before (see the previous page 156), and it seems that after it went further on, it divided into two branches, at about a mile and three-quarters from the site of the present town, both of which terminated in about four miles in an ancient road, called the "Chartway," which went for some very considerable distance along the outskirts of the said district of the Weald. A road to the Weald, then, passed through the site of the present town; and besides that, as before mentioned, the military road of Antoninus, coming from London, by Keston, Wrotham Heath, etc., crossed here at Radford in its way to Durobrivae, Judd Hill (i.e. Durolevum), and Canterbury. These are almost the only two facts now known of the earlier state of the town. It was, as is supposed, about the year 800, in the time of the Saxon longs, that the whole parish was transferred into the hands of the Archbishops of Canterbury, by some unknown donor, neither the original grant or instrument, nor any notification of its contents, being now extant among the records of Canterbury cathedral, or elsewhere but what is our argument from this? Why, it may be inferred that if the lands granted by the donation were so large in extent as they undoubtedly were, that they must have been deficient in population and comparatively uncultivated. There having been originally a Roman station here, and contiguous to it a Roman settlement, or "vicus," it would seem that dwellings became gradually constructed under the archbishops, on the line of Roman road, which was the more promoted by its being a thoroughfare, as has just been said, from the Weald of Kent; but so gradual was the progress of this now important town, that it can scarce be found mentioned in our national records till the thirteenth century. In that century, in the year 1261, Archbishop Boniface, the founder of the Hospital of Newark, which is situated across the river, on the former London road, obtained the grant of a market at