*

liked to be ashore; the one occasion was Barking Fair, on October the 21st and 22nd, the other was the feast of Christmas. Gingerbread, shows, dancing and drinking were the attractions (Stult of the former festival, whilst good cheer and family meetings distinguished the latter. There was abundance of prime fish in Barking in those days, and two pair of fine soles was a common present to neighbours from the master when the smack came home. Lachets were a fish well known in the town. This

ancient designation for gurnets is fast disappearing from our
vocabulary to-day. In the days of the monastery,
the Abbess levied a trifling toll, known as herring-
silver, on the catches. But the fishery, like the monastery, has
completely disappeared, and left the river Roding for Gorleston,
Grimsby, Lowestoft, and Hull.

Fishing steamers come up the river for repairs, which is their
only connection with the locality to-day; they are one uniting
link with the past which may disappear at any time.
Ice was preserved here in immense storehouses, and a lively

*NB Oct II is the frail

trade in collecting it was carried on for many years. The introduction of the system of packing in ice was found a convenient method of taking the catch fresh to market, and quite superseded the former plan of transporting the haul of fish up the Thames alive in the vessel's hold. This system was open to objection, as, if a captain became becalmed in his passage to Billingsgate, before steam tugs were so numerous, his whole catch of haddocks might die for lack of clean sea-water, which could not be renewed from a fresh-water stream.

The road from West Ham to Rainham was constructed in the first decade of this century, a bill being brought before Parliament to obtain the required authority. This bill proposed to bridge the Roding, and was objected to by some owners. Mrs. Alice Keeling and William Smith, Esq., petitioned against it, and amongst a variety of reasons there is the following allegation:

Mr. Smith is lessee and occupier of Barking Mills, and a commodious adjoining dwelling-house, which have been possessed by him and his ancestry for nearly a century, and the whole forms a comfortable and retired family residence. The Grounds, which Mr. Smith holds, belonged to the ancient dissolved Monastery of Barking, and are nearly circumferenced by the River Roding, Hawkins River, and the old stone walls of the Abbey, which secure to them the greatest privacy, and prevent depredations from being easily committed on his property. Not a pathway crosses, except the private road made by Mr. Smith, used solely for him, his family, and friends visiting his house. The entrance to the grounds from Barking Town is under a venerable stone arch, called the Abbey Gate, formerly the approach to the Monastery; and immediately within the arch is a cottage, occupied by one of Mr. Smith's own servants. The intended road will run within 300 yards of Mr. Smith's house, divide his grounds nearly in the centre, separate his kitchen garden from his house and the cottage, destroy the ancient arch, and part of the cottage and old stone wall, and take from his residence that privacy and security, which are now some of its greatest recommendations, and were strong inducements to Mr. Smith to purchase the lease of the grounds, and to alter and improve them at a very heavy expense.

These were some amongst many other excuses to hinder the road as suggested in the Bill, and to make the exit into Barking, via Cowbridge Lane; but a slight modification was made, so as to avoid Mr. Smith's ground whilst not frustrating the wise idea of the promoters to bring the end of this part of the road as near to the middle of the town as possible. The Roding and its branches were crossed in three places, and though two of the bridges were of vile construction as far as draught horses were concerned, yet a nearer way from Rainham to London was established.

In former days shipbuilding was executed on both banks of the Roding, and smacks and other vessels might often be seen on the stocks, in different stages of progress. The Eastern Counties' Railway Company had two steamers, the Essex and the Kent, constructed here in 1847, for the purposes of their ferry from North to South Woolwich, a small type of vessels compared with those grand liners which the Great Eastern. Railway have lately built for their noble service between

Harwich and Hook of Hook of Holland. Their gross tonnage was widely different, being only 66 and 67 tons, respectively. The ferryboats glided softly into the Roding on a full spring tide, and were soon fitted up for their duties near by. Their length was 78 feet, while their breadth was only 29 feet, but they were useful vessels, and for many years made an important link between the two counties.

Thus the Roding has been of vast importance in the history of Essex, and has had a glorious career in bye-gone days.

In the olden time it was a purling stream of elegance and beauty, descending from Hainault Forest as a clear and brilliant current, tinted a little sometimes with loam after heavy rain, but soon becoming bright again. Rushing and sparkling down by the Abbey, teeming with fish as plainly visible to the naked eye as in the Thames above Oxford, with pools where young folk might bathe and disport themselves, or even quench their thirst when the sun was hot, it was an indispensable acquisition to a noble estate, a boon to the towns on its banks, and a joy and pleasure to contemplate or to traverse.

But the river has fallen on evil times and into the power of those who have injured its glory and reputation. This is a boastful age of civilization and progress, yet how dull we are in sanitary science. The Roding, instead of being a source of health and life, has been converted into a terror and a nightmare. From a lovely charming torrent it has degenerated into an open sewer; from a living current it has been converted into a fetid ditch, a receiver for the filth and abomination of the district, and a source of danger and dismay to the inhabitants who reside on or near its banks. The emanations from this open culvert may, as poisons often do, bring malaria and and plague when certain other conditions prevail.

How has this come to pass? Why is this state of affairs permitted? How long is it to exist?

Have our ruling authorities no ideas of sanitation except to pour their sewage, more or less filtered, into the lovely rivers which intersect the country? This is a backward move, and is more worthy of the dark ages than of the days of sanitary congresses and medical conferences.

Surely our legislators should act promptly ere it is too late. If the law is not stringent enough to hinder this curse, let it be altered speedily. It is not prudent to wait till fear and pestilence bring a rude awakening. If our system is wrong, our statutes cumbrous and feeble, let them be strengthened and made workable, so that justice may be administered to all. Let remedial measures be taken at once, that the evil may be abated, never to occur again.

The Essex County Council had the matter brought before it as urgent in October of 1898, and dealt with it in a prompt and decided fashion. The Council, anxious to take the quickest

possible move, and eager to deal with the injustice, delegated all powers to a strong Committee, clothed with full authority to do whatever is possible under the circumstances.

Let us hope that though the action of the law be slow it may be effective, that justice may be done, and that one district may not be allowed to poison and ruin another. Still more, let us hope that some day the Roding may be restored to its pristine beauty, and be as it once was, a source of joy and beauty to the dwellers on its banks.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages in England. By the Rev. EDWARD L. CUTTS, D.D., pp. xvii., 579, Crown Svo., London (S.P.C.K.), 1898. Price 7s. 6d.

Although this is not a distinctly Essex book, it has yet a double claim on the notice of this Review. Its author was for some years an Essex vicar, and many of his facts and illustrations are drawn from parishes in the neighbourhood of Billericay. It is a book full of interest for all readers, and it fills a vacant place in English Church history.

The history of the Church in the middle ages is closely bound up with the general history of the country. The fact that before the Norman Conquest the Bishop and the Ealdorman sat side by side to judge causes is an illustration of a principle, then universally acknowledged, but now forgotten, that in a Christian land the Church means the people in their spiritual aspect, as the state means the people in their secular aspect. But gradually, perhaps inevitably, the ecclesiastical and the civil order became separate and distinct. The great Norman prelates who were brought into English sees after the Conquest would have little care for the civil affairs of the subject race; Lanfranc and Anselm were great eccleasiastics, intent on asserting the rights of the Church against the encroachments of the civil power; Becket was honoured as a martyr in the cause of the independence of the Church. But all the while the daily life of the people went on as before, and that life was moulded in a far greater degree than is ours by ecclesiastical influences.