252 Maud Heath's Causey. 
passages, more especially that of constructing bridges, fell upon the 
priests, being at that time the persons of most varied education, 
and probably best qualified by engineering talent to undertake it. 
There was one bridge more particularly, the celebrated wooden one 
called the ‘“Sublician,” connecting, and being then the only one 
that did connect, the opposite sides of the Tiber. This means of 
communication, so precious both as a passage and a defence, was 
placed under the special care of the Priests who took, as it is said, 
from this charge their name of Pontifices. When Christianity 
succeeded Heathenism, it was thought politic to retain in many 
instances existing names: and so it has come to pass that the Chief 
Bishop of Christian Rome, still continuing after 24 centuries to 
use the Title of Ponrrrr, represents in fact the Trustees of the very 
bridge of our old school friend Horatius Cocles! The Title sur- 
vives, but the Trust has expired. For after long assault and 
frequent reparation, yellow Tiber washed the bridge bodily away a 
1000 years ago, and it has never been rebuilt. 
How, and under what authority, in our own. country, road and 
bridge making was conducted in early times, would be a curious 
subject of inquiry. Acts of Parliament, turnpike trusts, highway 
rates, and the like, are of course, comparatively modern inventions. 
Royal commissions in times past may have controlled the king’s 
highways: but the original making, even of many of them, certainly 
of many of the passages and causeys which are found upon them, 
was no doubt owing in great measure to the efforts of individuals. 
Now and then a great person would be drowned or nearly so, and then 
there would be improvement. In 1252, a Queen of England who had 
suffered a cold bath in crossing the Warwickshire Avon at Stratford, 
as soon as ever she had escaped from the water, hastened to assign 
a meadow for the perpetual sustentation of a bridge. This was 
perhaps the same that was afterwards improved by Hugh Clopton, 
Mayor of London, ‘‘who made (says Leland) a sumptious bridge 
and causey there. There had been but a poor one of timber and 
no causey to come to it; whereby many poor folks and others, 
refused to come to Stratford when Avon was up, or coming thither 
stood in jeopardy of life.” 
