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in those times, the king was mentioned as Henry without the 

 numeral. But that it was of the time of Henry II. there was no 

 doubt, because in it was mentioned that famous Bishop Jocelin 

 of Bath, who removed the seat of the bishopric from Bath to 

 Wells, which event took place in the 13th century in the reign of 

 Henry II. The document, he hoped, would be thought of sufficient 

 importance in regard to the history and development of commerce 

 to be printed in the Proceedings of the Club, as it would be a 

 valuable addition to the history of Bath. One of the greatest 

 hindrances to commerce was the great number of small tolls which 

 every lord took the opportunity of levying on all persons who 

 travelled, especially those who travelled on any profitable journeys 

 throughout their dominions. We are to understand from such a 

 document as this that four powerful corporations — Bath and Wells, 

 Glastonbury, and the Bishop (who of course is a corporation) 

 — united in order to implore from the king the grant of freedom 

 from toll for their own men, homines proprii, wherever they had 

 to cross the royal property. It was usual in those days for people 

 to pay toll if they went but ever so short a distance along a road 

 belonging to a new lord, and as there was a vast number of suzerains 

 throughout the country, there was a vast number of tolls to pay. 

 We find a law made in order to relieve the merchant that it should 

 not be obligatory upon a traveller to go out of his way to go over 

 a lord's bridge in order to pay the toll — that he should be free if 

 he could but get over the river without crossing the bridge, 

 revealing to us the fact that there was an exceeding jealousy about 

 the right to the payment of these demands, and that people were 

 supposed to be obliged to follow the road. Hallam, in his third 

 volume of the Middle Ages, particularly mentions this practice as 

 having not only retarded the development of communication with 

 foreign counti'ies, but also made it difficult to exchange tlie pro- 

 ducts of one part of our own country for the products of another 

 part, and equalize the distribution of means of life. It was very 

 generally known that the religious houses were the precursors of 

 commerce, industry, and manufacture, and that the monks of Bath 

 were among the precursors in the West of the manufacture of the 

 long-famous and still famous fabric of west country cloth. He 



