If, as is stated, Gundulph, the bishop of Rochester, built the keep of Rochester Castle at a cost of sixty pounds--and if this is true, quite as remarkable things are on record--it is clearly hopeless to attempt to reconcile any known money value of things with prices we are familiar with. Even if the amounts paid to great dignitaries were to be assessed according to any scale that has been named, they would be ridiculous, and yet that would seem to be the most natural and neutral test. If the Lord Chief-Justice of England were now offered in the way of fee for his annual labours ten or even twenty times the value of the sum that was paid to Chief-Justice Gascoigne in Henry IV.’s time, he would probably look quite as severely as that judge ever did on the Prince of Wales; so that, when we say the forfeited estates of a monastery, or the rent-roll of a nobleman, were say £500 a year, it is entirely beside the question to attempt to arrive at the value by any rough-and-ready method of multiplication. Perhaps most of this was paid in kind, and very little gold passed, and great allowance must be made for isolation. Of course, leaving railways on one side, we must remember what the state of roads was before the present century. Certainly, when ecclesiastical architecture was in its glory in England, a journey from Liverpool to London would have entailed as much manual labour as from London to Calcutta for each traveller, and this is very much within the mark. In many counties in England £10 in those days would represent £500 now, and in some, of course, the difference would be much less striking. This is introduced here, because, unless such variations are kept in mind, we shall always be at fault in trying to arrive at any comparative estimate of the value of money, and be continually led astray in assessing the nominal rent-rolls of abbeys or manors. Near the spot where the view of the Jews’ House is taken stands the conduit, a small pretty little building like a chapel, that in all probability was constructed out of the spoils of some ecclesiastical remain. Leland describes it as newly built when he saw it about the middle of the sixteenth century; and as the ornaments, such as the cuspings and other enrichments, belong to a period of some two centuries earlier, this is probably its history. Then as the convent of the Carmelites or White Friars stood on the opposite side of the street, the materials most probably came from there. Some of these conduits still remain in England, and are in use at the present day; and when we remember that only two centuries ago they formed the principal means of supplying water to the citizens, our march of improvement does indeed seem wonderful. The amount now considered necessary for the health and comfort of a city is at least twenty-five gallons per diem for each person, and, even with rain water, we may judge how far short the mediæval supply must have been. [Illustration: ON THE WITHAM, NEAR STONE BOW.]