[Illustration: THE “WHITE HART” INN.] This is the summit of River Hill: a place which figures in an early sixteenth-century trust-fund that offers some entertaining history. XXII The road to Hastings, or to Rye, was the beneficiary of a bequest left in 1526 by James Wilford, a successor of those “pious benefactors” who from the earliest times, for the good of their souls less than for love of their kind, had been wont to repair highways, build bridges and causeways, and perform the like services, either by direct gifts or through the intermediary of the Church. Of the practical piety of James Wilford I think there can be little doubt. In the times when he lived, Reformation was in the air. The religious houses were moribund, and had Henry the Eighth not disestablished and suppressed them, another would have done so. People rather scoffed at the idea of purchasing salvation by bequests, just as you in modern times insure against fire. Wilford, therefore, in that he does not appear to have left his money with any ulterior object of saving his soul, was really more pious than he knew, and perhaps saved it the more certainly. Let us trust he is enjoying the full credit of his good deed. This public benefactor, a “rippier” of Rye, and said to have been an alderman of London, in his will of 1526 stated that he had actually _made_ the road from River Hill to Northiam church, a length of some twenty-six miles; and for the perpetual repair of the ruinous parts he left an annuity of £7, charged upon the “Saracen’s Head,” Friday Street, Cheapside, belonging to the Merchant Taylors’ Company. There had been sufficient reasons in his lifetime for him to make or amend this road; for by the term “rippier” a fish-carrier was meant, and James Wilford would appear to constantly have travelled it in his business of supplying London with fish, carried on horseback in panniers. That it should have been possible to convey fish this distance in the early part of the sixteenth century so expeditiously that it arrived in good condition is a somewhat striking testimony to the enterprise of an age commonly thought to have been ignorant of speedy communications. The Merchant Taylors were by the terms of this will to pay the £7 annually to the executors and relatives bearing the name of Wilford, and after their death were to make payment to the vicar and churchwardens of Rye. In the event of those authorities neglecting their duty of applying the money for the benefit of the road, the annuity was to be paid to the vicar and churchwardens of Northiam; and, should they default, was then to devolve upon Newenden.