Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/229

Rh declared will be "a great comfort," not only to all the king's subjects thereabouts dwelling, but also to all others that way passing and repassing, especially to all persons coming and going between the city and the town of Westminster about the deeds of the laws there kept in the term season. The following year another act (25 Hen. VIII. c. 8) was passed for the repaving of Holborn. This street is described as being the common passage for all carriages carried from west and north-west parts of the realm, and as having been, till of late, so well and substantially paved that people had good and sure passage through it; but now, proceeds the complaint of the inhabitants to the king, recited in the preamble of the act, "for lack of renewing of the said paving by the landlords, which dwell not within the city, the way is so noyous and so full of sloughs and other incumbrances, that oftentimes many of your subjects riding through the said street and way be in jeopardy of hurt, and have almost perished." A similar enactment is thereupon made to that in the statute for paving the Strand; and a general power is given to the mayor and aldermen to see the pavements maintained upon the same principle in all the streets of the city and suburbs, and also of the borough of Southwark. Yet a few years after this, in 1540, we find a new act (the 32 Hen. VIII. c. 17) directing the repavement of part of Holborn and various other streets, which are described as still "very foul and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noyous, as well for all the king's subjects through and by them repairing and passing, as well on horseback as on foot, as also with carriage." These streets were—1. The causeway or highway leading from Aldgate to Whitechapel Church: 2. The causeway from the bridge at Holborn Bars "unto the end of High Holborn westwards as far as any habitation or dwelling is on both the sides of the same street:" 3. Chancery-lane, "from the bars besides the Rolls late made and set up by the Lord Privy Seal unto the said highway in Holborn:" 4. Gray's Inn lane, " from Holborn Bars northward as far as any habitation is there:" 5. Shoe-lane: and 6. Fewter (now Fetter) L 2