English Local Government: the Story of the King's Highway

1 S r^ _D ^r ^ f^â —^ ~] <S^^^^ r^ " r^ 5 1— (rt u. O >. K -J ^ r^ UJ r^ =* 1 D '" liyT-k^.^^^^-^--\^ I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englishlocalgoveOOwebbuoft ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT [ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERN- MENT]: THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY. BY SID- NEY AND BEATRICE WEBB. EX LIBRIS ST. BASIL'S SCHOLASTICATE LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, NEW YORK, CALCUTTA AND BOMBAY. 1913- BE612l^ PREFACE At the beginning of the year 1913 the Story of the King's Highway —an account of how, in England and Wales, the roads have actually been made and managed, from the earliest times down to the present day—may claim a certain topical interest. The advent on the roads of the automobile and the motor omnibus is producing effects, both on public opinion and on administration, which are curiously parallel to those produced, three centuries ago, by the coming in of the carriage and the waggon. The " New Users " of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose aggressions on the pedestrians and on the road surface were made the subject of persistent complaint in their day, are now themselves resenting the quite analogous aggressions of the " New Users " of the roads in the twentieth century. A hundred years ago, as our eighth chapter relates, the country was saved by " Pontifex Maximus Telford " and " Macadam the Magician." We do not find ourselves able to foretell the name of our twentieth-century deliverer, nor even the message that he will bring, or the office that he will hold ! We limit our suggestions or predictions to the last two pages. The Story of the King's Highway seems to us worth telling as a study in administration. And, if we mistake not, it has an interest even for the general reader, unconcerned with " problems." The strange devices by which our ancestors ; vi THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWAY " thought that they could keep the roads in repair ; the King's " Loiterers " who asked for largess " ; the curious idea of mending the roads by criminal indictment of the parish ; the yet untold history of the rise and fall of the Turnpike Trusts " " the frauds of the pikemen ; the glories of the stage-coach ; " the calamity of railways " ; the spectacle of the nineteenth- century statesmen being utterly baflflêd by the problem of the proper unit of road administration—all these things are worth reading about to-day. But whatever topical interest the present volume may have, owing to the accident of its publication at this date, the book really forms part of the study of English Local Government which we began in 1899, and of which the first considerable instalments were published as The Parish and the County in 1906, and The Manor and the Borough in 1908. It does riot, however, stand next to these two works in logical sequence. They both dealt with the structure of local government, and they need to be supplemented by a third volume, describing the various statutory local governing bodies, and recapitulating the whole survey of the structural development from the Revolu- tion to the Municipal Corporations Act. This we hope one day to complete. But the present volume comes from another drawer ! When we were still working out the history of the Parish and the County, arid the Manor and the Borough, we found it desirable—în order to ensure that we had correctly understood the structure—to describe, in some detail, the evolution of each separate function of English Local Govern- ment. Unfortunately, all these papers had to be put aside, from 1908 to 1912, under the stress of more urgent work. When we found time to take them out again, the volume on Road Administration proved to be the one nearest to completion. We have therefore chosen it for publication this year ; and in PREFACE vii order to round off the story, we have made it begin with the war-chariot of Boadicea and brought it down to the motor omnibus of to-day. The reader who likes footnotes and references will find these in appendices immediately following the several chapters, so that they can, according to taste, with equal convenience, be studied or skipped. SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB. 41 Geosvenoe Road, Westminstee Embankment, London, S.W., January 1913. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAoa The King's Highway bbfoee the Sixteenth Cbnutey . 1 Appendix to Chapter I. : Notes and References . 9 CHAPTER II BoAD Legislation under the Tudors and the Stuarts . 14 Appendix to Chapter II. : Notes and References . 24 CHAPTER III Parochial Road Administration 27 Appendix to Chapter III. : Notes and References . 42 CHAPTER IV Road Administration by Presentment and Indictment . 61 Appendix to Chapter IV. : Notes and References . 59 CHAPTER V The New Users of the Roads in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 62 Appendix to Chapter V. : Notes and References . 76 ix X THE STORY OF THE KING'S HIGHWA Y CHAPTER VI PAOE The Maintenancb of Bbidobs 86 Appendix to Chaptee VI. : Notes and Refeeences . 104 CHAPTER VII Tee Tttbnpike Road 114 Appendix to Chapter VII. : Notes and Refebenoes . 146 CHAPTER VIII " PONTIFEX MaXIMUS TeLFORD " AND " MaCADAM THE Magician" 165 Appendix to Chapter VIII. : Notes and References . 180 CHAPTER IX The Road Legislation of the Nineteenth Century . 192 Appendix to Chapter IX. : Notes and References . 223 CHAPTER X The New Users op the Roads in the Twentieth Century . 238 Appendix to Chapter X. : Notes and References . 265 INDEX CHAPTER I . THE king's highway BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY We propose, in this book, to tell the story of the King's Highway in England and Wales : not, indeed, the romance and picturesque incidents of travel on the road, but the more prosaic tale of the maintenance and management of the thoroughfares which make travel possible. And in this history, even more than in others, it is out of prolonged darkness that we emerge into light. We have to pass rapidly over the first thirteen or fourteen hundred years of historical knowledge about England, during which, of the actual methods and detailed facts as to the management and mamtenance of the roads, there is next to nothing known. Of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries we can form some imperfect vision ; whilst from the beginning of the eighteenth the records are abundant. To those who wonder what there can be of interest or instruction in so prosaic and mechanical a subject as road maintenance, we venture to suggest that they should give it a trial. In the evolution of road administration in England, we shall see exemplified, with many an instructive parallel, the whole story of EngUsh Local Govern- ment, from the Court Leet to the County Council. And in the dramatic eighteenth century struggle between the new users of the roads and those who were liable for their maintenance— between the rival assumptions that the traffic must be suited to the roads and that the roads must be suited to the traffic— we have a curiously exact precedent for the constant argument that went on yesterday about the bicycle and the automobile, and that is going on to-day between the Road Authority and the Motor Onmibuses. Our forefathers had a short and ready method of local self- 2 THE KING'S HIGHWAY government. In our volume on The Manor and the Borough we have described, in connection with the Court Leet, the characteristic mediaeval assumption of local administration, that the common services needed for social life were to be performed, not by any specialised organs of the community, but by being shared among all the citizens, serving compulsorily without pay. It was taken for granted that these services—allotted as they were among persons and classes according to their assumedly permanent status in the community—would themselves remain, year in and year out, unchanged in kind and quantity. This assumption it was that gave significance to the whole conception of nuisances, active and passive. If no man conmiitted any new annoyance, or refrained from fulfilling any old obligation, it was assumed that all would be well. In no department of local government was this mediaeval assumption so persistent as in the Maintenance of Roads, and in no other service was its result so obviously disastrous. Not until well into the nineteenth century was the old order wholly superseded by the modern device of a specialised organ of administration, alimented by compulsory taxation, and having, as its express object, the satisfying of the increasing needs of a progressive society. Be- tween these two assumptions, and the characteristic ideals of road administration to which they gave birth, there waged, during the whole of the eighteenth century, and indeed from the Restora- tion to the Reformed Parliament, one prolonged struggle. What maintained this conflict between the old principles and the new was the fact that these rival conceptions of public administration corresponded, in the main, with the interests and needs of antagonistic sections of the community—on the one hand the inhabitants of the rural parishes, but little concerned with any means of locomotion on wheels, and on the other, the new users of the roads, the citizens of the rapidly growing ports and industrial centres, and all whose business or pleasure compelled them to travel up and down England and Wales. It is this conflict between rival principles and conflicting interests that lends some philosophic interest to the story of the King's Highway. But before we can reach the point in our narrative at which this conflict between rival policies becomes, as we may almost say, dramatic in its intensity, we must run rapidly over those ; BRITISH AND ROMAN ROADS 3 preceding centuries into which we have made no special research.

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