River Improvement 135 



Thames and the Severn, and between the Dee and the Severn ; 

 and he argued that there would be a further advantage from 

 the point of view of the national food supply, as an improve- 

 ment in river navigation would allow both of corn being more 

 easily brought to London and of the setting up of great 

 granaries, at Oxford for the advantage of London, and at 

 Stratford-on-Avon for the benefit of towns on the Severn. He 

 further says : 



" I hear some say, You projected the making Navigable 

 the River Stoure in Worcestershire ; what is the reason it 

 was not finished ? I say it was my projection, and I will 

 tell you the reason it was not finished. The River Stoure and 

 some other Rivers were granted by an Act of Parliament to 

 certain Persons of Honour, and some progress was made in 

 the work ; but within a small while after the Act passed it 

 was let fall again. But it being a brat of my own I was not 

 willing it should be Abortive ; therefore I made offers to 

 perfect it, leaving a third part of the Inheritance to me and 

 my heirs for ever, and we came to an agreement. Upon which 

 I fell on, and made it compleatly navigable from Sturbridge 

 to Kederminster ; and carried down many hundred Tuns 

 of Coales, and laid out near one thousand pounds, and then 

 it was obstructed for Want of Money, which by Contract 

 was to be paid." 



To describe, in detail, all the various schemes for the im- 

 provement of river navigation which were carried out, more 

 especially in the second half of the seventeenth century and 

 the first half of the eighteenth (irrespective of the many 

 others that succumbed to the complaint spoken of by Yar- 

 ranton want of money), would take up far too much space ; 

 but a few typical examples, which have a direct bearing on 

 the development of British trade, commerce and industry, 

 may be of interest. 



Until the year 1694, when the improvement of the Mersey 

 was taken in hand, Liverpool had no chance of emerging 

 from a situation of almost complete isolation, and of com- 

 peting with ports some of which, though now ports no longer, 

 or far outstripped by the Liverpool of to-day, were then of 

 vastly greater importance than Liverpool from the point of 

 view of national commerce. 



Nature, unaided by man, had not been so considerate to 



