of the monarchy which followed the Dissolution of the
monastic orders.

To this day traces remain of the road which joined this market to the
second crossing at Henley.

We may presume that the importance of Cookham was maintained for some
two centuries after the Conquest, until it was outflanked and the
stream of its traffic diverted by the building of the bridge at
Maidenhead.

Just as this bridge came later than the Bridge at Henley, so it was
inferior to it in structure; it was, as we have seen, of timber, but
such as it was, it was the cause of the growth of Maidenhead much more
than was the bridge at Henley the cause of the growth of Henley. The
first nucleus of municipal government grows up in connection with the
Bridge Guild; the Warden and the Bridge Masters remain the head of the
embryonic corporation throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and even when the town is incorporated (shortly before the
close of the seventeenth century), by James II., the maintenance and
guardianship of the wooden bridge remained one of the chief
occupations of the new corporation.

It was just after the granting of the Charter that the army of William
III. marched across this bridge on its way to London, an episode which
shows how completely Maidenhead held the monopoly of the Western road.
The present stone bridge was not built to replace the old wooden one
until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, parallel in this as
in everything else to the example of Henley; and this position of
inferiority to Henley, and of parallel advance to that town, is
further seen in the statistics of population. In 1801, when Henley
already boasted nearly 2000 souls, Maidenhead counted almost exactly
half that number. The later growth of the place is quite modern.

The antiquity of the crossing of the Thames at Cookham is supported by
a certain amount of pre-historic evidence, worth about as much as such
evidence ever is, and about as little. Two Neolithic flint knives have
been found there, a bronze dagger sheath and spear-head, a bronze
sword, and a whole collection or store of other bronze spear-heads.
Such as it is, it is a considerable collection for one spot.

Cookham has not only these pre-historic remains; it has also fragments
of British pottery found in the relics of pile dwellings near the
river, and two Roman vases from the bed of the stream; it has further
furnished Anglo-Saxon remains, and, indeed, there are v