Yet it raises a curious doubt: is it worse to kidnap a newborn babe, which will then live, than the quite likely alternative, given the foulness of those days simply to murder it?
From an initial insubstantial trickle it has grown to a world-class waterway, and as it spreads to 29km wide between Whitstable and Foulness Point, the Thames is heavy, not only with water, but millennia of history.