By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson. 



285 



keeping his rivulet within its banks : and the carts and waggons 

 used very often to make use of the causeway, which is the reason 

 why large stones were placed there by the corporation to keep 

 them off. 



In the oldest accounts I have seen of the expenditure of the 

 Borough fund in 1598 when William Gale was Bailiff of 

 Chippenham, money was paid for pitching the causeway and 

 " pitching the pyke." The pyke I presume to have been a turnstile. 



There is also mention of a Hermitage on the causeway, in very 

 old times. A public causeway, seems, at first hearing, rather an 

 odd place for the residence of a hermit : as one generally under- 

 stands by that name, a peculiar kind of individual, whose taste led him 

 to live in a cave or a cell, away among the hills or woods, eating 

 roots and berries, and drinking of the clear spring : a very primi- 

 tive and simple mode of life, which might suit some people better 

 than others. We often find in old researches mention of Hermits, 

 men or women. If men, they were called sometimes Anchorites: 

 if women, Anchoritesses. These are words of Greek origin, signi- 

 fying men or women who lived apart from society. But these men 

 hermits, though they lived alone, did not always live out of society. 

 They lived in some small house, with a little chapel annexed, very 

 often upon bridges in the middle of towns or cities : very often in 

 the outskirts of towns, on some road-side, where everybody must 

 pass by in coming into the town, and where the hermit contrived 

 to way-lay them, and take a little toll. But I must say for him 

 that he did not pocket the said toll for any selfish or private 

 purpose of his own. He received it as a voluntary offering, and 

 applied it to some useful or charitable object. Anchorites were 

 actually licensed', and by the Bishop of the Diocese. Two of these 

 rather curious old licenses are preserved, and in print : one was for 

 a hermit at Fisherton, close to Salisbury, and another on Maiden- 

 head Bridge in Berks. In both these cases, the person who applied 

 for the license to live the life of a hermit, made what is called his 

 profession, in a deed regularly drawn up, in solemn form. The 

 substance of the latter is as follows: — "In the name of God, 

 Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before God and you my Lord Bishop 



