ery few points
upon the river where so regular a continuity of the historic and the
pre-historic is to be discovered as in the neighbourhood of this old
ford.

In was in the course of the Middle Ages, and after the Conquest, that
new Windsor rose to importance. It is not recognised as a borough
before the close of the thirteenth century; it is incorporated in the
fifteenth.

Reading certainly increased considerably with the continual stream of
wealth that poured from the abbey; it possessed in practice a working
corporation before the Dissolution, was famous for its cloth long
before, and had become, in the process of years, an important town
that rivalled the great monastery which had developed it; indeed it is
probable that only the privileges, the conservatism, of the abbey
forbade it to be recognised and chartered before the Reformation.

Abingdon also grew (but with less vigour), also had a manufactory of
cloth, though of a smaller kind, and was also worthy of incorporation
at the end of the Middle Ages.

Staines cannot take its place with these, for in spite of its high
strategical value, of its old Roman tradition, of its proximity to
London and the rest, Staines was throughout the Middle Ages, and till
long after, rather a village than a town. Though a wealthy place it is
purely agricultural in the Domesday Survey, and the comparative
insignificance of the spot is perhaps explained by the absence of a
bridge. That absence is by no means certain. Staines after all was on
the great military highway leading from London westward, and it must
have been necessary for considerable forces to cross the river here
throughout the Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages, as did for
instance, at the very close of that period, the barons on their way to
Runnymede; and far earlier the army that marched hurriedly from London
to intercept the Danes in 1009, when the pagans were coming up the
river, and whether by the help of the tide or what not, managed to get
ahead of the intercepting force. But if a bridge existed so early as
the Conquest, we have no mention of it. The first allusion to a bridge
is in the granting of three oaks from Windsor for the repairing of it
in 1262. It may have existed long before that date, but it is
significant that in the Escheats of Edward III., and as late as the
twenty-fourth year of his reign--that is, after the middle of the
fourteenth century--it is mentioned that the bridge existed since the