LAND CARRIAGE. 761 



I noticed how wheat and other kinds of grain were cheaper in 

 London than in its vicinity, and on viewing the ground near 

 Burcot pier, I felt sure that not only wood and stone but 

 agricultural produce was abundantly sent down this water-way. 



Though it is probable that the roads in England were not 

 kept in such good repair as the evidence given by the cost of 

 carriage suggests to have been the case in earlier times, I do 

 not find such complaints as to the badness of their condition 

 in the seventeenth century as I do in the eighteenth, when 

 statute labour was first formally enacted by Parliament and in 

 part superseded by the Turnpike Act of 1773. In the first 

 place, it was in the power of the higher authorities to fine those 

 responsible for keeping the roads in repair, and I remember 

 having put an end to a lawsuit by showing one of the litigants, 

 the University of Oxford, which claimed that a particular 

 road was their own private way, that the officials of the parish 

 in which this road was situated were fined by the judges in 

 Charles the Second's reign for allowing this very road to get 

 out of repair, the remission of the fine, on the submission of 

 the churchwardens, being recorded in the parish archives. 

 Even in my accounts there are some notes of expenditure on 

 the repair of roads *, and I think it far from improbable that 

 the customary obligation, as a common law responsibility, of 

 repairing roads, was found to be effectual in keeping highways 

 in tolerable condition. 



LAND CARRIAGE. The cost of carriage is conveniently 

 illustrated by taking two points and examining the charge at 

 which the service of conveying heavy articles between them is 

 satisfied. Such an illustration is afforded by the payments 

 made for carrying firewood between Oriel College, Oxford, and 

 a wood called Stowford, about four miles' distance from the 

 place of destination. 



Oriel College, like many other of the Oxford Colleges, was 

 possessed of a wood in the neighbourhood of the city, from 



>r example, New College undertook half the cost of paving New College 

 Lane, Queen's College the other half. 



