156 DAGENHAM imEACH. 



The present course, however, is entirely due to the hand and mind 

 of man ; for without his restraining influence, exhibited by the long 

 line of embankments on both sides of its length, from Kew down- 

 wards to below Tilbury, the river would long ago have broken away 

 from its present channel, inundating at one place, and casting up the 

 debris at another ; scouring out a new course as its waters rushed 

 along. At what periods the earliest embankments were formed is a 

 matter for conjecture. Camden, Dugdale, and others considered 

 them the work of the Romans ; perhaps they made the start, for 

 they were workers as well as fighters, and have left us substantial 

 remains of their strength and skill ; but, so far as I am aware, we 

 have no evidence to prove this ; and we are too old to believe any 

 longer the story of our childhood, which transformed the stakes 

 which hold the mud together into the weathered thigh-bones of their 

 dauntless soldiers.^'' 



But we do know that the various owners of land and marsh abut- 

 ting on the river border have been constantly engaged, as far back as 

 we can go, in repairing and reforming these artificial boundaries ; 

 and that where neglect in so doing has occurred, the penalty has 

 been paid in the shape of serious damages by flooding and great 

 inundations — that the giant river has aroused now and again, 

 stretched out his mighty arms, devastated large tracts, and paralysed 

 for a while the strongest efforts of man. 



We have, however, positive information of the first enclosure of 

 Plumstead Marsh, which extended to Lesnes, in a folio MS. : 

 "Augustini Eccl : Cantuar : Annales," under the year 1279. 

 " Eodem anno inclusus erat primo mariscus de Plumstede per 

 Abbatem de IjCssnes mari."* This marsh, on the right bank of 

 the river, nearly opposite, was again inundated in 1522, through a 

 breach in the wall at Erith, and the land was not wholly recovered 

 until 1606. 



Nowhere, perhaps, can we better see and comprehend than at 

 this spot the artificial character of the river boundaries ; and the 

 words written some twenty years ago by our Hon. Member, Henry 

 Walker, F.G.S., in his "Rambles round London" (1871), will give 



3 The reader may be referred to Mr. F. C. J. Spurrell's importani paper in the " Archaeo- 

 logical Journal" (vol. xlii., p. 269), entitled " Early Sites and Embankments on the Margins of 

 the Thames Estuary," for information as to the probable periods of the formation of the early 

 embankments. Mr. .Spurrell is inclined to class them all as comparatively modern — the earliest 

 as clearly post-Roman, and probably mediaeval. — Eu. 



4 Vide Lambarde, "Perambulation of Kent, 1576," who quotes from the original MS. in 

 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 



