A number of other Acts relating to the Lea followed, but mention need only be made here of one passed in 1779 which stated that, inasmuch as the trustees appointed under earlier enactments could not, without further advance in the rates they were already empowered to enforce, liquidate the charges falling upon them in respect to the outlay for works done on the river, they were authorised to increase those rates.
In the seventeenth century, especially in the period following the accession of Charles II. to the throne (1660), much attention was paid to river improvement. A rapid expansion of commerce, of industries and of wealth had followed alike the planting of colonies in the West Indies and on the continent of North America, the development of home manufactures, the reclamation of many waste spaces through the operation of enclosure Acts, and the improvements brought about in cultivation. The need for better means of communication in order to open up districts then more or less isolated, to provide better transport for raw materials and manufactured goods, and to facilitate the carriage of domestic and other supplies needed by the increasing population, thus became more and more apparent.
In many instances the condition of the roads and the prejudicial results upon them of heavy traffic were adduced as the main reason for a resort to improvements of river { 130}navigation. An Act (21 Jas. I., c. 32), passed in 1624, for deepening the navigation of the Thames from Bercott to Oxford, stated that it was designed "for the conveyance of Oxford freestone by water to London, and for coal and other necessaries from London to Oxford, now coming at a dear rate only by land carriage, whereby the roads are becoming exceedingly bad." It was further stated, in the preamble, that "the said passage will be very behoveful for preserving the highways leading to and from the said university and city and other parts thereabouts" which, owing to "the continual carriages by carts," had become dangerous for travellers in winter, "and hardly to be amended or continued passable without exceeding charge." In 1739 there was passed an Act (14 Geo. II., c. 26), "for the betterment and more easy and speedy portage" on the Medway of timber from the woods of Sussex and Kent, which timber could not be "conveyed to a market but at a very large expense by reason of the badness of the roads in these parts."