“_Plautius_, the _Roman_ General under the _Emperor Claudius_, in the year of Christ, 43, is said to have passed the river _Thames_ from _Essex_ into _Kent_, near the mouth of it, with his army, in pursuit of the flying _Britons_ who being acquainted with the firm and fordable places of it passed it easily. (Dion. Cass., lib. lx.) The place of this passage is, by many, supposed to have been from _East Tilbury_, in _Essex_, across the river to _Higham_. (By Dr. Thorpe, Dr. Plott, and others.) Between these places there was a _ferry_ on the river for many ages after, the usual method of intercourse between the two counties of Kent and Essex for all these parts, and it continued so till the dissolution of the abbey here; before which time Higham was likewise the place for shipping and unshipping corn and goods in great quantities from this part of the country, to and from _London_ and elsewhere. The probability of this having been a frequented ford or passage in the time of the _Romans_, is strengthened by the visible remains of a raised causeway or road, near 30 feet wide, leading from the _Thames_ side through the marshes by _Higham southward_ to this _Ridgway_ above mentioned, and thence across the _London_ highroad on _Gads-hill_ to _Shorne-ridgway_, about half-a-mile beyond which adjoins the _Roman Watling-street_ road near the entrance into _Cobham-park_. In the pleas of the crown in the 21st year of K. Edward I., the _Prioress_ of the nunnery of _Higham_ was found liable to maintain a bridge and causeway that led from _Higham_ down to the river _Thames_, in order to give the better and easier passage to such as would ferry from thence into Essex.”[70] It may be added that the Hoo peninsula has other marks of having been, at much earlier times, a district of great transit. There is, perhaps, no other part of England, of so small an extent, which has so many and clustered examples of “Street” in names of secluded spots--including the almost ubiquitous “Silver Street”[71]--quite disengaged from those that follow the line itself of Watling-street. Yet Mr. Johnson of Cranbrook goes on to say, “As Cliffe in Hoo was never a place of note itself, so it lies, and ever did lie, out of the road to any place of note.” It is believed that he has greatly under-rated the substantial results of such a dynastic change as we are now considering; followed, for a thousand years, by its sequential changes on the material surface of the earth.