=59. Roads neglected, or left to benevolent associations.=—The maintenance of the roads was still left to local authorities. We find in the court records of manors that the people reported stretches of road which were in bad condition, and ordered that they should be repaired under penalty of fine; but a road had to be very bad before it attracted attention, and received little care at best. The clergy were the leaders in maintaining the roads, for their estates were scattered and they felt the need of transportation as none other but merchants did. Pious persons also devoted themselves to this object, as a meritorious work like visiting the sick or caring for the poor; they formed associations to keep roads in repair, and left bequests to allow the work to be carried on after their death. The Alpine hospices, which are so familiar to visitors in Switzerland now, were established by religious orders to help travelers and merchants on their way. =60. Difficulties of transportation by road.=—A feudal lawyer distinguished in theory five kinds of roads: the path, the wagon road of eight feet, the road of sixteen feet, the highway of thirty-two feet, and the Roman roads of sixty-four feet. There was nothing in reality to correspond to this distinction. The Roman roads were still in use, but they were too much worn and too few in number to raise the general level of transportation. When an English king wanted to transport provisions to Scotland about 1300, he required four horses, or, in the northern counties, eight oxen to a wagon. Transportation by wagon was so difficult that pack animals were still in general use and travelers nearly always went on horseback, both men and women riding astride, and twenty miles being considered a fair day’s journey. The town of Bristol was granted a county court in 1373 to save the townspeople the journey to Gloucester, “distant thirty miles of road, deep, especially in winter time, and dangerous to passengers.” At the very end of this period (1499) a glover traveling to market at Aylesbury was drowned with his horse in a pit which a miller had dug to get clay from the road. A court acquitted the miller on the ground that he had no malicious intent, and really did not know of any other place where he could get the kind of clay he wanted.