In the Ballad of Abingdon Bridge, written by Richard Fannande Iremonger in the thirty-sixth year of Henry VI (1458), we find most of the difficulties that attended mediæval bridge-building. Till the fourth year of Henry V (1417) the townsfolk of Abingdon and Culham had nothing but a ford, which could not be passed after a storm of rain or after a thaw. Yet Abingdon lived under the shadow of a great monastery, and roads were constructed from her streets to the ancient or Roman highways. Not even a timber bridge preceded the charming stone one that charity built in 1417, the very year in which Henry V sailed from England with 16,000 men and ravaged Normandy. But in the Middle Ages most people regarded bridges as we in our ignorance regard hospitals, as useful and necessary things to be supported by charitable doles, and not by district rates. To beg is a degradation, no matter what the cause may be, and many a small town could have built for itself a bridge but for the ruling custom that taught it to be a mendicant. Culham and Abingdon waited a very long time before almsgiving got rid of their dangerous ford. The Abbot gave his aid, and Geoffrey Barber paid a thousand marks to the workmen, and Sir Peris Besillis, Knight, provided the stone, and “the gode lorde of Abendon left of his londe, for the breed [breadth] of the bridge, twenty-four fote large”:-- It was a greet socour of erthe and of sonde, And yet he abated the rent of the barge. An C. Pownde, and xvˡⁱ was truly payed By the hondes of John Huchyns and Banbery also, For the waye and the barge, thus it must be sayed. But I am happy to add that “the Commons of Abendon” had to do something for themselves. It was “set all in one assent that all the brekynges of the brige the town bere schulde.” In other words, charity had produced a free town bridge, leaving the inhabitants to pay for its upkeep.