"The antient fund for keeping the roads of England repaired was a rate levied on the land holders in proportion to their rents, together with the actual service of the men, the carts, and horses of the neighbourhood for a limited number of days. But now, by the increase of inland trade, heavy carriages and packhorses were so exceedingly multiplied that those means of repairing the roads were found totally inadequate; neither was it just that a neighbourhood should be burdened with the support of roads for the service of a distant quarter of the Kingdom. It was therefore necessary to devise more effective and, at the same time, more equitable means of supporting the public roads, and the present method of making and repairing the roads at the expense of those who actually wear them and reap the benefit of them was now first established by an Act of Parliament (15 Car. II., c. 1.) for repairing the highways in the shires of Hartford, Cambridge and Huntingdon, by which three toll-gates (or turn-pikes) were set up at Wadesmill, Caxton and Stilton." The highways here in question formed part of the Great North Road to York and Scotland, and the preamble of the Act stated that this "ancient highway and post-road" was, in many places, "by reason of the great and many loads which are weekly drawn in the waggons through the said places, as well as by reason of the great trade of barley and {33}malt that cometh to Ware, and so is conveyed by water to the city of London ... very ruinous, and become almost impassable, insomuch that it is become very dangerous to all his Majesty's liege people that pass that way." The Act required the justices in each of the three counties to appoint surveyors who were to provide road materials and require of persons chargeable under the general law that they should send waggons and supply labour in accordance with their obligations, any extra work done by them being paid for at the usual rates in force in the district. The surveyors were, also, to appoint collectors of tolls who were empowered to levy, at the toll-gates (one of these being in each of the three counties) "for every horse, one penny; for every coach, sixpence; for every waggon, one shilling; for every cart, eightpence; for every score of sheep or lambs, one half-penny, and so on in proportion for greater numbers; for every score of oxen or neat cattle, five pence; for every score of hogs, twopence"; but no person, having once paid toll, and returning the same day with the same horse or vehicle, or with cattle, was to pay a second time. The Act was to remain in operation for eleven years; though it was, of course, then renewed. How the turnpike system, thus introduced, was subsequently developed throughout the land will be shown later.