Fn Scotland the highway system is regulated by the Roads and Bridges Act 1878 and amending acts.
In the narrative of William Rubruquis (1253), though distinct reference is made to the conquering Gur Khan under the name of Coir Cham of Caracatay, the title of "King John" is assigned to Kushluk, king of the Naimans, who had married the daughter of the last lineal representative of the gur khans.(fn 2) And from the remarks which Rubruquis makes in connexion with this King John, on the habit of the Nestorians to spin wonderful stories out of nothing, and of the great tales that went forth about King John, it is evident that the intelligent traveller supposed this king of the Naimans to be the original of the widely spread legend.
With this mention Prester John ceases to have any pretension to historical existence in Asia (for we need not turn aside to Mandeville's fabulous revival of old stories or to the barefaced fictions of his contemporary, John of Hese, which bring in the old tales of the miraculous body of St Thomas), and his connexion with that quarter of the world gradually died out of the memory of Europe.(fn 3) When next we begin to hear his name it is as an African, not as an Asiatic prince; and the personage so styled is in fact the Christian king of Abyssinia.
Moreover, we know that the Ethiopic Church did long possess a chapel and altar in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and, though we have been unable to find travellers' testimony to this older than about 1497, it is quite possible that the appropriation may have originated much earlier.(fn 5) We know from Marco Polo that about a century after the date of Pope Alexander's epistle a mission was sent by the king of Abyssinia to Jerusalem to make offerings on his part at the Church of the Sepulchre.
We do not know whether the leech Philip ever reached his destination, or whether a reply ever came back to the Lateran.(fn 6) Baronius, who takes the view for which we have been arguing, supposes it possible that the church in Rome possessed in his own time by the Abyssinians (St Stephen's in the Vatican) might have been granted on this occasion.
