619 



MILE. 



MILE. 



650 



we found that our explanation not only had been given, but was at 

 one time so common as to admit of reference as to a thing understood. 

 Dr. Grew, in a paper in the 'Philosophical Transactions' (1711), 

 speaking of some erroneous " under-reckoning " says, " their mistake 

 seems to have been,. their reckoning only by the maps; that is, b 

 computed and not by measured miles." 



It is believed that, since the time of Ogilby, the roads have bee 

 much shortened by the various acts of parliament. Jfate the mile-iton 

 been always altered accordingly 1 or was the increased speed of stage 

 coaches, towards the end of their career, in part the result of calling 

 shorter line of road by the same number of miles .' To try thi 

 question, we shall compare a few distances from place to place, a* 

 given in^Ogilby's ' Britannia,' with those hi Mogg's edition of Paterson 

 ' Roads' (182-4), altered so as to start from the same point, namely, th 

 old standard in Cornhill : 



Ogilby. Mogg. 

 London to Worcester . . . .112 114 



,, Berwick 339 337 



>> Bristol 115 a; 



Bridgnorth H2 H2 



The measures in Ogilby may of course be erroneous ; but as the 



were certainly made with a sufficient instrument, and exhibit ever 



appearance of care, and as in our country it is nobody's business to se 



that all succeeding milestones are altered when a mile of road is saved ii 



the middle of a line, we suspect strongly that a remeasurement woul< 



often show the distances of 1824 to be too long. And in truth the fou 



distances just given are now said to be of 111, 337, 108, and 138 miles. 



The credit of the antiquaries' tradition, which would otherwise b 



considerable, is destroyed by its probable origin, as above stated. W 



now come to another species of evidence, the testimony of foreign 



writers. The new measures of any country found their way abroac 



but slowly at the beginning of the 17th century, and we shall no 



therefore be surprised to find foreign writers of the middle and end o 



that century varying from then existing measures in their statements 



We shall first take the geography of Varenius, first published in 1650 



and edited in 1872 by no less a person than Newton, then Lucasiar 



professor. The following sentence was allowed by the editor to pass 



without comment : " Triplicia habent Angli milliaria : majora, quorum 



27J sequaut gradum sive 19 Hollandica; mediocria quorum 50; mi 



nima quorum 60 vel 55." Now the mile of Varenius is described by 



himself as containing 18,000 Rhineland feet, each of which, according 



to Dr. Bernard, is 1'033 English feet. Whence it may be deducec 



that the three miles described as English by Varenius severally contain 



2 43, 1-33, and Ml statute miles (taking " 60 vel 55 " to be 60). We 



have no doubt that Varenius has here got hold of the leuca, the olo 



mile or half the leuca, and the modern statute mile, which, being no( 



sixty years old when he wrote, was not, though the contemporary legal 



measure, more accurately known than the others. Again, Ozanam, 



in his ' Mathematical Dictionary,' 1691, makes the English mile a 



quarter longer than the Italian mile, that is, considerably above the 



statute mile ; but his accounts of itinerary measures are so evidently 



theorised into round hundreds and thousands of geometrical paces, 



that no dependence can be placed on any specific results drawn from 



them. If his geometrical pace be five French feet (Paucton, p. 179), 



' :nglish mile (which he states at 1250 paces) is 6250 French feet, 



' 1 'J English yards, that is, T26 statute miles. But this is hardly 



worth notice, for no value of the geometrical pace can be taken which 



will make Ozanam's account of measures consistent with itself. We 



shall take one more conjectural determination of the mile, derived 



from the sea league of the 17th century. Ounter states this at three 



miles of 5000 feet in a mile, the league being the twentieth of a 



reputed degree. The author of the Exact Dealer's Daily Companion,' 



above cited, calls it three Italian miles, or 4904 yards. Now if the 



original league were the land measure, then the mile (or half of the 



leuca) would have been 2452 yards, or 1'4 statute miles. 



D'Anville endeavours to make the old mile the same thing as the 

 original French league, or the Roman mile and a half [LEAGUE], taking 

 the compiUed mile, already discussed, as the old measure. But inde- 

 pendently of the mile thus considered not being long enough (and we 

 have no instance of an itinerary measure shortening by time), the 

 distinction between the mile and the league seems to have been one 

 of the most common notoriety from the time of the earliest manu- 

 scripts ; and previous to this time the confusion which might have 

 made D'Anville's supposition true had already lengthened the league by 

 500 paces. 



The only way of detecting the length of any measure, a copy of 

 which is not absolutely preserved, is by the knowledge of some quan- 

 tity, which having been handed down in terms of the old measure, and 

 being still in existence, can be re-estimated in terms of the new 

 measures. Unfortunately we have no very exact measurements of 

 well-known lengths; nevertheless by using such as we have, and taking 

 the mean of a considerable number, the odds are much against any 

 very serious error remaining in the result. 



About 1478 William Botoner, commonly called William Wircestre, 

 or William of Worcester, made a tour in various parts of England, and 

 wrote, apparently for his own use, a large number of memoranda, 

 which remained in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 

 and were published in 1778, by Dr. Nagmyth, with the title,' ' Itinera- 



rmm Willelmi de Worcestre.' The date of the writer is well settled, 

 for he asserts that in the year 1473 he presented to the bishop of 

 Winchester his own translation into English of Cicero de Senectute. 

 This William of Worcester was given to measurement : he records the 

 dimensions of the churches which he visited, and the numbers of miles 

 between the several towns. From the latter enumerations we have 

 collected the most definite instances, which we have compared with 

 our latest road-books, as follows (W is the number of miles in W. of 

 W.'s account ; R in the road-books) : 



W. R. 



From Oxford to Farringdon . . . .12 17 J 



Farringdon to Wotton Basset . . . 15 19 



Gloucester to Tewkesbury . . .7 1 1 



Shcpton Mallet to Glastonbuvy . . 5 &\ 



Glastonbury to Bridgewater . . 9 15| 



Bridgewater to Taunton . . . . 7 lit 



Taunton to Wellington ... 5 7 



Wellington to Collumpton . . . 10 121 



Collumpton to Exeter . . . .10 1 1| 



Ottery St. Mary to Exeter . . . 10 13 



Plymouth to Saltash .... 3 4J 



Totals 03 131J 



' To give the best chance of a correct result which our present means 

 afford, we must increase this 131^ modern road miles in such pro- 

 portion as will make them correctly represent the same roads at the 

 time when William of Worcester travelled. This we have no data for 

 doing, and any supposition we may make must rest on its own intrinsic 

 probability. To neglect this correction altogether would make the 

 preceding give 100 old miles equal to 141 statute milea, and this is the 

 lowest conclusion which can be formed. But if five per cent, of devia- 

 tion has been corrected since the old account, that is, if what is now 

 100 miles would have been 105, then 100 old miles may be stated at 

 148 statute miles. This conclusion, and even a stronger one, may be 

 reinforced from a totally distinct quarter. But first let it be observed, 

 that since roads have no tendency to lengthen, but the contrary, it may 

 be inferred that such of the preceding instances as make the old mile 

 least are most probably those in which the distances have been 

 shortened ; and instead of being the cases of most weight, are precisely 

 the reverse. 



Though the preceding instances are quite sufficient, yet it may be 

 satisfactory to name one or two short distances in which a very large 

 mistake is impossible. The following, were they the only ones, would 

 lead us to suspect that the old mile was even longer than a mile and 

 a half statute. William of Worcester says that Wokey Hole is about 

 lialf a mile from Wells, whereas, by the Ordnance Map, it is a mile and 

 six-tenths in a straight line from the centre of the town. Again, 

 VIerkysberry (now Maaberry) Castle is placed by him at two miles 

 from Wells on the opposite side : it is now three miles and three- 

 quarters in a straight line from the centre of the town. Lastly, Fenny 

 Castle is said to be a mile and a half westward towards the marsh, 

 whereas what is now called Castle Hill is two miles and three-quarters 

 westward. These instances are more convincing than the preceding 

 as to the mere use of a longer mile, though not so well adapted for its 

 determination. 



We must now remove the question to Palestine. In the description 

 of the earth given by Roger Bacon (Jebb, pp. 180-236) he generally 

 'ollows Pliny, and gives distances in Roman miles, except only when 

 reating of those parts which the Crusaders visited, and other Eastern 

 jountries. In this part of his account Bacon relies much on the con- 

 versation and writings of a certain Willielmus, who went on a mission 

 rom the king of France to the Tartars (Turks), in 1253, and on the 

 >ral accounts of other travellers. But the country on the distances of 

 whose towns he is most precise in his information is Palestine 

 tself. By taking fifteen well defined instances, and measuring the 

 orresponding distances on Major Rennell's map in parts of inches, \ve 

 lave the following, the first column being the number of leucffi in 

 Jacon, the second the number of inches in Rennell. (We omit sea- 

 istances, as likely to err considerably.) 



From Gaza to Ascalon 



,, Ascalon to Joppa 



Joppa to Aco 



,, Aco to Crcsarea 



Aco to Tyre 



,, Tyre to Sarepta 



Sarepta to Sidon 



Sidon to Baruth 



Baruth to Gibeleth 



Gibeleth to Tripoli* 



,, Jerusalem to Joppa 



., Jerusalem to Jericho 



Samaria to Jerusale: 



,, Samaria to Ceesnrea 



Totals 



152J 16-03 



With it was published the ' Itinerary of the Holy Land,' by Simon Sim 

 'ith it was also published the tract on Leonine Verses referred to in the ar 



i that mihipflt. 



that subject 



