Отрывок из книги
Edwin A. Pratt
Published by Good Press, 2019
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In the reign of Henry VIII. the first Statutes relating to particular highways were passed, a lord of the manor in Kent, and another in Sussex, being empowered to construct certain new roads, at their own expense, and then enclose the old ones for which the new would be substituted; but the Act of 2 and 3 Philip and Mary c. 8, passed in 1555, was the first Highway Act in this country which applied to roads in general.
"Commerce," says Macpherson, "beginning to increase considerably in the reign of Queen Mary, and the old roads being much more frequented by heavy carriages" (a term applied at this time to wheeled vehicles of any description), the Act was passed with a view to securing a much-needed improvement. After declaring, in a preamble, that the roads had become "both very noisome and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and carriages," the Act directed that constables and churchwardens in every parish should, during Easter week in each year, "call together a number of the parochians" and choose two honest persons to serve for twelve months as surveyors and orderers of works for amending parish highways leading to any market town. These surveyors were authorised to require occupiers of land to attend each Midsummer with wains, or carts, in proportion to their holdings, such carts being furnished, after the custom of the country, with oxen, horses or other cattle and necessaries, and to be in charge of two able men. All other householders, cottagers and labourers, able to work and not being servants hired by the year, were to furnish work in their own persons, or by deputy, bringing with them "such shovels, spades, pikes, mattocks and other tools and instruments as they do make their own fences and ditches withall." Work was to be carried on for four days, of eight hours each, unless otherwise directed by the supervisors; and constables and churchwardens were "openly in the Church to give knowledge" of appointed days. Fines for default were to be imposed at leets or quarter-sessions.
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