Mr. Harold Peake suggests to me that these writers may all have had as their inspiration the brilliant Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote the _History of the British Kings_ in the early twelfth century. He tells us, in language not more credible than that of “The Dream of Maxen” in the _Mabinogion_, that King Belinus commanded four roads to be made over the length and breadth of the island:--
“Especially careful was he [King Belinus] to proclaim that the cities and the highways that led unto the city should have the same peace that Dunwallo had established therein. But dissension arose as concerning the highways, for that none knew the line whereby their boundaries were determined. The king therefore, being minded to leave no loophole for quibbles in the law, called together all the workmen of the whole island, and commanded a highway to be builded of stone and mortar that should cut through the entire length of the island from the Cornish sea to the coast of Caithness, and should run in a straight line from one city unto another the whole of the way along. A second also he bade be made across the width of the kingdom, which, stretching from the city of Menevia on the sea of Demetia as far as Hamo’s port, should show clear guidance to the cities along the line. Two others also he made to be laid out slantwise athwart the island so as to afford access unto the other cities. Then he dedicated them with all honour and dignity, and proclaimed it as of his common law, that condign punishment should be inflicted on any that should do violence to other thereon. But if any would fain know all of his ordinances as concerning them, let him read the Molmutine laws that Gildas the historian did translate out of the British into Latin, and King Alfred out of the Latin into the English tongue.”
This great north-and-south road is like Ermine Street, the slantwise roads might be Watling Street and the Foss Way, and that across the width from Menevia to “Hamo’s port,” the Icknield Way. As Geoffrey makes one road go from the Cornish sea to Caithness, so Henry of Huntingdon takes his Fosse Way from Totnes to Caithness. Henry, as is known, had read part or all of Geoffrey’s book before it was given to the world and made an abstract of it; and the romancer had warned him to be silent as to the British kings, because he had not that book in the British tongue, brought from Brittany by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, and translated into Latin by Geoffrey himself. Here, as usual, it can safely be said that Geoffrey’s words are not pure invention; but what his authority in writing or tradition may have been appears to be undiscoverable. He may have used some tradition which was the basis also of the account of the Empress Helen’s road-making in “The Dream of Maxen.” He may have used the so-called laws of Dynwal Moel Mud--“before the crown of London and the supremacy of this island were seized by the Saxons”--who measured the length and breadth of the island, in order “to know its journeys by days.” (_Laws and Institutes of Wales: Vendotian Code._) Henry of Huntingdon may well have been a meek adapter of Geoffrey’s majestic statements, and some local knowledge of his own may have helped him to put names upon the roads of Belinus. To this second road from St. David’s (Menevia) to Hamo’s port or Southampton he gives the name of Ichenild or Ikenild. Walter Map, in _De Nugis Curialium_ (_circa_ 1188), speaks of Canute holding London and the land beyond Hickenild, and Edmund the rest; the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_ says that Edmund had Wessex and Canute the “north part” or Mercia; and these two together help to define the road.