“Now, Sir, my intention in bringing to your memory these historical memoranda, is, to remind you that abstracts of written proceedings of these Courts, sometimes called the _Placita Rolls_, or Rolls of Pleas, are yet preserved, recorded in Law Latin in a current Court-Hand full of contractions, some being in the Tower of London, and others in the Chapter House at Westminster. These Rolls contain pleadings as well made in the ancient _Curia Regis_, as in the Courts subsequently erected; though, those of the reigns of the First and Second Edwards are chiefly of pleas in the King’s Bench, which is the last fragment of the King’s Hall, because it _may_ be removed with the Sovereign’s person, wherever he goes; and, although he be not actually present, yet he is still supposed to be so, since the style of the court is yet ‘_coram ipso Rege_,’ before the King himself. Now, a collection of abstracts from the Placita Rolls of the various Courts, having been made, and the contents being thus of a very miscellaneous character as to their original time and place, it has been printed by order of the Commissioners of Records under the title of ‘_Placitorum Abbreviatio_,’ or Abstracts of the Pleadings preserved in the Chapter House at Westminster, London, 1811, folio. “In this volume then, on page 316, column 2, we find it stated, that during Easter Term, in the sixth of the reign of King Edward II.,--that is to say 1312,--there were pleadings before the King, at Westminster, concerning the property of the Master of London Bridge, in certain Mills on the River Lee in Essex; but as these pleadings refer to an Inquisition originally made in the time of Edward I., the present will be the most proper period to describe and translate them. Stow mentions the circumstance, when speaking of the office of Bridge-Master, in his ‘_Survey_,’ volume ii. page 25, in the following terms. ‘The Keeper of the Bridge House had, in ancient times, an interest in certain Mills upon the River Lee, near Stratford; and the Master of St. Thomas of Acres,’--now Mercers’ Chapel, in Cheapside,--‘had a title to other mills there. For, as it appears by an old Inquisition, taken in the time of King Edward the First, there was a _Calcetum_--_i. e._ a chalk causeway--on the North, near Stratford, which was made by Queen Maud, through which there were three trenches made for three courses of water to run, for the use of several mills, partly belonging to the Master of St. Thomas, and partly to the Bridge Master: over which were three wooden bridges made by the said Masters. This is manifest by an extract out of an ancient Inquisition taken at Stratford at Bow, before Roger Brabanzon and others, in Anno xxxii^o.’--we shall presently find that this ought to have been xxxi^o.--‘_Regis Edwardi filii Regis Henrici_, &c.--the purport of which is, that there were three mills made upon this chalk causeway Northward; one a Fuller’s Mill, and the site of another mill belonging to the Master of St.