‘If a small ship come up to Bilynggesgate, it shall give one halfpenny of toll: if a greater one which hath sails, one penny: if a small ship, or the hulk of a ship come thereto, and shall lie there, it shall give four pence for the toll. For ships which are filled with wood, one log of wood shall be given as toll. In a week of bread’--perhaps a festival time, ‘toll shall be paid for three days; the Lord’s day, Tuesday, and Thursday. Whoever shall come to the Bridge, in a boat in which there are fish, he himself being a dealer, shall pay one halfpenny for toll; and if it be a larger vessel, one penny.’ “Concerning Brompton’s translation of these laws, Bishop Nicolson, in his ‘_English, Scotch, and Irish Historical Libraries_,’ London, 1736, folio, page 65, says that they are pretty honestly done, and given at large: but they may be seen with several variations and additions very fairly written in the collections of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, preserved with the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, No. 596. John Brompton, however, at column 891 of his Chronicle, tells us one circumstance more concerning London Bridge before the Invasion of Knute; for he says, under the year 1013, ‘After this, many people were overthrown in the Thames, at London, not caring to go by the Bridge;’ that is to say, because it had been broken in the two recent battles as I have already told you, and there were also erected several fortifications about the City.’ “Perhaps it was the error of Sweyn in getting his Fleet foul of London Bridge, which made Knute the Dane, his Son, go so laboriously to work with the Thames, upon his Invasion in 1016; and I shall give you this very wonderful story in the words of the Saxon Chronicle, page 197. ‘Then came the ships to Greenwich, and, within a short interval, to London; where they sank a deep ditch on the South side, and dragged their ships to the West side of the Bridge. Afterwards they trenched the City without, so that no man could go in or out, and often fought against it; but the Citizens bravely withstood them.’ There are some who doubt this story, but honest William Maitland, who loved to get to the bottom of every thing, as he went sounding about the river for Cæsar’s Ford, also set himself to discover proofs of Knute’s Trench: and you may remember that he tells us, in his work which I have already cited, volume i. page 35, that this artificial water-course began at the great wet-dock below Rotherhithe, and passing through the Kent Road, continued in a crescent form to Vauxhall, and fell again into the Thames at the lower end of Chelsea Reach. The proofs of this hypothesis were great quantities of fascines of hazels, willows, and brushwood, pointing northward, and fastened down by rows of stakes, which were found at the digging of Rotherhithe Dock in 1694; as well as numbers of large oaken planks and piles, also found in other parts.