conduct.[8]

Yarranton was no sooner at liberty than we find him again occupied with
his plans of improved inland navigation. His first scheme was to
deepen the small river Salwarp, so as to connect Droitwich with the
Severn by a water communication, and thus facilitate the transport of
the salt so abundantly yielded by the brine springs near that town. In
1665, the burgesses of Droitwich agreed to give him 750L. and eight
salt vats in Upwich, valued at 80L. per annum, with three-quarters of a
vat in Northwich, for twenty-one years, in payment for the work. But
the times were still unsettled, and Yarranton and his partner Wall not
being rich, the scheme was not then carried into effect.[9] In the
following year we find him occupied with a similar scheme to open up
the navigation of the river Stour, passing by Stourport and
Kidderminster, and connect it by an artificial cut with the river
Trent. Some progress was made with this undertaking, so far in advance
of the age, but, like the other, it came to a stand still for want of
money, and more than a hundred years passed before it was carried out
by a kindred genius--James Brindley, the great canal maker. Mr.
Chambers says that when Yarranton's scheme was first brought forward,
it met with violent opposition and ridicule. The undertaking was
thought wonderfully bold, and, joined to its great extent, the sandy,
spongy nature of the ground, the high banks necessary to prevent the
inundation of the Stour on the canal, furnished its opponents, if not
with sound argument, at least with very specious topics for opposition
and laughter.[10] Yarranton's plan was to make the river itself
navigable, and by uniting it with other rivers, open up a communication
with the Trent; while Brindley's was to cut a canal parallel with the
river, and supply it with water from thence. Yarranton himself thus
accounts for the failure of his scheme in 'England's Improvement by Sea
and Land':--"It was my projection," he says, "and I will tell you the
reason why it was not finished. The river Stour and some other rivers
were granted by an Act of Parliament to certain persons of honor, and
some progress was made in the work, but within a small while after the
Act passed[11] it was let fall again; but it being a brat of my own, I
was not willing it should be abortive, wherefore I made offers to
perfect it, having a third part of the inheritance to me and my heirs
for ever, and we came to an