Tr 
3 
0 
a 
J 
ir 
Oe 
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS 533 
large towns could be most easily solved by giving new 4D, 1563 
facilities for internal traffic; he urged that the rivers might ’ 
be utilised for the conveyance of corn. He suggested that for 
great granaries should be built by the London Companies som?" 
near Oxford, and that the navigation of the Cherwell and 
Thames might be improved so as to render the conveyance 
of corn from them very easy’. He would have erected 
similar granaries at Stratford-on-Avon?, from which the 
towns in the Severn valley might be supplied. There were 
also attempts to utilise the Wye in a similar fashion? as 
well as to connect the Severn and the Thames by a canal at 
Lechlade. Charles IL, who had seen many things on his 
travels, was much interested in these schemes, as well as in 
the proposal to render the Medway navigable, with the view 
of conveying the timber of the Wealds of Kent and Sussex 
for the use of the Royal Navy’. During the seventeenth ond the ner 
century, when the products of the surface of the land were coal gave 
the only goods for which internal transport was required, Ho 
these schemes seemed impracticable; but in the eighteenth of #rofit. 
the increasing traffic in coal promised to be remunerative, 
and capital was available in large quantities for attempting 
to carry out these costly undertakings. It was the Duke 
of Bridgewater who, by his enterprise, demonstrated to the 
English public the possibility of success. 
His first canal, from Worsley to Manchester, was only The Due 
eleven miles long, but it presented formidable engineering Ga 
difficulties. Tunnelling was necessary to get access to the Sanat rom 
pits at a convenient level®; and the promoters determined Porshy ta 
to attempt to construct an aqueduct over the River Irwell, with his 
This was very desirable for the sake of convenience in resources, 
working the canal; though it was generally regarded as an 
impossible feat; but Brindley’s skill in the choice and use 
of materials enabled him to solve the difficulty”. In 1761, 
1 Yarranton, England's Improvement, 180. 2 Jb. 163. 
8 Act for making navigable the Wye, passed June 26, 1651, not printed by 
8cobell though mentioned by him. 
¢ Phillips, Inland Navigation, 210. 
® On the difficulties of conveying timber, see Defoe, Tour (1724), Vol. 1. 
Letter m. p. 59. The project of 16 and 17 C. IL c. 11 (private) as revived by 
13 Geo. II. c. 26 is described in the edition of 1748, 1. 204. 
8 Smiles, Lives of Engineers, I. 357. 7 Ib. I. 353.