Maud Heath’s Causey. 253 
The great causey and arched bridges that divide Barnstaple from 
Plympton, in Devon, owe their origin to a similar accident. “A 
merchant of London called Stawford chanced to be at Barnstaple 
to buy cloth, and saw a woman riding to come over by the low 
salte marsh from Plympton towards Berstaple, and the tide came 
so sore in, that she could not pass: and crying for help, no man 
durst come to her; and so she was drown’d. Then Stawford took 
the prior of Berstaple a certain sum of money to begin this causey, 
and the bridges, and after paid for the performing it.’’1 
There is, or used to be, hanging up in the hall of St. Helen’s 
Hospital at Abingdon, a long ditty in praise of the builder of Culham 
Bridge, near that town: one verse in modern phrase ran thus :— 
King Harry the fifth in his fow-erth year 
Hath found for his folk a bridge in Berk-shire; 
For carriage and cart to come and go clear, 
That, winters before, were soused in the mire. 
And some from their saddles flopped down to the ground, 
Or into the water, wist no man where. 
Private convenience again, would set some to work. Across 
the moors of Glastonbury is a causeway a mile long, called Gray- 
lake’s Foss, made by the abbots, chiefly for communicating with their 
own estates. It was no doubt through clerical influence under other 
circumstances, that amongst deeds of charity to which the dying 
were often urged, we find bequests of money by will, for making or 
repairing highways or causeys. No bad use to put it to either: 
when it is remembered how many centuries it takes before any 
country is really provided with decent roads; and how difficult it is 
to keep them in tolerable order when they are made. Amongst 
right thinking persons of this kind, was Joan Lady Bergavenny, 
who in 1434 devised “to the making and mending of feeble bridges 
and foul ways, £100.”2 Still greater was the zeal of Edmund 
Brudenell Esq., who in 1457 ordered by his will, even his gold 
cup, silver basins, a great piece of gilt plate with the cover, and 
three silver candlesticks, to be sent to the Tower of London to be 
melted down: to mend the highway across the heavy clay between 
1 Leland Itin: IL, 105, 2 Test. Vetusta, p. 226, 
