his son's time Henley has grown so much that it
counts as one of the three only boroughs in the whole of Oxfordshire:
Oxford and Woodstock are the two others.

It was in the thirteenth century also that a bridge was thrown across
the river at this point--that is, Henley possessed a bridge long
before Wallingford, and at a time when the river could be crossed by
road in but very few places. The granting of a number of indulgences,
and the promises of masses in the middle of the thirteenth century for
this object, give us the date; and, what is perhaps equally
interesting, this early bridge was of stone.

It is usual to think of the early bridges over the Thames as wooden
bridges. Aft older generation was accustomed to many that still
remained. This was true of the later Middle Ages, and of the torpor
and neglect in building which followed the Reformation. But it was not
true of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The bridge at Henley,
like the bridge of Wallingford and the later bridge of Abingdon, was
of stone.

It was allowed to fall into decay, and when Leland crossed the river
at this point it was upon a wooden bridge, the piers of which stood
upon the old foundation. How long that wooden bridge had existed in
1533, when Leland noticed it, we cannot tell, but it remained of wood
until 1786, when the present bridge replaced it.

In spite of the early importance of the town, it was not regularly
incorporated for a long time, but was governed by a Warden, the first
on the list being the date of 1305, within the reign of Edward I. The
charter which gave Henley a Mayor and Corporation was granted as late
as the reign of Henry VIII. and but a few years before Leland's visit.
From that moment, however, the town ceased to expand, either in
importance or in numbers; the destruction of Reading Abbey and of the
Cell of Westminster at Hurley just over the river, very possibly
affected its prosperity. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it
had a population of less than 3000, and sixty years later it had not
added another 1000 to that number.

Maidenhead follows, for centuries, a sort of parallel course to the
development of Henley.

Recently, of course, it has very largely increased in population, and
in this it is an example in a minor degree of what Reading and Oxford
are in a major degree--that is, of the changes which the railway has
made in the Thames Valley. But until the effect of the railway began
to