The Opening Meeting. 139 



early time. The Abbot of Abingdon, in pre-Norman times exacted 

 a toll of one hundred herrings at Lent-tide from the men who carried 

 on the traffic between Oxford and London, and this toll was well 

 deserved, for it was in recognition of a bit of engineering carried 

 out by the Abbot in cutting off a loop of shallow water'in the 

 Thames by a channel more practicable for navigation. 



Speaking of the great roads of England as they existed in Saxon 

 times in conjunction with her great rivers, The President mentioned 

 that the ancient Roman road that went to Silchester from the west 

 passed through Streatley, the record of which was still retained in 

 its name, while in Saxon times the Icknield Way crossed the Thames 

 at the ancient town of Wallingford, where afterwards there stood a 

 royal castle on the site of an earlier Roman, and possibly, too, a 

 British stronghold, the circumvallations of which remain. An in- 

 teresting link between our own county and the pass cut by the Thames 

 through the chalk downs below Wallingford was the fact that the 

 ancient Ridgeway, familiar to everyone who traversed Hackpen Hill 

 or skirted the downs under Barbury Castle or the hill of the White 

 Horse, came down upon the Thames also in this neighbourhood, 

 possibly in British times, crossing the river to the west of the grand 

 old British castle of Sinodun, the long mounds of which still crowned 

 the isolated boss of chalk round which the Thames winds near to the 

 place where in after days the religious metropolis of Mercia had its 

 seat, in Dorchester at the junction of the Thame, and Thames. 

 Here the river was then the boundary between the Saxon kingdoms 

 of Wessex and Mercia, even as it still forms the junction line at once 

 of manors, parishes, and counties from Lechlade to the sea. In fact 

 it was only in Wiltshire that it could be said to belong to a single 

 county, though in many places the boundary of the county of Berks 

 was found just including the left bank of the river. 



At its conclusion, Mr. H. J. F. Swayne proposed a vote of thanks 

 to the President for his excellent address, and having referred to the 

 fact that Mr. Story Maskelyne is the Chairman of a Parliamentary 

 Committee, expressed a hope that he would follow up the observa- 

 tions he had made with some active measures. In regard to the 

 President's remarks on the meetings of the Society, he himself was 



