Saint Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury originally had an old watermill, but its output was insufficient, so the abbot decided to build a new one. The water had not flowed fast enough, so he built a dam and artificially created a waterfall. With the new and old mills working together, they could meet his required output.
Building the dam widened the river. A log bridge required no great skill—find a sturdy log and lay it across both banks for people to cross. Now that the river had widened, the water washed away the soil at both ends of the bridge. With no support, the log was swept away as well.
The villagers were indignant. At that point, the abbot built a new bridge for them to cross. Its structure was more complicated and more stable than the old log bridge, and he could even put up a shelter on it so people could rest there.
"I'm doing charity," he told the villagers with righteous conviction. "You don't have to pay for the bridge to be built. I'm only charging a small toll to maintain it."
He said nothing about how the new watermill had increased his income.
Those merely passing through paid one or two pence and crossed, since they had urgent business to attend to. The others continued their standoff with the abbot.
This case took place in the fourteenth century. At the time, most Britons still lived in the countryside, where villages practiced self-government under the Germanic peoples' mark community system. Although there were lords, they often left their estates for various reasons—following the king on the Crusades, for example, or going to Normandy to fight the French. The manor was usually left in the hands of agents, such as the steward and the lady of the house.
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