives of the Corporation of

Nottingham , I, King Henry II to King Richard II, 1155–1399 , ed. W. H. Stevenson (London, 1882), 82.




130

aimed at those merchants coming regularly to the bridge or market, as some itemsare taxed on a weekly basis. As a result, we also have records of disputes about thesettling of accounts. In 1299, there was a quarrel on London Bridge about the

payment of tolls that led to the drawing of knives.

335

And, in a more orderly manner,the Fine Rolls record the seizing of a dish for non-payment of an overdue pavageaccount in Cambridge.336 A further point of contention was the honouring of generalexemptions from toll. The Memoranda Rolls of London record the frequent sendingof letters to other towns protesting against the failure of those towns to respect theblanket immunity that London citizens enjoyed against toll throughout thekingdom.337 On the other hand, they also record that in 1328 three emissaries arrivedfrom Salisbury with writ and newly acquired charter to demand their burgesses’freedom from pavage and murage in London.338 Religious houses also guarded theirrights jealously. After pavage, pontage and murage were granted to York in 1308,

violent disputes broke out between the mayor of the city and the officials of St

Mary’s Abbey and the Hospital of St Leonard over the collection of the tolls, sinceboth houses claimed exemptions.339

In all these ways, pontage and pavage seem to have been levies much as othertolls, and probably appeared as surcharges on top of other market dues (such asstallage and lastage).340 They were different, however, in that they were supposed toproduce tangible results. The merchants paying the tolls kept a wary eye out to see iftheir payments were being used properly, as the inquests into alleged fraudulentdiversion of proceeds suggest.341 (The simplest interpretation of the joke isconnected to such fraud: Robin Hood is filling the role of one of the notoriouslydishonest pavage collectors; like them, he takes money and builds nothing with it.)Pontage and pavage were also distinctive in that they were supposed to be temporary

tolls awarded for a set term. A pavage grant to Beverley (one of many that the townreceived) was revoked during its term because the paving of the town was perceivedto be complete.342 Suspicion about the honesty of toll-collectors leads to theinclusion in the grants of ever-more stringent clauses to ensure the properobservation of the terms: the grants come to include the phrase that ‘at the end ofthe aforesaid term the customs will cease and be utterly wiped out’;343 it is specifiedthat ‘the money is to be used in the [work] specified, and not in other uses’; 344 andoverseers were appointed for the work.345

335 Calendar of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls, preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the City of London at

the Guildhall, a.d. 1298–1307 , ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 31–2.336 Calendar of the Fine Rolls preserved in the PRO, I, Edward I, A. D. 1272–1307 (London, 1911), 314.337 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls preserved among the archives of the Corporation of the City of London at

the Guildhall, Rolls A1a–A9, a.d. 1323–1364, ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1926), pp. 9, 21, 26–7,37–8, 86–7, 169.

338 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls , ed. Thomas, p. 65. See also Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets (as n. 84), pp. 116–20.

339 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 129–30, 317, 370, 470–71.340 See Masschaele, Peasants, Merchants, and Markets , pp. 67–70.341 e.g., Patent Rolls, Edward III, iii, 283 (pavage at Cambridge); Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiii, 369

(pontage at Ripon).342 Patent Rolls, Richard II, iii, 404.343 e.g., PRO C66/130 (1 Edward I, Part II), membrane 9 (murage, pontage and pavage for York).344 e.g., PRO C66/297 (1 Richard II, Part I), membrane 1 (pontage for Yarm on the River Tees).

345 e.g., PRO C66/324 (11 Richard II, Part I), membrane 13 (pontage for Staines).



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If we turn to the question of why grants of pontage were made when they were,

we have to step back momentarily to consider the legal theory of the King’s

Highway. During the twelfth century, there were numerous efforts to reduce the

extent and importance of the King’s Highway, especially by asserting that there wereonly four of them because ancient kings had only built four.346 The new legal science

being learned from Bologna changed all such legal mythology. The 1220s were a

heady period for the new English lawyers of the king’s court.347 To begin with, they

were liberated by the fact that the king was an infant and therefore unable to impede

their creativity. Inspired by the end of the crisis of Magna Carta, they sought to

reclaim the rights of the king – or, as they would have seen it, of the crown – under

new principles derived from Roman law.348 Looking at a single practical aspect of the

law like the law of the highway makes the boldness with which these lawyers

appropriated the ideas and words of Roman law and asserted their validity in

England against all precedent to be quite breath-taking. The highlight of this process

is the great legal compilation that we know as Bracton, which was written some timejust before 1230.349

Bracton establishes two important principles that are essential to the grants of

pontage.350 The first is a new definition of the highway. Essentially it demonstrates

that the common way is the king’s highway, which implies that use establishes the

highway. If people use a road freely, it is the king’s highway, and, as the legal dictum

still has it in England, ‘once a highway, always a highway’. The flexibility of this

doctrine came to mean, of course, that effectively every road, no matter how small,

becomes the king’s highway. The second new principle comes straight out of the

Digest. The king’s highway is a ‘quasi-sacred thing’. This is a category of items that

pertain to the king and the king alone; they cannot be alienated, and so, if they seem

to have been alienated, the person claiming to own them must prove his ownership.

And, because time does not run against the king, custom cannot be used to

demonstrate ownership, and thus a written proof must be produced.351 Fleta, another

thirteenth-century legal treatise, in listing the articles of the eyre discusses crimes of

treason against the king and then goes on to list a lesser set of offences that ‘touch

the king in part’, but also affect private persons. This list stipulates that the justices in

346 Alan Cooper, ‘The King’s Four Highways: Legal Fiction meets Fictional Law’, Journal of Medieval

History 26 (2000), 351–70; idem , ‘The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Saxon Law of the Highway’,Haskins Society Journal 12 (2002), 39–69.347 D. A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 1–4, 336–7, 401–2.348 Just as Frederick Barbarossa had tried to do on the Continent a generation or two before; see Peter

Munz, Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 119–20 and David R. Carr,‘Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard League: Imperial Regalia, Prescriptive Rights, and theNorthern Italian Cities’, Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 10 (1989),29–49, esp. 41.

349 For the dat ing of Bracton, see Bracton , ed. Woodbine and Thorne, III, xiii–lii, esp. xxvii–xxix.350 For full details, see Alan Cooper, ‘Obligation and Jurisdiction: Roads and Bridges in Medieval

England (c. 700-1300)’, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard University, 1998, chapter 8.351 Contrary to the opinion of one nineteenth-century wag: ‘The goodness of a custom entirely

depends on nobody being able to say how it came to be a custom at all; and the moreunaccountable it is in its origin, the better it is for legal purposes’; Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, The

Comic Blackstone (London, 1866), p. 10.




132

eyre should inquire as to ‘new customs set up, by land or by water’.352 In other

words, if anyone were taking a toll on the king’s highway, he had to produce a

charter to prove his right to it. And, since we are only just entering the period of

comprehensive written records, most landholders would be unable to prove such aright. This situation is the background to the quo warranto inquests which were

conducted haphazardly under Henry III in the mid-thirteenth century and then

systematically under Edward I in the 1270s.

These rules were profitable to the king. For example, encroachments on the

roads, be they in the form of buildings erected across city streets or crops planted on

highways, were known as purprestures against the king, for which he could collect a

fine. If a landholder wished to enclose a road, he needed the king’s licence and had

to promise to provide a road of equal quality and utility to passers-by.353 Most

importantly for travellers, however, private tolls were limited.354 A couple of cases

may illustrate the practical working of these rules: in 1249, an inquisition was made

into illegal tolls taken on the road in Barnet (that is, one of the main roads north outof London) with the consent of an abbot of St Albans; the said abbot’s successor

vowed that the practice had ceased and would not be repeated.355 Similarly, in 1362,

Philip Otere, a chaplain, was charged with having taken money in alms on the bridge

at Ferrybridge (Yorkshire) and having used the money to build bars to block the

bridge so as to demand payment from people crossing. In this case, a three-year

pontage grant had just expired, and Philip may have been continuing the toll

illegally.356

The rule against private tolls on the king’s highway meant that bridges were never

an asset to landowners; there is one exception to the rule against tolls on the

highway, however: owners of ferries were allowed to charge for passage.357 The result

is that ferries were profitable and therefore ferries appear in the records as assets to

be argued over. A few examples will serve to demonstrate the value of ferries. In

1307 the king had to restore the ferry at Drypool, Yorkshire to its previous owner

after granting it to the burgesses of Hull without realising that someone already held

it.358 In 1354, the final decline of the once flourishing port of Dunwich, destroyed by

sea and plague, included a severe decline in the value of the ferry: whereas it had

352 Fleta , ed. Richardson and Sayles (as n. 5), II, 46–7. Similarly, the late-thirteenth-century Mirror of Justices declares that ‘by perjury towards the king sin all those lieges of the king who appropriate tothemselves jurisdiction, too wit counties, honours, hundreds, sokens, return of writs, or otherhereditaments, wardships, escheats, reliefs, suits, services, marriages, fairs, markets, infangenethef,

utfangenethef, wreck, waif, estray, treason hidden in the earth, warrens in their own land or inanother’s, toll-traverse or other toll, pavage, pontage, chiminage, murage, carriage, or such othercustoms’; Mirror of Justices , ed. Whittaker (as n. 23), p. 17.

353 e.g., Inquisitions ad quod damnum , I (as n. 159), 3, 5, 7, 9.354 The best illustration of the difference that the relative lack of private tolls made in England is the

map that Robert Fossier has made of the roads of Picardy, swerving and being remade to avoidone toll after another; Robert Fossier, L’Enfance de l’Europe Xe–XIIe siècles: aspects économiques etsociaux , II, Structures et problèmes , Nouvelle Clio: l’histoire et ses problèmes 17 (Paris, 1982), 734.

355 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 19. For another example of the king’s officers acting tosuppress an illegal toll, see Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 240–46.

356 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 317–19. Philip was ordered to repair the bridge using the money hehad raised.

357 Boyer notes that in France in a similar manner, parties worried about losing the revenue from theirferries when a bridge was built; Boyer, Medieval French Bridges , pp. 33, 37.

358 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 544.



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been worth half a mark annually, now it was worth only a shilling.359 The ferry at

Herringfleet on the border of Suffolk and Norfolk became a matter of dispute. One

John of Loudham held the ferry through a grant of John atte Ferye; the king had

seized the ferry back, however, on the basis that John atte Ferye had never beenseised of the ferry ‘except by usurpation on the king’. Commissioners, taking

evidence both in Norfolk and Suffolk, found that no-one properly held the ferry

except the king and that the king and the person to whom he granted the ferry

should find the boats.360 Similarly, the prioress and nuns of the unfortunately named

Crabhouse Convent had illegally started a ferry at Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen

(Norfolk), which had for fifteen years been undercutting a ferry a few miles further

down the Great Ouse near King’s Lynn that belonged to the abbot of Bury St

Edmunds.361

Just how valuable a ferry could be is shown in an inquest into the possessions of

the archbishop of York at Laneham, Nottinghamshire: he had a fishery worth 26s 8d

and a ferry across the Trent worth £6 13s 4d.362 The value is demonstrated in adifferent way by the shenanigans in Yorkshire where the highway between Holme at

Rotsea crossed the River Hull. There, because the river had dried up to a great

extent, people could ford the river and not use the ferry. So the ferrymen dug holes

in the river bed to make it dangerous to cross and charged people whether they used

the boats or not.363 Other ferrymen simply charged more than they should have

according to custom or insisted on waiting until they had enough passengers for a

full boat, keeping people hanging around as a result.364 Because ferries were valuable

assets, we see the kings granting the right to them in the Patent Rolls. For example,

in 1313, Edward II granted the ferry at Sandwich to the mayor and bailiffs of the

town; it was worth 40s a year.365

In contrast to these examples of the profits of ferries and many more like them, I

know of only two examples of bridges being treated as assets. The first is simple: in

1358, the king granted a pension of 3d a day to be taken from the revenues of the

toll on the bridge at Ware.366 The other example, however, was a spectacular failure:

359 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 56.360 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , IV, 32–3. Two important details are added in this case: first, that

the ferry was on the king’s highway connecting Little Yarmouth to Norwich; and, second, that theriver across which the ferry travelled belonged to the king because it is tidal.

361

Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) preserved in the Public Record Office , V (London, 1962),195.362 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , V, 70–71. Ferries also appear in a thoroughly routine way in lists

of possessions: e.g., Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 147–8, V, 93–4.363 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 306–8.364 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, 306–7.365 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 2; see also ibid., ii, 2. Other grants of ferries include ibid., ii, 561, iii, 43,

430–31 (although this is an anomaly: a grant revoked because the costs associated with the ferry were so great). The potential profit from ferries did not exclude the king’s charitable interest inthem: in 1318, the king granted the priory of Birkenhead licence to build lodgings for the manytravellers who wished to use the priory’s ferry across the Mersey, but who were delayed by the

weather; Patent Rolls, Edward II, iii, 108–9.366 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xi, 134. The bridge at Ware might be said to be the perfect bridge to turn

a profit: it crossed a relatively small river, but carried one of the major roads of the whole

kingdom.




134

the grant of London Bridge to Queen Eleanor after her humiliation by the

Londoners.367

Returning to the legal theory itself, it is possible to see why royal grants of

pontage and pavage do not appear before the 1220s; presumably anyone wishing topay for a bridge through tolls before then just erected a toll booth and took tolls

without asking the king. What may appear odder, however, is that the grants appear

at all given that at the same time, the king’s lawyers were trying to re-assert local

obligation for road and bridge repair. Why should the king have granted the right to

take tolls on his roads to those same local people whose duty it should have been to

make the repairs? That this is not an idle question is attested by the contrast between

the towns that received grants of pontage and pavage and the plight of those

communities that did not receive such grants but were instead coerced to fulfill their

bridge and road building obligations. For instance, the poor souls of Strood, on the

west side of the Medway, opposite Rochester in Kent, were chastised for not

providing an adequate road for the heavy traffic passing through their town on its way to Canterbury or Dover.368 Similarly, the burgesses of Oxford were ordered on a

number of occasions to fulfill their obligations to repair the pavement of the town.369

The short answer is that grants of pontage and pavage were favours to the

recipients. This was not another form of taxation thrust onto an unwilling populace.

Two examples may serve to illustrate this. First, the grant of pavage to the town of

Blyth in Nottinghamshire in 1305 was suspended until the sheriff had conducted an

inquest to establish that ‘it will not be prejudicial to the inhabitants of Blyth, or

others, if the town is paved’.370 Second, on two occasions, grants of pavage to the

town of Pontefract were revoked because it was revealed that those who had

petitioned for the grants had not acted with the knowledge and consent of the whole

community of the town.371 Grants were given in response to petitions; the record of

some such petitions may be found in the Rolls of Parliament. For example, in 1306,

the burgesses of Huntingdon petitioned the king for pavage on the grounds that

their town could not be adequately paved without the king’s help.372 Likewise, in

1322, the counties of Cheshire and Shropshire petitioned the king that the ford of

Longford near Bletchley was extremely dangerous and asked for pavage to repair it;

instead pontage was granted for the provision of a causeway and bridge.373 Many of

the grants specify that the toll was given through the intervention of somebody,

usually someone from the locality who was well connected at court; for example, in

1322, the king granted pontage at Pershore at the request of Thomas of Evesham,

367 See above, pp. 118–19.368 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xiii, 256.369 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 208, iv, 121, 334.370 Patent Rolls, Edward I, iv, 396, 463. The inquest approved the grant of pavage; Calendar of

Inquisitions Miscellaneous , I, 540.371 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 99, ii, 169. Similarly, in 1362, the collectors of murage and pontage at

Newcastle were changed, and new collectors were appointed by ‘common consent’ at theGuildhall; Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 272.

372 Rotuli parliamentorum; ut et petitiones, et placita in parliamento, I, ed. J. Strachey (London 1767), 193.

373 Rotuli parliamentorum , ed. Strachey, I, 397.



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one of his clerks.374 In many other cases, the recipients had to pay for the grant: forexample, again in 1345, the town of Wakefield paid 40s for their grant.375

It may seem odd at first that towns would wish to burden their market with such

tolls. Part of the reason may have been the difficulty of assessing landholders’ repairobligations inside a town. Each householder was supposed to maintain and clean thestreet in front of his tenement, but was it fair that those on the busier streets,particularly the highway through the town, should pay more? And what about theparts of town in which not all the pavement was directly contiguous to tenements,particularly the market square? It may have made some sense for the paving dues tobe distributed among the merchants by means of a toll. This is truer still in the caseof bridge building. On the other hand, of course, the tolls were not really a form ofself-taxation, since they also hit visiting merchants in a way that property-basedobligations would not.376 I have said that few conclusions can safely be drawn fromthe items listed for assessment in the grants since the lists are so formulaic; one

particular pattern does emerge, however: that is the copying of one set of tolls by aneighbouring town. That is to say, the grant of one set of tolls encouraged the menof other towns nearby to petition for their own tolls, so as not to be paying solely forthe bridge or paving of their neighbours, but to have their neighbours pay for theirstoo. For example, in 1358 the king granted pontage to Newark in Nottinghamshireon very similar terms that he had granted it to Wansford, just south of Newark onthe Great North Road, a year before.377 Likewise, Oundle and Thrapston inNorthamptonshire received multiple grants throughout the second half of thefourteenth century,378 and Thrapston’s first grant (in 1369) was closely modelled onan earlier one to Oundle.379

The tolls were advantageous to the recipient in one other sense. The maintenance

of a town’s paving and bridge were essential to its prosperity. If a town were tocapture trade, it had to provide for it. In 1343, the town of Atherstone in theMidlands petitioned for and received a grant of pavage because its market was so lowand wet that it attracted few merchants.380 Likewise, the dangers of a dilapidatedbridge could cause merchants to seek an alternative route avoiding the bridge and thetown next to it. The people of Bedford attributed the economic decline of their townin the fifteenth century to the new bridge a few miles down river at Great Barford.381

There is one last reason why towns may have been so eager to acquire grants ofpontage. While it is impossible to gain a fully comprehensive picture, it may be stated

374

Patent Rolls, Edward II, iv, 47; see also the grant to Fordingbridge in 1268 at the request of Johnle Fauconer, who was rector of Fordingbridge and keeper of the Hanaper; Patent Rolls, Henry III, vi, 223.

375 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vi, 549.376 It is perhaps ironic then that, according to Harrison, the tolls do not seem to have been a very

effective fund-raising device: Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 212.377 PRO C66/253 (31 Edward III, Part III), membrane 9 (Wansford); C66/254 (32 Edward III, Part

I), membrane 36 (Newark). For an example of the relationship between markets, see Masschaele,Peasants, Merchants, and Markets , pp. 129–46, 165–88.

378 See Appendix 2.379 PRO C66/279 (43 Edward III, Part I), membrane 11 (pontage for Oundle), C66/280 (43 Edward

III, Part II), membrane 42 (pontage for Thrapston)380 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vi, 3.381 Violet Rickards, ‘The Borough of Bedford’ in The Victoria History of the County of Bedford , ed. William

Page, III (London, 1912), 1–33 at 3.




136

that most of the grants of pontage were for bridges that no-one was obliged torepair.382 In several cases, such a lack of obligation is made explicit in the inquiriesthat led to the grants383 or in the terms of the grant itself.384 Thus, given the long

memory of obligation and exemption, the grants of pontage may be a retrospectiveclue to which bridges stood on sites that were unbridged at the time whenobligations were established. In other words, the grants of pontage may point us inthe direction of the newer bridges. They also sometimes refer to the other innovationof the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the bridge made wholly of stone, madepossible by the understanding of how to build wider arches.385 Two grants – forDoncaster in 1247 and Saltersford (Cheshire) in 1331 – are directed specifically atrebuilding bridges of stone.386 It may be significant that after these two bridgesreceived a pontage grant for rebuilding in stone, they did not receive another grant,presumably because they did not need it.387 Indeed, the mysterious absence of severalimportant bridges from the list of pontage grants may be explained by their early

reconstruction in stone, since once a bridge was properly constructed of stone itrequired less maintenance as the survival of many medieval stone bridges to this daytestifies.388

If these grants were such a favour to the recipients, what was in it for the king? The simplest answer is that they were acts of charity, analogous to the more obviousacts of charity discussed above. That the king thought his soul would benefit simplyby the award of the right to take tolls is demonstrated by the frequent mention in thegrants that they were awarded through the king’s special grace.389 More particularly,

we have the example of the town of Beverley which received the most grants ofpavage of any town, receiving eighteen between 1249 and 1399, which was sofortunate in part because the king gave tolls ‘out of reverence to God and to St John

of Beverley who is buried in the Church of Beverley’.390 Similarly, in 1276, Edward Igranted pontage for Redbridge in Hampshire for the sake of the soul of his latefather, Henry III.391 In another case, Edward III granted pontage to two men whohad already started to build a bridge across the River Swale in Yorkshire because ofthe dangers of the existing bridge – the standard charitable pretext.392 In 1347,Berwick received a grant of pontage in part because of the expenses that poor people

were put to in crossing the river by the ferry.393 The connection of pontage and

382 Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 211.383 e.g., Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 55, III, 333.384

e.g., Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 172, xiii, 257; Richard II, i, 376. This is certainly not always thecase; in one of the grants of pontage for Holland Bridge, it is stated that those liable for repair were not to be relieved by the grant; Patent Rolls, Edward I, iii, 576. And there are several bridgesfor which obligations certainly existed that were the subject of pontage grants: e.g., Huntingdon.

385 For bridge engineering, see the excellent section of Harrison’s book: Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , pp. 77–135.

386 Patent Rolls, Henry III, iii, 498; Edward III, ii, 170.387 Doncaster did receive another pontage grant before the end of the fourteenth century, but it was

for the causeway leading from the town, not the bridge itself; Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 410.388 Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , pp. 5, 96–8, as well as h is illustrations.389 e.g., PRO C66/308 (4 Richard II, Part I), membrane 21.390 Patent Rolls, Edward I, ii, 175, iv, 52, Edward III, i, 36, xiv, 359, Richard II, ii, 476.391 Patent Rolls, Edward I, i, 129.392 Patent Rolls, Edward III, iii, 339.

393 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vii, 439.



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charity is best shown, however, by an inquisition taken into a grant of pontage for

Wetherby in Yorkshire. Eleanor de Percy, who was executing the will of the late

Richard Arundel, asked for a grant of pontage for help in repairing the bridge, which

she had started to repair for the good of his soul. The jurors were asked to determineif anyone was obliged to build the bridge and answered that no-one was, so the

pontage was granted.394 A delightfully anomalous case may secure the point,

however: pontage was not the only gift a king could give to aid in the repair of a

bridge; Richard II granted the town of Maldon (Essex) the right not to send anyone

to Parliament so that they could better repair their bridge.395

Moving beyond the stated reasons and becoming more cynical, an analysis of the

chronological pattern of the grants suggests that they were given in times of royal

weakness.396 The first grants of pontage were made in the 1220s during the minority

of Henry III; the principal peaks in the number of grants are the period from 1314 to

1322, when Edward II was in conflict with Thomas of Lancaster and the Ordainers;

1327 to about 1340: the minority and early years of Edward III; and about 1375 to1388, the declining years of Edward III and the minority of Richard II. While a

strong king may not be eager to give out the right over the king’s highway, those

around a weaker king might be less reluctant. Many grants record the active

intervention of courtiers – either requesting the grant directly or at least supplying

the information that led to it, which may amount to the same thing. Other grants

were handed to the powerful at court: in 1313, Queen Isabella secured a grant of

pontage for Boston.397 And in the same year, the king granted a twenty-year pontage

– a length of term almost twice as long as any other – for the building of a new

bridge in Ireland by his brother Thomas, earl of Norfolk, his nephew Gilbert de

Clare, and his cousin Aymer de Valence.398 And, moreover, we have some more

direct evidence of a connection between the grants and politics: a pontage grant for

Berwick was considered urgent because of the threat of Scottish invasion.399 In 1321,

Cirencester received its one and only grant of pavage just at the time when Edward

II and the Despensers were mustering their troops in the town against Lancaster’s

revolt.400 More directly still, in 1381, the year of the Peasants’ Revolt, the burgesses

of Huntingdon were granted pavage as a reward for ‘good behaviour in the late

insurrection and their stout resistance against the insurgents’.401 And on two

occasions pontage grants were intended to repair bridges destroyed in civil conflict:

once for the bridge of Worcester after it had been destroyed by Prince Edward in his

baronial wars402 and once for Lechlade after its bridge had been destroyed by the

duke of Gloucester in 1388.403

394 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 55; Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 521.395 Patent Rolls, Richard II, iii, 508, v, 187.396 See Graph 1.397 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 598.398 Patent Rolls, Edward II, ii, 43; similarly, there were grants at the request of the Despensers in the

1320s; Patent Rolls, Edward II, iii, 502–3, iv, 307.399 Patent Rolls, Edward III, vii, 439.400 Patent Rolls, Edward II, iv, 42.401 Patent Rolls, Richard II, ii, 69402 Patent Rolls, Henry III, vi, 639.

403 Patent Rolls, Richard II, iii, 409.




138

Map 2: Pontage and Pavage during the Reign of Edward I (1272–1307)



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Map 3: Pontage and Pavage during the Reign of Richard II (1377–99)




140

An examination of the geographical spread of the grants in the respective reignsalso suggests a connection between the grants and the kings’ affairs. The pattern of

grants under Edward I suggests his concern with the Welsh – a large number of hisgrants going to places in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire on the route toNorth Wales – and with the Scots, a number of grants maintaining the West coastroute to Scotland.404 By contrast, the pattern of grants in the reign of Richard IIreflects his more peaceful life-style, with the grants concentrated in the South andEast of England.405

Even if the grants reflected the king’s own interests, there is no reason tosuppose that they were not also granted for the most straightforward reason of all:because they were needed. While the introductory clauses of the grants are asformulaic as the lists of items to be assessed, they are presumably not whollyinaccurate. The grants of pontage refer to the bridges being in a ruinous stage, to the

great danger of those crossing.406 The highway pavage grants refer to theimpassability of the roads.407 That these are not convenient fictions may bedemonstrated by two observations. First, that if the roads or bridges were not in apoor state, the grants benefit no-one – not the king, not the burgesses requesting thegrants, not the travellers. Second, the peak year for grants for pontage, 1383,408 follows after some of the worst winters of the century, which, for instance, finallydestroyed the old Roman bridge across the Medway at Rochester.409 Moreover, inthe thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, carts were changing again, becoming heavierand acquiring iron-bound wheels.410 These new vehicles placed new strains on thestreets and bridges. In a desperate effort to keep the old bridge at Rochesterserviceable, watchmen were placed on the bridge to ensure that no over-loaded carts

attempted to cross.411 Tolls start to make a distinction between regular carts and cartsbound with iron.412 No wonder those local people supposed to maintain roads andbridges balked at the added expense of repairing the devastation wrought by thesenew juggernauts and their mercantile masters. For example, the people of the county

404 See Map 2.405 See Map 3.406 e.g., Redbridge (1358): ‘pons de Rudbrigge per quem habent communis transitus hominium

parcium adiacencium et aliunde dirutus est et confractus ad maximum periculum transeuncium pereundem et quod nullus pontem illum de iure reparare tenetur’; PRO C66/254 (32 Edward III, PartI), membrane 22.

407

e.g., the highway from Smithfield to Is lington (1380): ‘in auxilium emendacionis alte vie aSmythefeld Barre usque Goresplace in Iseldon’ que in multis locis diruta est et confracta admagnum dampnum et nocumentum populi nostri per dictam viam transeuntis’; PRO C66/308 (4Richard II, Part I), membrane 17.

408 See Graph 1.409 Brooks, ‘Rochester Bridge, A.D. 43–1381’ (as n. 143), p. 40.410 Dorian Gerhold, ‘Packhorses and Wheeled Vehicles in England, 1550–1800’, Journal of Transport

History , 3rd series 14 (1993), 1–26. For an inquisition describing different kinds of wheeled vehicle,including a ‘a four-wheeled carriage for four horses called “whirleinthecole”’, Calendar of Inquisitions

Miscellaneous , III, 176.411 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 348.412 e.g., PRO C66/271 (39 Edward III, Part I), membrane 1 (pavage for Beverley), C66/288 (47

Edward III, Part I), membrane 13 (pavage from Burstwick to Hedon and Drypool, Yorkshire),C66/290 (48 Edward III, Part I), membrane 1 (pavage for Grimsby), C 66/311 (5 Richard II, Part

I), membrane 1 (pontage and murage for Bridgnorth).



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of Huntingdonshire objected to paying their land-based contribution for the upkeepof Huntingdon Bridge because the burgesses of the town of Huntingdon weretransporting heavy loads across the bridge and thereby increasing the cost of

maintenance.

413

There was also considerable suspicion about the misuse of money collected by way of pontage and pavage. In 1357, an inquiry into the bridge at Redbridge,Hampshire, recorded that a couple of local hermits had been collecting pontage (as

well as alms) from all sorts of passers-by, including pilgrims and nobles, withoutdoing anything to repair the bridge.414 From the early fourteenth century, there wereinquiries into the alleged misappropriation of money raised through tolls.415 These

were, it must be said, more common in the case of pavage,416 presumably becausepeople might disagree as to whether the paving of a town was proving successful,

whereas it would be obvious to everyone whether a bridge was functional or not. In1318, an inquiry was commissioned into money collected for the bridge at Kegworth,

both from charity and from pontage.417 Similarly, in 1328, the people of Derby werepermitted to replace the collectors of pontage there, because the collectors hadproved themselves untrustworthy.418 As the decades went by, more and more of thegrants include language suggesting such suspicion. They include clauses like ‘at theterm of the said seven years, however, the customs will wholly cease and be doneaway with ( completo autem termino dictorum septem annorum dicte consuetudines penitus cessent et

deleantur )’.419 Increasingly, the grant included from the outset named individuals who were to oversee the collectors.420

If bridges were dilapidated and roads impassable, it was in the interest of the kingto see them repaired promptly. And, indeed, the terms of the grants give us someindication that the work was seen in a larger context. One of the pieces of

information given about a bridge before pontage would be granted, besides the factof its being broken, was that it was a crossing common to all,421 in a way that echoesthe passage from the legal compilation, Britton, quoted above, which talks of ‘bridgesand causeways and common roads’.422 Sometimes, it was specified that the bridge

was in the king’s highway, as was the case with the bridge over the River Soarbetween Rothley and Cossington north of Leicester.423 It was stated that highways,such as the one from London to Tyburn, were repaired because of the difficulty that

413 Placitorum in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservatorum abbreviatio (as n. 84), p. 148.414 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , III, 103; the pontage was probably taken as a result of a seven-

year grant in 1347: Patent Rolls, Edward III, vii, 273.415 Fleta includes among the articles of the eyre an enquiry into ‘citizens and burgesses taking muragegranted to them by the king in other fashion than they should under the grant made for thatpurpose’; assuming that such enquiry would extend to pontage and pavage, such inquests were amatter of routine as well as special commission; Fleta , ed. Richardson and Sayles, II, 51. Forexamples of such inquisitions, see Patent Rolls, Edward II, iv, 381, Edward III, i, 190, 221, ii, 390,iii, 374.

416 Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 18, 88, ii, 63, iii, 88.417 Patent Rolls, Edward II, iii, 279.418 Patent Rolls, Edward III, i, 374.419 PRO C66/130 (1 Edward II, Part II), membrane 11 (murage and pontage for York).420 e.g., Patent Rolls, Edward II, i, 386, v, 62, Edward III, xii, 172.421 e.g., PRO C66/254 (32 Edward III, Part I), membrane 22 (pontage for Redbridge).422 Britton , ed. Nichols, I, 78–9.

423 Patent Rolls, Edward III, ii, 115.




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the bad road was causing to travellers.424 In all these cases the idea is the same, theroutes were to be open for all: these are not trivial local roads. Furthermore, in a fewcases, the importance of a local grant for a longer route is stated: the Trent bridges at

Nottingham and Newark were both made the subject of pontage grants because theycarried the road ‘to the North’.425 Similarly, the bridge of Wichnor, on the border ofStaffordshire and Warwickshire, was to be repaired for the greater safety of thosecoming from Wales and Ireland;426 in this last case, unfortunate happenings ensuedthat confirmed the king’s judgment that this was indeed part of the route fromLondon to Ireland. William de Saunford, the recipient of the grant of pontage, hiredone John Taylor to help him collect the toll. This John took advantage of hisposition as toll-collector to rob, kill and throw into the river below an unknowntraveller. John and William were both indicted of the crime. John immediately tookflight for Ireland; William for London; QED.427

Thus, the direct and indirect evidence for the reasons for the granting of pontage

and pavage suggests that the grants were requested and made circumspectly; whilethe grants were a favour to the recipients, they were still a toll that had to be paid;

while the king gained advantage from the grants in terms both of charitable karmaand political kudos, they were not grants that were made lightly. Given this situation,in which pontage and pavage were neither requested nor given haphazardly, it ispossible to interpret the grants as evidence both for the state of the economy and forthe state of the road network.

A comparison of the grants with the Gough Map, a map of England of unknownauthorship and purpose from around 1350,428 reveals that almost every grant wasgiven to a town or bridge that was on a route that is marked on the map or can besurmised from it.429 It should come as no surprise that the basic pattern of the grants

suggests a road system with shape similar to that of the Romans and, indeed, to thatof today, since settlement and routes have followed the same rules of topographyand drainage for centuries.430 The grants of pontage and pavage tend to fall at thenodes of the network. Thus, whether the grants were made out of immediate need or

were directed by a sense of wider context, the effect would be the same: the repair ofthe network by repairing its most vital links.

The success or failure of the pontage and pavage grants in financing thenecessary work hinged, of course, on the state of the economy. It is therefore notsurprising that the Black Death made an enormous impact on the history of thesetolls. There was a marked dip in the number of grants in the 1340s, 1350s and

1360s,431

although, of course, as noted earlier, this may have more to do with thechanging political fortunes of the king. The apparent return to high numbers of

424 PRO C66/308 (4 Richard II, Part I), membrane 21.425 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xi, 2 (Newark), xii, 314–15, 363 (inquest about Nottingham which had

been the subject of numerous pontage grants).426 Patent Rolls, Edward I, iv, 517.427 Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous , II, 7.428 E. J. S. Parsons, The Map of Great Britain, c. A.D. 1360, known as the Gough Map: An Introduction to the

Facsimile (London, 1958).429 See Appendix 2; Brian Paul Hindle, ‘The Towns and Roads of the Gough Map’, Manchester

Geographer 1 (1980), 35–49.430 J. H. Appleton, The Geography of Communications in Great Britain (London, 1962).

431 See Graph 1.



G r a p h 1 : G r a n t s of P o n

t a g e a n d P a v a g e u p t o1 4 0 0

0 2 4 6 8 1 0

1 2

1 4

1 6

1 8

1 2 2 5

1 2 3 5

1 2 4 5

1 2 5 5

1 2 6 5

1 2 7 5

1 2 8 5

1 2 9 5

1 3 0 5

1 3 1 5

1 3 2 5

1 3 3 5

1 3 4 5

1 3 5 5

1 3 6 5

1 3 7 5

1 3 8 5

1 3 9 5

P o n

t a g e

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144

grants in the 1380s would seem to confirm this. However, there is a more significant

change that is masked by the simple numbers of grants. While the number of

pontage grants does not show a drop-off when the 1380s are compared with the

1330s, the number of pavage grants does diminish. This trend appears even morepronounced when the town pavages are separated from the highway pavages.

Highway pavages only really become common from the late 1350s. When this is

taken into consideration, it can be seen that the number of pavage grants for the

repair of city streets drops appreciably from its high point in the 1330s. If a bridge

collapsed, it was obvious to all, but the state of the city streets might be more of a

matter of opinion, and the collection of pavage therefore a luxury to a town left

impoverished by the plague. It is, however, only in the case of a grant of pontage that

we have direct evidence for the plague’s devastation. The burgesses of Nottingham

were granted pontage in 1349 for repair of the Hethbeth Bridge across the Trent.

This was the twelfth grant for this bridge in a line dating back to 1311. This grant

was, however, to be cancelled, because, as a result of the pestilence, the toll could notbe collected.432 Nottingham never requested or received another grant. Nottingham

was not the only town to drop from the lists of grantees. Boston, Lichfield, Leicester,

Shrewsbury, Derby, Southwark, Tamworth, Warwick, Wakefield, Worcester and

York, all relatively frequent recipients of pavage grants before the Black Death,

disappear from the list afterwards.433 The pavage grants after the Black Death are

disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the burgesses of Beverley,

Scarborough, Droitwich and Gloucester.434 The high number of pontage grants after

the Black Death is also misleading. It conceals the concentration of the grants on a

few bridges: principally the Thames bridges at Maidenhead, Windsor and Staines, the

long causeway known as the Holland Bridge linking southern Lincolnshire to the

Great North Road across the fens435 (it alone received thirty-two grants between

1349 and 1399), the bridges across the Nene at Thrapston and Oundle, and the

bridge at Newcastle upon Tyne.436

After the Black Death, therefore, it seems that the system of granting pontage

and pavage to maintain the bridges and city streets of England was failing. 437 The

burgesses of England appear not to have believed themselves prosperous enough to

take on the extra burden of tolls. Indeed, after the Black Death, there seems to have

been a tendency to return to the idea of enforcing the local obligations for road and

bridge repair more vigorously.

And it is in this context that we should understand the development of the cross-

country highway toll in the period after the plague. It would be proper to avoid the word pavage here, as it is not used here on more than a few occasions in the rolls

432 Patent Rolls, Edward III, viii, 295.433 See Appendix 2.434 See Appendix 2.435 The pontage grants connected to the Holland Bridge began only after litigation in 1331 had

established the limits of the obligations of the prior of the hospital at the head of the bridge torepair the bridge; he was to contribute no more than £5; Public Works , ed. Flower, I, 308–9.

436 See Appendix 2.437 For the argument that the infrastructure of Europe declined severely after 1348, see John Kelly,

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (New

York, 2005), pp. 283–4. (I am indebted to Prof. Jill Harsin for this reference.)



Three Solutions

145

(though it is used rather less cautiously in the calendars).438 This was not paving, butmerely maintaining the roads. The best word is probably ‘turnpike’, especiallybecause it will enrage the early modernists to have us demonstrate that yet another of

their supposedly original ideas is actually medieval. As C. T. Flower comments,cross-country roads would maintain themselves,439 in the sense that the wear and tearof traffic will keep back the growth of branches and define a track on the ground (tothe point that one feature of the English landscape is the hollow-way, wherecenturies of erosion have created a natural cutting).440 However, extremely heavytraffic will overwhelm a track. Thus, it was necessary to patch a road, fill pot-holesand such like. We are fortunate that one grant of pavage lists the items necessary forthe job. In 1363, the king commended William Phelipp for his labour in, of his own

volition, attempting to repair the highway between Smithfield and Highgate (that isto say the southern-most end of the modern A1 in North London), but because thehighway was still ‘muddy and worn down’ granted him customs to buy ‘wood, sand

and other things necessary’.441 The method of repair was to lay branches or planksacross the road to provide support in the wet areas and to fill the pot-holes withsand. While such a seemingly crude method may lead those familiar with Romanroads to scoff, the result could be a surface providing more traction and a moregiving road surface than the hard Roman flag-stones, thereby offering a better roadfor horses and carts.442

Most of the highway tolls of the second half of the fourteenth century were forthe highways running north and west out of London, along the lines taken by themodern A4, A40, A5, A1 and A10.443 I do not know why there were not similar tollssouth of the river or running east into Essex, except to suggest that most of thetraffic would have come to London from the north and west. At least around

London, the king’s highway did not maintain itself, but rather was deliberately andurgently repaired. Here at least the weight of traffic was reducing the roads toimpassability, as parliamentary petitions of the period loudly lament.444 Certainly, thismay be taken of evidence of the growing importance of London and of themercantile classes in the affairs of the nation. Other highways maintained by tolls

were Watling Street between Stony Stratford and Fenny Stratford, some around

438

e.g., the grant of tolls to repa ir the highway between London and Acton in 1363; the marginalnotation in the roll says ‘De regia strata inter Acton’ et London’ emendanda’, but the calendar callsthis a grant of pavage; PRO C66/268 (37 Edward III, Part II), membrane 44; Patent Rolls, EdwardIII, xii, 382–3. (In fairness, an earlier grant for the same stretch of road, of which the text is verysimilar, is marginally notated ‘de pavagio’, so it might be said that it was the medieval scribes who

were not consistent, not the compilers of the calendars).439 Public Works , ed. Flower, II, xvi.440 See, for example, the use of hollow-ways in the reconstruction of a part of the route taken by

Edward I with his wife’s body in 1290: Christopher Taylor, Roads and Tracks of Britain (London,1979), pp. 116–19.

441 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xii, 409.442 David Harrison cites Daniel Defoe’s opinion that even when travellers followed a Roman road

they preferred to walk to one side of it or the other; Harrison, Bridges of Medieval England , p. 52.443 See Map 4.

444 e.g., Rotuli parliamentorum , ed. Strachey, I, 308.




146

Map 4: Grants of Pontage and Pavage around London in the Fourteenth Century

(Solid lines are highways that were the object of grants; broken lines are other roads.Circles represent pontage grants)



Three Solutions

147

Oxford, near Hull and in Wiltshire.445 In broader terms, however, the development

of the cross-country toll may reflect the need to devise a new method of highway

repair in response to the disruption of rural economy and society after the Black

Death.

446

When studied in their proper context, next to grants of pavage, grants of pontage

show kings acting to repair a road system that was under continual pressure from

heavy traffic. Because the grants were charitable acts by the king, often granted when

in need of support, they met needs defined by local people. In some sense, therefore,

the grants represent innovation in the road network. The repair of town streets, of

vital river crossings, and, indeed, of cross-country highways, represent an effort to

provide an adequate and working road system under threat from new traffic

demands. The grants demonstrate the interest of the king in the roads. Indeed,

although this interest was hardly disinterested, viewed optimistically, the maintenance

of the king’s highway as a safe and passable route, common to all, might be taken in

some sense to symbolize a new sense of national kingship in place of the twelfth-century lord-kingship. Viewed less optimistically, however, the haphazard quality of

the solution is once again evident: grants were connected to royal favour as much as

they were to need; some tolls were misappropriated, and others failed to produce the

results expected.

Conclusion

Reading the records from late medieval England, one gets a sense of the king’s

government mixing and matching between the three solutions described here. The

same bridges recur in the records, and often the government has to commission an

inquest to establish the same situation that had been established by inquest a decade

or so before. Pontage grants are repeated, always with the same dire warnings. Some

bridges are repaired and soon collapse again. None of the three solutions works in a

calm manner: obligations are disputed, tolls are fought over, and parishioners must

have got heartily sick of the latest offer of indulgence in favour of some distant

bridge.

The overall picture is one of the impotence of kings to do anything broadly

constructive about a national problem that seems to have been recognized by all.

This conclusion seems to be confirmed by what happened after the end of the

Middle Ages. Under the Tudors, new forms of governance evolved. The preamble tothe Statute of Bridges (1530) notes that

in many partes of this realme it can not be knowen and proved, what

Hundrede, Riddynge, Wapentake, Citie, Borough, Towne, or Parisshe,

445 Patent Rolls, Edward III, xv, 281 (Burstwick to Hedon and Drypool, Yorkshire), xvi, 86 (Hull to Anlaby), Richard II, i, 458, ii, 228, iii, 278 (Oxford to Headingham x3), iv, 319 (Oxford to Woodstock), iv, 287 (Bradford Bridge to Thornwater Bridge, Wiltshire), 432 (Fenny Stratford toStony Stratford).

446 This intervention by the king on such a mundane level of governance fits well with RobertPalmer’s thesis of the transformation of governance; Robert C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the

Black Death: A Transformation of Governance and Law (Chapel Hill, 1993).




148

nor what persone certayne or body politique ought of right to make

suche bridges decayed, by reasone wherof suche decayed bridges for

lacke of knowlege of suche as owen to make them for the mooste parte

lyen longe withoute any amendement, to the greate anoyaunce of theKinges Subjectes.447

In response to this familiar state of affairs, however, the statute offered a new

solution: if no-one could be found responsible for the upkeep of a bridge, the

Justices of the Peace would

have power and auctoritie to taxe and sette every Inhabitaunt … to

suche reasonable ayde and somme of money as they shall thynke by

theyre discrecions convenyent and sufficyent for the repayrynge

reedefyenge and amendement of suche brydges.448

Then the Justices were to see the money collected, appointing collectors as necessary,and to write up the new obligations for future reference.449

Such an orderly solution was beyond the power of medieval government. The

best a medieval king could do is to push people in the direction they were already

going: he could encourage charity, he could award tolls when people ask for them,

and could insist on obligations where they were universally recognized. Such a

conclusion may ultimately serve to highlight the power of the charitable motive in

late-medieval piety and the energy of local initiative: England was well served by

bridges, but not because kings built them.

447 Statutes of the Realm (as n. 6), III, 321. See also Martin Cook, Medieval Bridges , Shire Archaeology 77(Princes Risborough, 1998), p. 47; Blackstone, Commentaries (as n. 164), I, 356.

448 Statutes of the Realm , III, 322.449 By another statute of 1555, every parish was supposed during Easter Week to elect two surveyors

of highways and to name in church four particular days before the Feast of St John the Baptist when all the parishioners were to send men, vehicles and too ls in proportion to their land holdingsto work on roads leading the market towns. Such a corvée is never spelled out so minutely in theMiddle Ages, but there are certainly echoes of the Statute of Winchester; Statutes of the Realm , IV,

284–5.



Conclusion

What does the history of the financing of bridges tell us about the history of the

English Middle Ages? The seven centuries from c. 700 to c. 1400 can be divided into

four shorter periods.

The period between c. 700 and 871 is obviously the most difficult about which to

say anything definite. The obligation to build bridges first appeared in the charters,

not as a vital part of governance, but as a symbolic borrowing from Roman andContinental law. There were few bridges and the duty was not important. The

archaeological and environmental evidence suggests that most rivers could be forded

without difficulty.

The period from 871 to 975 marks a great period of transformation in the law of

bridges as it does in so much of English history. The heyday of the West Saxon

dynasty stands out as a period of innovative governance and distinct royal ideology.

It is in this context that the narrative sources reveal that Alfred the Great, in turning

the tide against the Vikings, insisted on the fulfillment of the common burdens,

including bridge-work. At the same time, the evidence of charters and the bounds

attached to them suggests that bridges were indeed becoming more common.

Alfred’s insistence was in part connected to the conduct of the war: in the war of

movement that the Anglo-Saxons were fighting, the ability to secure the major river

crossings was crucial. There was more to it, however. At the root of Alfred’s success

was the achievement of consensus among his followers in fighting the invaders; his

descendants took advantage of this surprising period of domestic peace to build a

public order. The pattern of the obligations established by Alfred and his

descendants indicates that bridge-work was a fundamental part of this order. The law

codes of Æthelstan and Edmund show this order being considered, agreed and put

into action. The charters of the same period show bridge-work being regularized at

the same time, evolving from a war-time necessity to a peace-time duty. And, indeed,

archaeology and place-name evidence suggest that as economic developmenttransformed the environment so bridges were a necessary part of a new, more settled

landscape. The evolution of the law of bridges in this period demonstrates practical

aspects of the ideology of kingship. Kingship rested not only on strength against

foreign invasion, but on the provision of domestic peace, based on sensible,

communal obligations which offered safe conditions for the pursuit of trade and

other lawful interactions.

After 975, this peace fell apart. The obligation to build bridges, which the West

Saxon dynasty had tried to make into an inescapable, communal duty, was

undermined. There are hints in the documents of the eleventh century that this

process began before the Conquest; it is after the arrival of the Normans, however,




150

that it became rampant. The Norman kings either did not understand or chose to

ignore the legal tradition that bridge-work was common to all, a duty beyond even

the remittance of kings. They exploited bridge-work for all it was worth, either

demanding its fulfillment in the strongest terms or granting exemptions from it tobuy favour. In this way, William I granted freedom from bridge-work to Battle

Abbey and opened the way for the great monasteries to claim their own exemptions

by the assertion of connections to the great kings of the past. Behind the forged

foundation charters and royal hagiography produced by the great houses in the early

twelfth century, there stands a new view of kingship and governance. Legal theory

had changed: now it was believed that bridge-work was a duty owed to the king

personally and could be excused by his gift. All in all, these changes suggest that

notions of the common interest were not important to the Norman kings.

The fourth and last period of the history presented here runs from the twelfth

century to c. 1400. Despite the reassertion of royal power and justice under Henry II

and the subsequent efforts of royal lawyers to build up that power using principlestaken from Roman law, bridge-building obligations never again became common to

all. Whereas the Angevins were successful in offering better justice, they could not

begin to force new obligations for the repair of bridges onto their people. The

arguments about bridge-work in the crisis of Magna Carta established the clear

principle that obligations must be established by precedent. Litigation of the

thirteenth century shows a clear understanding of this idea. The radical positions of

Bracton allowed the challenging of alleged privilege, but the king could not force

new obligations on his people. Thus the government that emerged in the thirteenth

century was limited. It was more complete in passive and profitable institutions of

justice, but it was hamstrung in its active and creative functions by an insistence on

established, limited obligation and known exemption. Indeed, the greatest lesson to

be drawn from an observation of bridges in this last period might be the creativity of

the medieval legal imagination, exercised in both a positive and negative manner. The

fate of famous bridges, especially London Bridge, shows the way in which the

spiritual, historical and entrepreneurial imaginations were pressed into service to find

solutions; the fate of humbler bridges shows the urgency with which this problem

was debated across the country and the way in which medieval people could conjure

legal and historical pretexts to avoid obligations.

Finally, a comparison of the history of the kings’ involvement with roads and

bridges may be instructive. In the period from c. 700 to c. 1400, the law of roads and

bridges offers a window into the practical aspects of royal ideology. Both roads andbridges were seen at one point or another as fundamental to the king’s fulfillment of

his coronation oath to keep the peace. The different fates of roads and bridges in the

law show the evolution of royal governance. On the one hand, bridges went from

being rare and largely unnecessary objects to being common ones that were

recognised as vital to the communications and economy of the country. Never-

theless, except for a brief time in the tenth century, their construction was not

something initiated by the king: the bridging of the major river crossings was

accomplished by local action. On the other hand, royal jurisdiction over the roads

was asserted early and maintained through the centuries, but road repair only

sporadically became a concern of royal government. In short, the stories of roads



Conclusion

151

and bridges had similar origins in the maintenance of public peace in the tenth

century, but they gradually diverged afterwards. The essential differences between

them keep them from running parallel. The king’s rights over the roads remained

essentially passive, that is to say, they consisted of the right to jurisdiction overcrimes on the roads. The king’s rights over bridges could be more active, consisting

of the right to force people to build bridges. In truth, however, only the strongest of

kings, ruling by force or by real consensus, could expect to extract bridge-work from

his subjects; only the weakest of kings would see his rights over the highway

disappear.

In the sixteenth century statutes were enacted which placed the repair of roads

and bridges equally on the people living near them. This, of course, was not the most

popular of policies with the people who lived closest to the busiest roads and thus

were expected to bear the heaviest burden. Two hundred years later the idea of the

turnpike road sought to remedy this injustice by placing the cost of repair on those

who travelled along the highways. Both these solutions had their medieval forebears. What is fundamentally different about them, however, is that they relied for their

success on the consent of Parliament, and the notion of general consensus which

that implied. Such consensus had existed briefly in the Middle Ages, but its collapse

had led to the end of the common obligation to repair bridges, and no power existed

to fill that void completely as long as the Middle Ages endured.



Appendix 1

The Gumley Charter of 749

The charter may be found as B178 (S92, MS 2). W. H. Stevenson considers this text

suspicious because of the use of same proem and anathema in a suspicious

Abingdon charter (B891; S583) copied in house’s twelfth-century cartulary; however,

the logic of the situation would dictate that the Abingdon charter was copied from

the Gumley charter, which was avaliable to William of Malmesbury (who quoted it

without the anathema in his Gesta regum ) and therefore was probably also available to

the Abingdon chronicler. The oddities of the contents of the charter, discussed in

Chapter 1, also suggest its genuineness, as they were so troubling to twelfth-century

writers that they tended to correct them by their own standards – no forger would

create such a document. The text of the main body of the charter is as follows:1

Plerunque contingere solet pro incerta futurorum Commonly it happens that, faced with uncertain

temporum vicissitudine, ut ea, quae multarum et change of future times, those things, which had been

fidelium personarum testimonio consilioque confirmed by the testimony and counsel of manyroborata fuerunt; ut fraudulenter per contumaciam faithful people, deceitfully by the stubbornness of

plurimorum , et machinamenta simulationis, sine very many people and devices of falsehood, without

ulla consideratione rationis periculose dissipata any consideration of reason were lost in a dangerous

erant, nisi auctoritate literarum, et testamento way, unless they set in eternal memory by the

cyrographorum aeternae memoriae inserta sint. authority of letters and the witness of cyrographs.

Quapropter ego Æthelbaldus rex Merciorum Wherefore I, Æthelbald, king of the Mercians,

pro amore cælestis patriæ, et pro remedio animæ for the love of Heaven, and for the cure of my

meæ, hoc maxime agendum esse prævidi, soul, have judged this thing to be especially worth

ut eam bonis operibus liberam efficerem ab accomplishing, so that I might set my soul free

omnibus vinculis piaculorum. with good works from all the chains of my sins.

Dum enim mihi omnipotens Deus For since almighty God has bestowed upon

per misericordiam clementiæ, absque ullo me with honour dominions of rule through his

antecedente merito, sceptra regiminis honorifice merciful clemency and without any earlier

largitus est, ideo ei libenter et voluntarie merit on my part, so I return to him again freely and

1 W. H. Stevenson, ‘Trinoda Necessitas’, English Historical Review 29 (1914), 689–703 at 694–5n,700n; see the comprehensive answer in Eric John, Land Tenure in Early England: A discussion of some

problems (Leicester, 1960), pp. 67–70.




154

ex eo quod accepi iterum retribuo. voluntarily from that which I have received.

Hujus rei gratia hanc donationem Deo teste For this reason, in my lifetime

me vivente concedo, ut monasteria et I concede this donation, that monasteries

æcclesiæ a publicis vectigalibus, et ab and servants of the Church, with God as surety,

omnibus operibus oneribusque, auctore are to remain free from public taxes

Deo, servientes absoluti maneant, nisi and from all work and burdens, except

sola quæ communiter fruenda sint, only those which are for the common benefit,

omnique populo edicto regis facienda and which are ordered to be performed by all

jubentur, id est instructionibus pontium, the people by royal edict; that is, those things

vel necessariis defensionibus arcium needed for the building of bridges and the necessary

contra hostes non sunt renuenda. Sed nec defence of fortresses against enemies should not be

hoc prætermittendum est, cum refused. Nor should this be overlooked, since it

necessarium constat æcclesiis Dei. remains necessary for the churches of God.

Quia Æthelbaldus rex, pro expiatione Because king Æthelbald, for the expiation of

delictorum suorum et retributione mercedis his sins and the repayment of eternal

æterni famulis Dei propriam mercy, has granted to the servants of God their

libertatem in fructibus silvarum proper liberty in the fruits of their woods

agrorumque, sive in cæteris utilitatibus and fields, and in other uses of rivers and in

fluminum vel raptura piscium, habere catching of fish; and granted that the little gifts

donavit: et ut munuscula ab æcclesiis from the churches in lay entertainment

in sæculare convivium regis vel of the king or magnates will not be

principum a subditis minime exigantur, demanded from their tenants, unless

nisi amore et voluntate præbentur, sed cunctas provided freely and charitably, but

tribulationes quæ nocere vel impedire possunt all tribulations by all the lords living

in domo Dei, omnibus principibus sub ejus under his power which can cause harm or

potestate degentibus, demittere et auferre præcipit; obstacle in the house of God are to cease and desist;

quatenus sublimitas regni ejus prosperis in so far as the sublimity of his reign prospers

successibus polleat in terris, et meritorum with fortunate successes on the Earth, evenmanipuli multipliciter maturescunt in cœlis. will his bundles of merits increase greatly in Heaven.

There are fourteen subscriptions, including Æthelbald, two bishops (Huita, ‘humble

Bishop of the Mercian Church’, i.e., of Lichfield, and Bishop Torthelm of Leicester)

and eleven laymen.



Appendix 2

Grants of Pontage up to 1400

The table below lists the grants of pontage made by the kings of England up to thebeginning of 1400. It is intended to supplement the arguments made in Chapter 4; inparticular, Columns 5, 6 and 7 illustrate some of the reasons for granting the tolls.

The breakdown of the columns is as follows:1. Location of the bridge in question.2. Year of grant.3. Volume and page of the Calendar of Patent Rolls (divided by kings): seeBibliography for full references.4. Duration of the grant in years.5. Was the grant given explicitly because of the request or ‘information’ of someone?

– usually a royal clerk, a member of the royal family or a prelate. If so, the column ischecked.6. Was a fee paid for the grant? If so, the column is checked.

7. Are the bridges on routes marked on or implied by the Gough Map?1

If so, thecolumn is checked. Additional details included in the grants that are pertinent to the arguments inChapter 4 are included in the footnotes.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ferrybridge 1228 ii, 173 1 X

Drogheda 1228 ii, 182 1 n/a

Staines 1228 ii, 197 1+ X

Drogheda 1229 ii, 267 3 n/a

Ferrybridge 1229 ii, 320 3 X

Doncaster2 1247 ii, 498 3 X

Fordingbridge 1252 iv, 166 1+ X

Evesham 1256 iv, 492 3

Nantwich 1257 iv, 579 5 X

1 Brian P. Hindle, ‘The Towns and Roads of the Gough Map’, Manchester Geographer 1 (1980), 35–49;Hindle’s reconstruction includes roads implied by the marking of places on routes not explicitlymarked, as well as the route from the thirteenth-century Matthew Paris map.

2 To rebuild the bridge out of stone.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

156

Shrewsbury 1259 v, 34 3 X

Fordingbridge 1268 vi, 223 2 X

Redbridge 1270 vi, 457 3

Fordingbridge 1271 vi, 514 3

Worcester3 1272 vi, 639 6 X

Redbridge4 1276 i, 129 5

Nantwich 1277 i, 233 ? X

Huntingdon 1279 i, 331 3 X

Brentford 1280 i, 418 3 X

London 1282 ii, 10 <1 X

London 1282 ii, 30 3 X

Montford, Salop5 1284 ii, 116 5

Llangollen 1284 ii, 125 3

Cork 6 1284 ii, 127 5 n/a

Bennettsbridge, co. Kilkenny 7 1285 ii, 169 3 n/a

Fordingbridge 1286 ii, 217 4

Staines 1286 ii, 229 5 X

Wheatley, Oxon8 1286 ii, 229 2 X

Warrington 1286 ii, 229 4 X

Staines

1294

iii, 86

6

X

Malton, Yorks 1295 iii, 143 3 X

Maidenhead 1297 iii, 324 3 X X

London 1299 iii, 409 7 X X

Carlisle 1300 iii, 486 5 X X

Holland9 1301 iii, 576 5 X

Walton-le-Dale, Lancs 1302 iv, 54 5 X

Boston 1305 iv, 322 3 X

Between Warrington and Sankey 1305 iv, 334 5 X X

3 Because the bridge had been destroyed by Prince Edward in the baronial wars.4 For the soul of Henry III.5 Directed to the sheriff and good men of the whole county, and giving them power to fine those

whose rafts damage the bridge.6 Licence to apply murage tolls to bridges too.7 Granted to a burgess of Kilkenny for his new bridge de Treuedineston . I am grateful to Prof. Ray

Douglas for this identification.8 Harpeford in the grant; I am following the identification offered by the various editors of the Patent

Rolls (cp. the grant of 1307). This grant was to ‘Hugh Griffin of Whatelegh’; the 1307 grant refersto the bridge as being in Oxfordshire.

9 The grant specifies that those who were obliged to repair the bridge should not be excused becauseof it.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

157

Carlisle 1305 iv, 334 5 X X

Boston 1305 iv, 362 5 X

Yarm 1305 iv, 389 3

Cockermouth 1306 iv, 412 5

London 1306 iv, 431 3 X

Holland 1307 iv, 493 7 X

Windsor 1307 iv, 495 5

Wichnor, Staffs10 1307 iv, 517 5 X

Wheatley, Oxon 1307 iv, 536 ? X

York 1308 i, 73 4 X

Boston 1308 i, 96 5 X X

Between Eustacebrigge and Waltham Cross 1310 i, 221 3 X

Marlow 1310 i, 226 4

Between Warrington and Sankey, Lancs 1310 i, 236 5 X X

Nottingham 1311 i, 386 5 X

Doncaster 1311 i, 410 3 X X

Radcot 1312 i, 515 5 X

Boston 1313 i, 553 5 X

Boston 1313 i, 585 5 X X

Between New Ross, Co. Wexford, andRosbercon, Co. Kilkenny 11

1313

ii, 43

20

n/a

Between Louth and Cockerington, Lincs12 1314 ii, 198 5

Marlow 1315 ii, 281 3

Nottingham 1315 ii, 344 3 X

Attingham, Salop 1315 ii, 377 3

Kegworth 1316 ii, 394 3 X

Kegworth 1316 ii, 511 5 X

Wetherby 13 1316 ii, 521 3 X

Drogheda 1317 iii, 57 5 n/a Kingston upon Thames 1318 iii, 113 6 X

Buildwas, Salop 1318 iii, 119 3 X

10 For the safety of people coming from Ireland and Wales.11 To Thomas, earl of Norfolk, the king’s brother, Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford,

the king’s nephew, and Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, ‘the king’s kinsman’; for constructionof a bridge between the towns.

12 For the construction of a new causeway between the towns through Tumby.13 To Eleanor, widow of Henry de Percy and executrix of the will of Richard of Arundel, who had

undertaken to repair the bridge for the sake of Richard’s soul.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

158

Kegworth 1318 iii, 150 4 X

Nottingham 1318 iii, 191 4 X X

Cork 1318 iii, 195 5 n/a

Montford, Salop 1318 iii, 196 3

Boston 1319 iii, 339 5 X X

Longford, Salop14 1319 iii, 355 3

Marlow 15 1320 iii, 502–3 7

Holland 1320 iii, 514 3 X

Pershore, Worcs 1322 iv, 47 2 X

Longford, Salop 1322 iv, 137 3

Burford, Oxon 1323 iv, 307 3 X X


Bridgnorth 1324 iv, 400 3 X

Lancaster 1324 v, 41 3 X X

Nottingham 1324 v, 62 3 X

Swarkeston, Derbys 1325 v, 90 3

Cosford by Shiffnal, Salop16 1325 v, 119 3

Staines 1325 v, 127 2 X

Derby 1325 v, 173 3 X

Corbridge

1327

i, 35

5

Wisbech 1327 i, 95 5

Nottingham 1327 i, 102 3+1 X

Lancaster 1327 i, 170 3 X X

Between Stanton and Swarkeston, Derbys 1327 i, 200 4

Wisbech 1328 i, 227 4+

Stone, Staffs 1328 i, 231 3 X

Boston17 1328 i, 248 3 X

Montford 1328 i, 249 5 X

Worcester 1328 i, 316 3 X X Nottingham 1328 i, 318 i X

Derby 1328 i, 318 3 X

Oxford 1328 i, 326 6 X

Brandon, Suffolk 18 1330 i, 546 5

14 For a causeway between Bletchley and Newport and a bridge over the River Tern.15 Granted to Hugh Despenser and called ‘his bridge’.16 To build a new bridge.17 For the half of the bridge belonging to William de Ros.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

159

Lancaster 1330 ii, iv 3 X

Leicester 1330 ii, 28 3 X

Maidenhead 1331 ii, 49 3 X

Aylesford19 1331 ii, 70 3

Between Whitchurch and Newport, Salop 1331 ii, 76 3

Brentford 1331 ii, 81 3 X

Between Cossington and Rothley, Leics 1331 ii, 115 4 X

Sudbury, Suffolk 1331 ii, 146 3

Boston 1331 ii, 150 3

Saltersford, Ches20 1331 ii, 170 5 X

Bridgnorth 1331 ii, 183 4 X

Wisbech 1331 ii, 183 3

Atherstone, Leics 1332 ii, 259 3 X

Malton, Yorks 1332 ii, 309 3 X

Between Shiffnall and Snelleshull, Salop 1332 ii, 338 3

Nantwich 1332 ii, 378 5 X

Wansford 1333 ii, 397 2 X

Yarm 1333 ii, 408 3

Croft-on-Tees 1333 ii, 409 3

Worcester 1334 ii, 514 3 XMaidenhead 1334 ii, 536 3 X

Peterborough21 1334 ii, 541 3

Peterborough 1334 ii, 555 3

Bridgnorth 1334 iii, xii 2 X

Holland 1334 iii, xiv 3 X

Wansford 1334 iii, 21 3 X

Hereford 1334 iii, 53 3 X

Nottingham 1335 iii, 95 5 X

Northampton 1335 iii, 96 5 XNottingham 1335 iii, 167 2 X

Windsor 1335 iii, 169 3

Between Shiffnall and Wellington 1335 iii, 188 3

Nuneaton 1335 iii, 188 4

18 Called Brandonfery in Norfolk in the grant: the bridge crossed the Little Ouse, which is the countyborder.

19 By petition of Parliament.20 To build a stone bridge.21 Vacated because as below.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

160

Haydon Bridge, Northumberland 1336 iii, 221 4

Between Waltham Cross and Eustacebrigge 1336 iii, 225 3 X

Shrewsbury 1336 iii, 228 3 X

Corbridge 1336 iii, 234 3

Appleby-in-Westmorland 1336 iii, 244 3 X

La Gue del Espyne , Yorks22 1336 iii, 339 3 X

Worcester 1337 iii, 385 3 X

Bridgnorth 1337 iii, 391 5 X

Newcastle-under-Lyme 1337 iii, 391 5 X

Pershore 1337 iii, 414 3 X

Boston 1337 iii, 414 5 X

Wansford 1337 iii, 458 2 X

Maidenhead 1337 iii, 545 6 X

Shrewsbury 1338 iv, vi 5 X

Swarkeston 1338 iv, 22 4

Lechlade 1338 iv, 57 3

Attingham 1338 iv, 58 3


Blackburnshire [sic] 1339 iv, 301 2

Ferrybridge 1340 iv, 432 3 X X Wansford 1340 iv, 516 3 X



Lechlade 1341 v, 291 3

Wakefield 1342 v, 382 3 X

Shrewsbury 1343 vi, 35 2 X X

Huntingdon 1344 vi, 252 5 X

Wallingford 1344 vi, 310 12 X

Wakefield 1345 vi, 549 3 X XNottingham 1345 vi, 568 7 X X

Shrewsbury 1346 vii, 45 5 X

Bolton upon Dearne, Yorks 1346 vii, 69 3

Kelham, Notts 1346 vii, 160 3 X

Tadcaster 1346 vii, 197 3

22 The bridge is described as crossing the River Swale; the site was probably near Bolton-on-Swalebecause one of the recipients of the grant was called John de Boulton.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

161

Swarkeston 1346 vii, 228 3

Holland 1347 vii, 243 6 X

Redbridge 1347 vii, 273 7

Radcot 1347 vii, 283 5

Berwick-upon-Tweed23 1347 vii, 439 7

Maidenhead 1348 viii, 20 7 X

Bedford 1349 viii, 254 4 X

Stony Stratford 1349 viii, 263 3 X

Malton 1349 viii, 284 3 X

Nottingham24 1349 viii, 295 5 X X

Newcastle upon Tyne25 1350 viii, 556 10 X

Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts 1350 ix, 7 5

Kingston upon Thames 1350 ix, 8 3 X

Shrewsbury 1351 ix, 41 10 X

Fordingbridge 1351 ix, 51 5

Worcester 1351 ix, 129 7 X

Whitby 1351 ix, 167 3 X

Yarm 1351 ix, 167 3

Stafford 1351 ix, 167 3 X X

Peterborough 1352 ix, 167 5Stony Stratford 1352 ix, 303 3 X

Oundle 1352 ix, 304 5

Holland 1353 ix, 491 5 X X

Marlow 1353 ix, 497 3 X

Buildewas 1354 x, 73 3

Swarkeston, Derbys 1355 x, 252 7 X

Maidenhead 1356 x, 326 5 X

Croft-on-Tees 1355 x, 329 3

Huntingdon 1356 x, 357 3 XFerrybridge 1356 x, 481 3 X

Holland 1357 x, 597 5 X

Wansford 1357 x, 638 2 X

Between Newark and South Muskham26 1358 xi, 2 3 X

23 The grant asserts the urgency to repair the bridge because of the loss of life incurred in the ferrybeing used, and because of the danger of a Scottish invasion.

24 Vacated because of the plague.25 With murage – and again urgency emphasized because of danger of Scottish invasion.26 A ‘common passage between the North and the South’.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

162

Redbridge27 1358 xi, 29 5+

Boston 1358 xi, 38 5 X X

Boston 1358 xi, 59 5

Northallerton 1358 xi, 110 4

Ripon 1358 xi, 111 3

Cockermouth 1358 xi, 144 3

South Ferriby, Lincs 1359 xi, 177 3 X

Redbridge 1359 xi, 177 10

Carlisle 1359 xi, 185 5 X

Bridgnorth 1359 xi, 193 5 X X

Bedford 1359 xi, 252 4 X

Ferrybridge 1359 xi, 296 3 X

Oundle, Northants 1360 xi, 343 5

Corbridge 1361 xi, 564 7

Whitby 1361 xi, 575 7 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1361 xii, 29 10 X

Redbridge 1362 xii, 172 10

Taunton 1362 xii, 203 7

Ripon 1362 xii, 253 5

Newcastle upon Tyne 1362 xii, 272 7 XStratford[-upon-Avon?]28 1363 xii, 309 3

Holland 1363 xii, 327 5 X

Wansford 1363 xii, 396 2 X

Windsor 1363 xii, 407 i

Staines 1363 xii, 408 i X

Oundle, Northants 1364 xii, 491 5

Windsor 1364 xiii, 53 3 X

Kirkby Lonsdale 1364 xiii, 129 6 X X

Stratford[-upon-Avon?]29 1366 xiii, 257 3

27 The grant states that no one was obliged to repair the bridge.28 This is the identification offered by the editors of the Calendars of the Patent Rolls. I have to say I

am skeptical: the grant refers to pons vocatus Stratford and is to two named individuals: both of theseelements suggest a bridge not in any town and are also in marked contrast to the pavage grant forStratford-upon-Avon of 1331 which refers unambiguously to Stratford super Avene and is given tothe bailiffs and good men of the town (PRO C66/177, membrane 17). I would hazard a guess thatthis grant (and the one for 1366 which is given in a similar manner) was for a bridge in Shropshire;the grant was to be supervised by one John of Hinstock: Hinstock is on a Roman road (so Stratford is a plausible name for a nearby river crossing), and that part of Shropshire was the recipient ofmany pontage grants. The grant also states that no one was obliged to repair the bridge.

29 See above, note 28.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

163

Holland 1366 xiii, 357 3 X

Maidenhead 1367 xiii, 378 5 X

Holland 1368 xiv, 117 5 X

Oxford 1369 xiv, 240 5 X

Oundle 1369 xiv, 245 3

Thrapston 1369 xiv, 273 4

Wansford 1369 xiv, 273 7 X

Brentford 1369 xiv, 325 5 X

Redbridge 1370 xiv, 461 10

Whitby 30 1371 xv, 60 7 X X

Whitby 1371 xv, 70 7 X X

Staines 1371 xv, 134 6 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1371 xv, 154 10 X

Biggleswade 1372 xv, 187 3

Darlaston, Staffs 1372 xv, 205 2

Thrapston, Northants 1373 xv, 321 3

Holland 1373 xv, 321 2 X


Wheatley, Oxon31 1373 xv, 345 2 X

Windsor 1373 xv, 347 7 Tadcaster 1373 xv, 368 3 X

Peterborough 1374 xv, 403 3

Warwick 1374 xv, 429 3


Montford, Salop 1374 xvi, 28 3 X

Holland 1375 xvi, 123 2 X

Chippenham, Wilts 1375 xvi, 170 2 X

Oundle 1375 xvi, 172 3

Kendal 1376 xvi, 237 3 X Wheatley, Oxon 1376 xvi, 248 2 X

Yarm 1376 xvi, 260 5

Kingston upon Thames 1376 xvi, 263 10 X X

Oxford32 1376 xvi, 280 i X

Newark 1376 xvi, 298 3 X

30 Vacated because as below.31 Called Hareford Brigge in Oxfordshire.32 To William de Raby, hermit.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

164

Warwick 1377 xvi, 423 3

Tadcaster 1377 xvi, 425 3

Alnwick 1377 xvi, 453 3

Malton 1377 xvi, 453 3 X

Thrapston 1377 xvi, 481 3

Yedingham, Yorks 1377 xvi, 481 3

Holland 1377 xvi, 482 2 X

Yarm 1377 i, 36 5 X

Maidenhead 1377 i, 61 4 X

Newark 1378 i, 84 3 X X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1378 i, 169 4 X

Wetherby 1378 i, 200 3 X

Yedingham 1378 i, 255 5

Oundle 1379 i, 313 3

Kendal 1379 i, 314 3 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1379 i, 326 5 X

Stangerwaith , Westmorland33 1379 i, 354 3

Holland 1379 i, 354 2 X

Cockermouth34 1379 i, 376 5

Wetherby 1379 i, 390 3 XLowther and Eamont Bridge, Westmorland 1379 i, 405 6 X

Lancaster 1379 i, 407 6 X

Holland 1380 i, 486 2 X

Lowther and Eamont Bridge, Westmorland 1380 i, 530 i/2 X

Stony Stratford 1380 i, 559 6 X

Newport Pagnell 1380 i, 562 3 X

Walshford, Yorks 1380 i, 562 2 X

Warwick 1380 i, 563 3

Wolseley, Staffs 1380 i, 563 3Between Waltham Cross and Cheshunt35 1380 i, 583 4 X

Staines 1381 i, 600 3 X

Maidenhead 1381 i, 602 5 X

Redbridge 1381 i, 605 3

Windsor 1381 ii, 19 3

33 Bridge across the River Lune.34 No one bound to repair except out of charity.35 For ‘Smalleybrigge’ between towns on the border of Essex and Hertfortshire.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

165

Holland 1381 ii, 44 2 X

Montford, Salop 1381 ii, 53 3 X

Dorchester, Oxon 1381 ii, 64 3 X

Bridgnorth 1381 ii, 69 10 X

Kendal 1382 ii, 91 4 X

Carlisle 1382 ii, 100 4 X

Walshford, Yorks 1382 ii, 113 3 X

Thrapston 1382 ii, 116 3

Oundle 1382 ii, 166 3

Appleby and Coupeland Bek, Westmorland 1382 ii, 210 4 X

Hereford 1383 ii, 216 10 X

Kingston upon Thames 1383 ii, 219 5 X

Shrewsbury 1383 ii, 228 3 X

Wareham, Dorset 1383 ii, 231 3

Fenny Stratford 1383 ii, 236 3 X

Bedford 1383 ii, 238 3

Rochester36 1383 ii, 243 7 X

Wallingford 1383 ii, 265 7 X

Whitby 1383 ii, 267 6 X X

Burton upon Trent 1383 ii, 301 3 XBolton upon Dearne 1383 ii, 306 5

Rochester 1383 ii, 308 7 X

Brigg, Lincs 1383 ii, 330 i X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1383 ii, 342 3 X

Brigg, Lincs 1383 ii, 361 3 X

Marlow 1383 ii, 361 5

Stamford Bridge 1384 ii, 366 3 X

Holland 1384 ii, 372 2 X

Aylesbury 1384 ii, 372 3Staines 1384 ii, 381 3 X

Skipton 1384 ii, 414 3 X

Windsor 1384 ii, 445 3

Newcastle upon Tyne 1384 ii, 485 5 X

Yarm 1385 ii, 520 5

Thrapston 1385 ii, 556 3

36 Pontage on a smaller footbridge erected while work continued on building new bridge.




1 2 3 4 5 6 7

166

Retford 1385 iii, 38 4 X

Holland 1386 iii, 97 3 X

Oundle 1386 iii, 97 3

Lancaster 1386 iii, 97 5 X

Kelham, Notts 1386 iii, 107 3 X

Maidenhead 1387 iii, 251 5 X

Wolseley, Staffs 1387 iii, 285 i

Staines 1387 iii, 362 5 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1387 iii, 367 3 X

Lechlade37 1388 iii, 409 2

Wilton 1388 iii, 437 2 X

Aylesbury 1388 iii, 445 i

Thrapston 1388 iii, 457 4

St Neots 1388 iii, 479 2

Maldon, Essex 1388 iii, 520 3

Chester 1388 iii, 529 3 X

Carlisle 1389 iv, 20 4 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1390 iv, 204 3 X

Newbury 1390 iv, 307 2 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1390 iv, 359 7 X Whitby 1391 iv, 500 5 X

Stamford Bridge 1391 v, viii 3 X

Oundle 1392 v, 23 3

Thrapston 1392 v, 133 3

Bridge End to Donington38 1392 v, 185 3 X

Thrapston 1392 v, 198 3

Maidenhead 1392 v, 204 5 X

Radcot 1393 v, 329 2

Newport Pagnell 1394 v, 372 3 XLowther and Eamont Bridge, Westmorland 1394 v, 382 2 X

Newcastle upon Tyne 1394 v, 387 4 X

Burton upon Trent, Staffs 1394 v, 409 3 X

Staines 1395 v, 553 i X

Staines 1396 v, 719 3 X

37 To repair the bridge after it was destroyed by Richard II’s uncle, Thomas of Gloucester.38 i.e, the Holland Bridge again by another name.



Appendix 2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

167

Bridge End to Donington 1396 vi, 8 3 X

Tadcaster 1397 vi, 59 3

Newcastle upon Tyne 1397 vi, 149 3 X

Windsor 1397 vi, 169 3

Maidenhead 1398 vi, 324 2 X

Fareham, Hants 1398 vi, 358 2 X

Fenny Stratford 1398 vi, 400 3 X

Aylesbury 1398 vi, 427 3

Chepstow 1399 vi, 563 5

Between Pulborough and Stopham, Sussex 1399 vi, 577 2 X

Bridge End to Donington 1399 vi, 589 3 X

Between Cambridge and Barton39 1399 i, 90 2

39 Granted ‘to John Jaye, hermit’.



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Management of Rochester Bridge, AD 43–1993 (Woodbridge, 1994). Youngs, Susan M., John Clark and Terry Barry, ‘Medieval Britain and Ireland in

1986’, Medieval Archaeology 31 (1987), 110–91.



Index

(Because the book contains the names of many small bridges, minor landholders and

so on, this is a selective index.)

Abingdon Abbey 18–19, 42, 91, 96, 153 Acton, Middlesex 88, 146

Æthelbald, king of the Mercians 25–7, 29, 31– 3, 37, 153–4

Æthelred II 39, 62, 65, 71 Æthelstan 39, 62, 69, 149 Æthelwulf, king of Wessex 38, 60 Alfred the Great 12, 39–41, 43, 46, 57–60, 64,

149 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 8, 11–13, 18, 21, 43,

46, 50, 52, 58, 64, 71, 113archaeology 13, 19n, 111–12, 149

Augustine, St (of Canterbury) 26, 30 Augustine, St (of Hippo) 42 Aylesbury 128n, 146, 165–7 Aylesford 51–2, 85, 159

Barnet 132, 146Battle Abbey 67–8, 114, 150Bede 1, 26–8, 34, 50n, 108Bedford 122–3, 135, 161–2, 165Bermondsey 85, 97, 113–14Berwick 136–7, 161Beverley 128, 130, 136, 144Black Death 123, 132, 142–3, 147, 161nBlyth 124–5, 134Boniface, St 24–5, 29–36, 46Boroughbridge 11, 128nBoston, Lincs 137, 144, 156–60, 162

Bracton 81, 131, 150Brent, River 98, 146bridge trusts 6, 80, 102, 106, 109–10, 113–18,

121, 123–4bridge-work (Anglo-Saxon obligation) 4, 8,

24–79, 105–6, 109, 113–14, 121, 126,149–51, 155see also obligations

Bridgnorth 11–12, 158–60, 162, 165Brigg, Lincs 11, 86, 165Bridgwater 11, 14Britton 83–4, 87, 141Brooks, Nicholas 5–6, 25, 27–9, 37–9, 41–2,

46, 51–2, 59–60, 99

Bury St Edmunds 90, 133

Cambridge 12–13, 40, 47, 49–51, 56–8, 103–5,127, 130, 146, 167

Canterbury 20, 48, 102, 112, 115–16, 120, 134Carolingians 15n, 26, 31, 60, 108–9carts 5, 22–4, 89, 129, 140, 145chapels on bridges 104, 115–17, 119, 121–2,

125charity 1, 55, 80, 89, 93–8, 100–101, 103, 105–

26, 136–7, 142, 147–8Charlemagne 36, 39n, 45, 59nCharles the Bald 43–5, 60, 93ncharter bounds 8–10, 15, 16n, 37–8, 149Chester 10, 13, 47–8, 51–2, 57, 81, 102–3,

105, 125, 166Christ Church, Canterbury 24, 27, 76n, 85Clofesho, Synod of 31n, 33Cnut 74, 79Colechurch, Peter 110–12, 116–18common burdens 24–79, 109Crowland Abbey 76

Chronicle of 18, 76Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury 32, 35

Danes see VikingsDerby 13, 141, 144, 158ditches 2, 18, 90–91, 105n, 106Domesday Book 10–11, 16n, 19, 22, 50n, 52

Doncaster 2–3, 136, 155, 157drainage of land 18, 21Droitwich 129, 144Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury 73, 75nDunwich 11, 132Durham 107n, 108n, 109n, 119

Edgar 10, 39, 63–4, 69, 72–6Edgware 101, 146Edmund 39, 64, 69, 74, 149Edward I 82, 91, 95–6, 104, 115, 119, 132,

136–8, 156nEdward II 127n, 133, 137




184

Edward III 1, 52n, 55n, 104, 124, 133, 135,137

Edward the Confessor 65, 74, 76Edward the Elder 1, 12, 14n, 39–40, 50, 57Egbert, archbishop of York 26, 28Eleanor of Provence 118, 134Ely 18, 66embanking of rivers 15–16, 19environmental change 15–22, 149exception clauses 8, 10, 28–9, 37, 39, 41–2,

45–6, 60–61, 63, 69, 72–5

Fenny Stratford 2–3, 145, 165, 167ferries 55, 101, 119–20, 132–3, 136Ferrybridge 2–3, 11, 128, 132, 155, 160–62Fleta 81, 84, 131floods 21, 91, 102, 113Fordingbridge 11, 14, 155–6, 161

fords 9–24, 46, 50, 89, 92, 95–6, 109n, 133forests 16–18, 21France/Francia 24, 30–32, 35, 43, 109, 111,

117, 119frankpledge 84–5

Glastonbury Abbey 18, 38n, 73–4, 97Gloucester 13, 87, 88n, 89, 144Godmanchester 92, 105Gough Map 102, 142, 155Gregory I, Pope 31–2, 34Gregory of Tours 26, 28Gumley, Synod of 24–9, 33, 36–7, 39n, 153

Harrison, David 6–7, 8nHemming’s Cartulary 9n, 41–2, 73Henry I 66–8, 72, 75–7, 94, 97, 108n, 114

coronation charter of 66, 77–8, 82–3Henry II 77, 81, 114, 128nHenry III 82, 95, 97, 118, 132, 136–7, 156nHenry of Huntingdon 70–71Hereford 14, 125, 159, 165hermits 80, 124–5, 141, 163n, 167nhighways see roadsHolland, Lincs 18, 90–91, 144, 156–9, 161–7Hollister, C. Warren 40, 77horses 5n, 22–4, 92, 145

houses on bridges 117, 120Hugh Candidus 72–3Humber, River 2, 15n, 20nHundred Rolls 56, 119Huntingdon 2–3, 47, 49–51, 53–4, 57, 87, 92,

104–5, 134, 137, 141, 146, 156, 160–61

indulgences 55, 104, 118, 123–4, 147Ine 62, 74Isembert 112–13, 117–18, 120

Jews 129 John, King 81–2, 113–15, 117, 120 John, Eric 25–9

Kegworth 123, 141, 157–8Kingston-upon-Thames 13, 146, 157, 161,

163, 165Knightsbridge 11, 146

Langdon, John 23, 129Lea, River 41, 43, 46n, 82, 91, 108n, 146Leen, River 50–51, 54–6, 126Leicester 3, 13, 50, 141, 144, 154, 159Leland, John 115–16Lincoln 2–3, 104, 123London 2–3, 13, 19, 41, 46–9, 51–3, 57–8, 66,

75n, 86, 88–9, 94–5, 100, 102, 105–6,109–19, 129–30, 133, 141, 145–6, 156– 7

London Bridge 5–6, 12–13, 21, 47, 52–3, 57– 8, 66, 68, 103, 109–19, 130, 133, 146,

150

Magna Carta 20, 78, 81–3, 87, 92, 131, 150Maidenhead 144, 146, 156, 159–61, 163–4,

166–7Maitland, F. W. 47, 54, 58Medway, River 47, 120, 134, 140Merton Priory 97, 111murage 126–7, 130, 132n, 134n, 156n, 161n

Nene, River 50, 93, 144New England 17, 21Newark 2–3, 99, 125, 135, 142, 161, 163–4Newcastle upon Tyne 85, 119–20, 134n, 144,

161–7Noel-Buxton, Rufus 15Nottingham 1, 12, 47, 50–51, 54–5, 58, 90,

122, 124–6, 129, 142, 144, 157–61

obligations, bridge-building (High and latemedieval) 1, 4, 46, 51–9, 80–106, 113,121, 124, 126, 144, 147–8, 150–51see also bridge-workfor roads 2, 83–5, 105–6, 127–8, 144

Offa, king of the Mercians 9n, 27, 37–8, 39n,70–73, 76n

Osbert de Clare 74–6

Oswiu, king of Northumbria 26, 28, 73Oundle 135, 144, 161–6Ouse, River 2, 105, 133oxen 22–4Oxford 13–14, 19, 109n, 134, 146–7, 158, 163

pack animals 22, 24, 129Palmer, Alice 126Paris 41, 44, 46Paris, Matthew 72Parliament 134, 137, 151, 159npavage 2, 123, 127–30, 132n, 134–47Peace Movement 109Peterborough 18, 72–3, 93, 159, 161, 163



Index

185

Pîtres 43–5, 60place-names 8, 10–11, 14–15, 16n, 18, 48–50,

149pontage 1, 55, 80, 92, 101n, 103–4, 115, 120,

123, 126–148, 155–67Pontefract 2–3, 11, 134

Quadripartitus 63, 78Quatford see Bridgnorth

Ramsey Abbey 76, 87Reading 68–9, 85, 146Redbridge 95, 99, 136, 141, 156, 161–4Richard II 120, 125, 137, 139, 166nroads 1–4, 40–41, 80, 83–5, 89–90, 96–7, 99–

101, 104–8, 125–6, 131–2, 135, 137,140–42, 144–7, 150–51

Robin Hood 127, 130

Rochester 6, 13, 40, 47–8, 51–2, 57, 81, 90, 99,101–2, 105, 110, 120–21, 125, 134,141, 165

Roger of Wendover 70–72Roman bridges 5, 51, 101–2, 110, 140Roman law 35–6, 105, 131, 149–50Romans 1, 5, 14–15, 48–9, 142Round, J. H. 47, 53–4

St Albans 3, 70–72, 132, 146St Augustine’s, Canterbury 20, 83, 92St Werburgh’s, Chester 69–70, 103Salisbury 96, 100, 130Scots 129, 137, 140, 161nSelden, John 24sheriffs 82–91, 96–9, 102, 105, 122, 125, 156nSherwood Forest 1, 55n, 125Shrewsbury 75–6, 144, 156, 160–61, 165Smithfield 101, 145–6sordida munera 35–6Southwark 19, 111, 113, 144Speed, John 10–11Staines 144, 146, 155–6, 158, 162–6Stamford 2–3, 11, 14Stamford Bridge 2, 11–12, 165–6Statute of Winchester 105Stephen 69n, 75–7

Stevenson, W. H. 24–6, 40, 69, 153Stony Stratford 2, 145, 161, 164Stow, John 110n, 116Stratford-by-Bow 88, 94, 100, 108n, 118n, 125Strood, Kent 102, 134Sturry, Kent 20, 83, 90, 92

Thames, River 12–13, 15, 18–19, 20n, 106–7,113, 116, 144, 146

Theodosian Code 28, 35 Thrapston 135, 144, 163–6tolls 105, 109

see also pontage, pavage and murage

Trent, River 1, 12–13, 20n, 40, 50, 55–6, 122,126, 133, 142, 144

Trent Bridge (Hethbeth Bridge), Nottingham1, 12, 40, 47, 50–51, 55–6, 58, 90, 122,124–6, 142, 144

“trinoda/trimoda necessitas ” 8, 24–5, 40see also Common Burdens

Uxbridge 11, 146

Vikings 4, 12, 37–9, 41, 43–6, 49–50, 57–60,72, 93n, 149

wagons 23, 102 wains 22–4, 129 Wales 140, 142, 157n Wallingford 14, 19, 160, 165 Waltham 91, 94–5, 98, 146, 157, 160, 164

Wansford 2–3, 14, 135, 159–63 Ware 2–3, 133, 146 Warwick 101, 144, 163–4 watermills 16, 19–21, 83, 89, 92, 95–6 Watling Street 2, 47, 102, 145–6 Wessex 4, 16n, 38–9, 106, 149 Westminster 15, 65, 87, 113, 146 Westminster Abbey 74–5, 86, 88, 98 Westerham, Kent 52, 99 William I 17n, 19, 50, 66–8, 150 William II 66–7, 97 William of Malmesbury 1, 70–71, 73–4, 153 wills 107, 118–19, 125–6, 137, 157n Winchester 13–14, 65, 92n, 100, 146 Windsor 118, 144, 157–60, 162–5, 167 Worcester 9n, 40, 73, 137, 144, 156, 158–61

York 2, 14, 109n, 130, 133, 144, 157