Alan Cooper's Bridges, Law and Power in Medieval England, 700- 1400, is an important contribution to our understanding of the development of the English laws relating to bridge building and maintenance from Anglo-Saxon times to the final decades of the fourteenth century. More a history of the responses of successive royal administrations to the problem of providing and maintaining a crucial element of transport infrastructure than a history of the technology of bridge construction, the book provides some fascinating insights into the very different approaches to governance of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kings.
Cooper introduces his subject by explaining that while the peace and stability offered by early medieval kings extended to guarantees that major roads and thoroughfares would be free of obstacles, brigands and other undesirables, such roads were expected to "look after themselves." The same was not true of bridges, however, which were recognised as needing legal provisions for their upkeep from a very early time. The changing nature of those legal provisions is the central concern of the book.
Cooper shows us how the performance of bridge-work was a universally enforceable obligation from as early as the middle of the eighth century and presented no particular problems of administration while the number of bridges remained small. It was not until many more bridges were constructed between 900 and 1200 that new laws and methods had to be developed to guarantee that they remained safe and traversable. The English laws on bridge- work were shaped by a number of different factors: population growth, changing patterns of land-use, new transport and construction techniques, religious aspirations, commercial interests, but perhaps most importantly, the strategic and economic goals of successive dynasties of English rulers.
Central to the book's ambitions are a clarification of certain aspects of the debate about the origin of the common burdens during the Anglo-Saxon period, especially as they related to bridge-work; an explanation of how the granting of royal immunities from secular burdens complicated the legal determination of bridge-work obligations during the late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman periods; and an overview of the ad hoc ways in which such obligations were parcelled out, renegotiated and created anew from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries by royal administrators.
The first half of Chapter One, titled "Bridge-work, but No Bridges: St Boniface and the Origins of the Common Burdens" examines the charter and archaeological evidence for the existence of fords and bridges to the end of the eleventh century, how rivers and streams were reshaped by forest clearance, field drainage and the canalization of waterways to feed watermills in the second half of the Middle Ages, and how advances in the transportation of goods (particularly wheeled transport from the second half of the twelfth century onward) placed increased structural burdens on roads and bridges. The second half of the chapter delves into the scholarly debate about the origin of the common burdens (i.e., the obligations on landholders to provide for military service and the upkeep of fortresses and public buildings and works), focusing on the work of W.H. Stevenson, Eric John and Nicholas Brooks. Cooper develops Brooks' position, arguing that the obligation on landholders to conduct bridge-work arose from a political settlement based on Roman law and Continental tradition negotiated by St Boniface with King Aethelbald of Mercia in the middle of the eighth century: an obligation that was more symbolic than real for most due to the small number of bridges at the time.
The second chapter, titled "Viking Wars, Public Peace: The Evolution of Bridge-work," elaborates upon the author's conclusion in the previous chapter that it was not until the tenth century that bridge-work was "established as an effective and burdensome element of governance" (38). Cooper argues with Brooks that the common threat of Viking invasion was the spur to the development of royal authority under the Saxons, providing a powerful incentive for the population's compliance with military and building obligations. He then analyses the different scholarly views on the purpose of bridge-work, arguing against the view espoused by Michael Powicke, Warren Hollister and Brooks that it was military in nature and intimately connected with fortress-work. However, while he succeeds in making a case against the latter point, he appears to end up agreeing with the former one.
Cooper then moves on to a very interesting discussion of what he refers to as "county bridges"--the six major bridges of Cambridge, Chester, Huntingdon, London, Nottingham and Rochester--and the wide-ranging bridge-work obligations that were attached to them. With the exception of the bridges at Nottingham and Huntingdon, the others were probably Roman in origin, but all were in existence by around 900. Drawing on a variety of primary and secondary sources covering several centuries, Cooper explains that while the obligations for the repair of Rochester Bridge were assessed across the lathe of Aylesford, those for Dee Bridge at Chester were based upon the county's hides, those for the bridge at Huntingdon on the county's hundreds, and those for the Leen Bridge in Nottingham on the county's wapentakes. The bridge-work obligations for London Bridge, on the other hand, appear to have been spread over many shires rather than a particular county or part of a county, whereas those for the bridge over the Cam in Cambridge were calculated by hides, but fell on particular estates, rather than the whole county. Cooper argues that the evidence points to an Anglo-Saxon origin for these obligations, which were connected to borough- building. He concludes the chapter with a discussion of the later Anglo-Saxon law codes referring to bridge-work as one of the common burdens, and how the relevant obligations were transformed from irregular or necessary repairs under Alfred to routine maintenance under Edgar.
The third chapter, titled "'As Free as the King Could Grant': The End of Communal Bridge-work," examines how the selective granting of exemptions to the common burdens by successive kings during the post-Conquest period led to a rapid erosion of the Anglo-Saxon settlement. Cooper opens the chapter by pointing out that the obligation to undertake bridge-work--from which even the king was not exempt--was either not understood or not respected by the Norman and Angevin kings, who used the bestowal of exemptions as a mark of favour. Cooper writes that "It is this use of previously communal and public obligations as an instrument of lordly rule that changed the legal understanding of the common burdens" (66). Once it was widely recognised that the Norman kings were prepared to exempt their own religious foundations and certain members of the lay aristocracy from bridge-work and other communal obligations, those who were not so favoured began exploring various avenues for securing such liberties for themselves. For religious houses founded before the Conquest, the favoured strategy was to acquire the services of a learned monk who would forge or alter the appropriate charters. For knights of the realm, it involved lobbying for and winning exemptions during periods of political instability and strife. For legal scholars, it involved watering down and omitting crucial elements of the Anglo-Saxon laws, presumably at the request or instigation of their lords, although Cooper does not speculate on their interest in doing so.
The fourth chapter, titled "Three Solutions," discusses how the lack of a coherent system of financing bridge maintenance during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries resulted in the development of three solutions by successive royal administrations: the enforcement of obligations, an appeal to charity and the granting of pontage tolls. Cooper's analysis of the enforcement of obligations opens with an attempt to establish the legal theory which informed bridge-work obligations under the Angevin kings. Most of the legal compilations of the period have little to say on the topic, with Fleta simply declaring that justices should make inquiries as to who ought to repair a particular bridge. Magna Carta contains one of the most important references to bridgework obligations, in which it is stated that "no vill or man shall be distrained to make bridges at river banks, unless they should do so from old and by law." The English legal compilation known as Britton (c. 1290) was presumably informed by Fleta and Magna Carta, and authorised sheriffs to distrain on the beasts and chattels of those who had not met their bridge-work obligations--which was generally assumed to be those villagers and landholders closest to the bridge in question. If a landholder held land on both sides of the bridge, he or she was held responsible unless they could prove otherwise. In cases where communal responsibilities could be established, anyone holding land within the relevant jurisdiction was held responsible. In other cases, the lord might be responsible for the supply of materials, and the tenants the labour for repairs. All kinds of complicating factors are discussed in the pages that follow, including the acquisition of lands to which obligations were attached of which the acquiring party was unaware until legal action was taken, obligations that were split across jurisdictions, and obligations newly created as a result of nuisance, such as those arising from damage caused to a bridge by heavy commercial traffic or the construction of a watermill and its associated waterworks. Obligations could also be created by historical precedent or by an initial act of charity: if the people of a village had customarily repaired a particular bridge, or if a secular or ecclesiastical lord had granted lands or rents for the upkeep of a particular bridge, they were expected to keep repairing it. A discussion of how various parties sought to escape their obligations or create exemptions is followed by a brief overview of how Anglo-Saxon bridge-work obligations were extinguished as the six great bridges discussed in Chapter Two collapsed and had to be completely rebuilt or new bridges were built nearby.
The section on charitable donations reveals the variety of motivations which informed donors, from ensuring a better position in the Afterlife, to securing or rewarding political support from vassals, and maintaining the commercial and military advantages conferred by the maintenance of vital transport links and strategic nodes. The creativity of high medieval officials at finding ways to finance the ongoing maintenance of important bridges is well illustrated by the arrangements made for Hethbeth Bridge over the Trent in Nottingham. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, its repairs were financed by a mixture of episcopal indulgences, royal gifts, grants of pontage tolls, bequests, profits of a ferry which replaced the bridge when necessary, and fund-raising by burgesses and bridge wardens.
The book closes with a very brief conclusion summarising its main findings and two appendices, consisting of the Latin text and an English translation of the Gumley Charter of 749, and grants of pontage made by various kings of England from 1228 to 1400. The Gumley Charter contains the first reference to bridge-work in an authentic charter, while the table of pontage grants is drawn from information contained in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, augmented by references to the Gough Map where appropriate. The conclusion makes the interesting observation that it was not until the sixteenth century that "statutes were enacted which placed the repair of roads and bridges equally on the people living near them," an unjust burden for those who lived closest to the busiest roads which was only remedied in the eighteenth century with the creation of turnpike roads. The rulers of the later Middle Ages lacked the political consensus (and, it would appear, the political will) to bring about any kind of systematic solution to the problem of road and bridge maintenance.
Bridges, Law and Power is an interesting and informative book, but its arguments would arguably have been easier to follow had it been prefaced with a coherent overview of earlier work on medieval English bridges, the disciplines and traditions from which that scholarship emanated, the main foci of interest, and where the author departed from or elaborated upon that scholarship. Where such discussions do take place, they are embedded in broader arguments which require the reader to keep in mind the various threads that have been developed earlier: not always an easy task for a non-specialist.
Due to his focus on the social power relations that shaped medieval bridge-work, Cooper restricts his discussion of methods of bridge construction to a very brief description of the two main types constructed during the Middle Ages: beam bridges and arched bridges. For details of bridge construction, readers are referred to Nicholas Brooks' and David Harrison's work on medieval English bridges, Donald Hill's general observations about ancient and medieval bridge construction, and a recent collection of essays on the history of London Bridge edited by Bruce Watson, Trevor Brigham and Tony Dyson. A little more detail on the methods and costs of bridge construction would nevertheless have made a welcome addition to the narrative.
Some recurrent instances of poor editing are also worth noting for the benefit of the publisher. It was somewhat disconcerting to find an increasing number of typographic and grammatical errors as the book progressed. The author's use of contemporary vernacular expressions and colloquialisms (such as "the bottom line," "keeping people hanging around" and "charitable karma") should also have been corrected prior to publication.
While these problems are relatively minor and could easily be addressed in a second edition, as the book stands it lends itself better to scholarly exegesis than to teaching in the history of technology, politics or the law.
For students of government administration, a final observation. There are a number of suggestive indications in the latter half of Bridges, Law and Power that the "muddle through" approach that was a feature of British government administration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and which has the dubious recognition of being a legitimate model of governmentality) may well have its origins in Anglo-Norman forms of governance. The evidence for such long duration correlations in styles of governance should be a comfort to British conservatives.