ON THE COST OF CARRIAGE. 693 



that parcels were ordinarily held by monastic bodies in manors, 

 or he would not have quoted as a recurrent fact (p. 94) the 

 portion of the Prior, in the fields meadow and closes of the 

 manor. Now it was clearly the interest of those who possessed 

 these scattered properties to have the communications between 

 them as easy and regular as possible. The worst English 

 roads were those of the Georges, such as are commented on 

 by Smollett 1 , and they were perhaps all the worse, because the 

 country party had contrived to shift the cost of repairing them 

 from their own rents on to the purse of the traveller. 



As the obvious convenience of access to property was a 

 stimulus to the due maintenance of roads on the part of land- 

 owners, so the habit of frequenting markets and fairs at stated 

 times was an impulse to the same end with all. Almost every 

 person within a radius of sixty miles, who was above the con- 

 dition of a day-labourer and peasant proprietor, would, if he 

 could, be present at the great Stourbridge fair, which lasted 

 three weeks, from the 8th 2 to the 29th of September, and 

 was as famous as that of Novgorod or Frankfort. Journeys of 

 considerable length were undertaken both on horseback and 

 by carts in a single day, a thing impossible if the roads had 

 been mere tracks, with ruts and mud holes such as one meets 

 with in the byways of the old and the highways of the new 

 States in the American Union. The Provost of King's College, 

 Cambridge, 1455, starts for London on Nov. n, and reaches 

 the city next day. In the summer, for Woodlark was in con- 

 stant attendance on the King and his Parliament, the journey 

 is often completed in a single day; such must have been 

 the expenses of the couriers despatched in Midsummer 1460 

 (Vol. Ill, p. 678, ii) to get news of the King's doings, and 

 perhaps of York's measures. 



Information as to the cost of carriage is of two kinds, by 

 water and by land. Water carriage is by sea, as from New- 



1 Humphrey Clinker. Letter of June 26. 



2 In Vol. I, p. 141, eighteenth is a slip for eighth. The reader will notice that the- 

 error is corrected by implication in the same paragraph. 



