STAGECOACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OfYOEE CHARLES G. HARPER 5 John Gf offri^y Miiou Ifomle^ TUFTS UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 3 9090 013 415 498 Vetermwy Library Tufts Universsty School of Vetennary Medkine 200 Westboro Rd. North Grafton. MA 0;536 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Brighton Road : Old Times and New on a ('lassie lli<^di\v;iy. The Portsmouth Road, and To-day and in Days of Old ts Tribntaries : The Dover Road: Annals Tiirni)ik('. nf an Ancient The Bath Road : History, Frivolity on an Old Highw Fashion, and The Exeter Road: The Stoi of England lligliwjiy. y of the West The Great North Road : Tbe to Scotland. Two Vols. Old Mail Road The Norwich Road: An Highway. East Anglian The Holyhead Road : The M to Dnlilin. Two Vols. ail-Coach Eoad The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great Fenl.md Highway. Cycle Rides Round London. The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road : Two Vols. [In the Press. STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OFYORE A PICTURESQUE HISTORY OF THE COACHING AGE VOL. I By CHARLES G. HARPER Illustrated from Old- Time Prints and Pictures London : CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited 1903 All rights reserved PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD. LONDON AND AYLESBURY. PREF/ICE Vy^ *' J-IANG up my old wliip over the fireplace,'''' said Harry Littler, of the Southampton " Telegrapjh,'" lohen the London and Southampton Mailioay icas opened, in 1833, — " I shan't loant it never no more " ; and he fell ill, turned his face to the wall, and died. The end of the coaching age was a tragedy for the coachmen ; and even to many others, whose careers and livelihood were not hound up with the old order of things, it tvas a bitter uprooting of established customs. 3Iany travellers v:ere never reconciled to railways, and in imagination dioelt fondly in the old days of the road for the rest of their lives ; while many more never ceased to re- count stories of the peculiar glory and exhilaration of old-time travel, forgetting the miseries and in- conveniences that formed part of it. But although reminiscent oldsters have talked much about those vanished times, they have rarely attempted a con- secutive story of them. Such an attempd is that essayed in these pages, confined within the compass of tioo volumes, not because material for a third was lacking, but simply for sake of expediency . Lt viii PREFACE is sJiown in the body of this hook, and may be noted again in this place, that the task of writing any- thing in the nature of a History of Coaching is rendered exceeding difficult by reason of the dis- appearance of most of the documentary evidence on lohich it should be based ; but I have been fortunate enough to 'secure the aid of 3Ir. Joseph Baxendale in respect of the history of Pickford 8f Co., of Mr. William Chaplin, grandson of the great coach-proprietor, and of 31r. Benjamin Worthy Home, grandson of Chaplin s partner, for in- formation concerning their respective families. Colonel Edmund Fuluier, also, communicated interesting notes on his grandfather, John Fahner, the founder of the mail-coach system. To my courteous friend, Mr. JF. H. Duignan, of Walsall, ivhose own recollections of coaching, and lohose collections of coaching prints and notes I have largely used, this acknowledgment is due. Mr. J. B. Muir, of 35, Wardour Street, my obliging friend of years past, has granted extensive use of his collection of sporting pictures, and 3Iessrs. Arthur Ackermann ^' Son, of 191, Regent Street, have lent p)rints and pictures from their establishment. CHARLES G. HARPER. Peteesham, Sueeey, April 1903. CONTENTS ciiArxnii I. The Introduction of Carriages . II. The Horsemen .... III. Dawn of the Coaching Age IV. Growth of Coaching in the Eighteenth Centur\ V. The Stage-Waggons and what they Carried How the Took Travelled ... VI. The Early Mail-Coaches .... VII. The Nineteenth Century : 1800—1824 VIII. Coach Legislation IX. The Early Coachmen X. The Later Coachmen XI. Mail-guards XII. Stage-coach Guards XIII. How THE Coaches were Named . XIV. Going by Coach : Booking Offices . XV. How the Coach Passengers Fared: Manners AND Customs down the Road PAGE 1 14 57 87 103 146 181 194 221 231 249 272 282 320 333 SEPARATE PLATES PAGE 1. The Maidenhead and Maulovv Post-coach, 1782. {From a contemjwrary Faintiny) . Frontispiece 2. The Stage-coach, 1783. {After Kowlandson) . . 83 3. The Waggon, 1816. {After Roivlandson) . . • T15 4. The Stage-waggon, 1820. {After J. L. Agasse) . .121 5. The Eoad-waggon : a Trying Climb. {After J. Pollard) . . . . . . .. . -131 6. The Stage-waggon, 1816. {By Rowlandson) . . 137 7. Pickford's London and Manchester Fly Van, 1826. {After George Best) . . . . . . .141 8. John Palmer at the Age of 17. {Attributed to Gainsborough, Ji.A.) ...... 149 9. John Palmer. {From the Paiuting by Gainsborough, ^-^•) 153 10. The Mail-coach, 1803. {Front the Engraving after George Robertson) . . . . . . .169 11. John Palmer in his 75th Year. {From an Etching by the U on. Martha Jer vis) . . . . -175 12. Mrs. Bundle in a Page; or, Too Late for the Stage. {After Rowlandson, 1809) . . . .183 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 13. The Sheffield Coach, about 1827. {From a con- temporary Painting) . . . . . .187 14. The " Birmingham Express " Leaving the " Hen and Chickens." (From a contemporary Paintinrj) . .191 15. "My Dear, You're a Plumper": Coachman and Barmaid. {After Rotdandson) . . . -223 16. The Old "Prince of Wales" Birmingham Coach. (After 11. Aiken) 233 17. In Time for the Coach. (After C. Cooper Henderson, 1848) 243 18. Stuck Fast. {After C. Cooper Henderson, 1834) . 267 19. The "Reading Telegraph" passing Windsor Castle. (After J. Pollard) 297 20. The Exeter Mail, 1809. (After J. A. Atkinson) . 301 21. The Brighton "Comet," 1836. (After J. Pollard) . 307 22. Matthews' Patent Safety Coaches on the Brighton Road 3^3 23. A Coach- Breakfast. (After J. Pollard) . . . 349 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT F'AGF. Vignette (Title-page) Preface .......... vii List of Illustrations xi Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore . . . . i Arms of the Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers 12 Epigiam Scratched with a Diamond-ring on a Window- pane by Dean Swift . . " . . . .46 Old Coaching Bill, Preserved at the " Black Swan," York 75 Old Birmingham Coaching Bill . . . . .81 Coaching Advertisement from the Edinburgh Courant, 1754 89 One of Three Mail-coach Halfpennies struck at Bath, 1797 173 Moses James Nobbs, the Last of the Mail-guaids . . 265 /A\KiB/;jA\/ao[!3 CHAPTER I THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES " Ah ! sure it was a coat of steel, Or good tough oak, he wore, Who first unto the ticklish wheel 'Gan harness horses four." The lines quoted above are not remarkably good as poetry. Nay, it is possible to go farther, and to say that they are exceptionally bad— the product of one of those corn-box poets who were accus- tomed to speak of steam as a " demon foul " ; but if his lines are bad verse, the central idea is good. That man who first essayed to drive four-in-hand must indeed have been more than usually To form anything at all like an adequate idea of the Coaching Age, it is first necessary to discover how people travelled before that age dawned. As a picture is made by contrasted light and shade, so is the story of the coaching yoL. I, 1 1 2 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE period only to be properly set forth by first narrating how journeys were made from place to place before the continuous history of wheeled trafiic begins. That history, measured by mere count of years, is not a long one. It cannot, in its remotest origin, go back beyond the first appearance of the stage-waggon, about 1590, when the peasantry of this kingdom began to obtain an occasional lift on the roads, and sat among the goods which it was the first business of those waggons to carry. The peasant, then, was the first coach-passenger, for while he was carried thus, everyone else, in all the estates of the realm, from King and Queen down to the middle classes, rode horseback, and it was not until 1G57 and the establishment of the Chester Stage that the Coaching Age opened for the public in general. If, then, we please to pronounce for that event as the true beginning, and allow 1848, the year when one of the last coaches, the Bedford "Times," Avas Avithdrawn from the London and Bedford road in consequence of the opening of the Bletchley and Bedford branch railway, to be the end, Ave have the beginning, the groAvth and perfection of the old coaching era, and its final extinction, all comprised Avithin a period of a hundred and ninety-one years. Wheeled conveyances are generally said by the usual books of reference to take their origin in this country with the introduction of Queen Mary's Coronation carriage in 1553 ; but, so far THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 3 from that being correct, mention of carriages is often found in authorities of a period earlier by almost two centuries. Thus, in her will of Septem- ber 25th, 1355, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, bequeathed her " great carriage, with the cover- tures, carjiets, and cushions," to her eldest daughter; and carriasre-builders at the close of Edward III.'s reign charged £100 and £1000 for their wares. Carts were not unknoAvn to the peasantry ; Eroissart tells us that the English returned from Scotland in 1360 in " charettes," a kind of carriage whose make he does not specify ; and ladies are discovered in 1380 travelling with the l3aggage in " Avhirlicotes," which Avere cots or beds on Avheels, or a species of Avheeled litter. We have, by favour of one of the old chroniclers, a fugitive picture of Richard II., at the age of scA'enteen, travelling in one of these Avhirlicotes, accom- panying his mother, Avho Avas ill. Bat such instances do not prove more than occasional use, and it certainly appears that Avhen Queen ^lary rode from the Toaa er of London to Westminster on her Coronation Day, Sej^tember 20th, 1553, in her State coach, she thereby revived the use of carriages, Avhicli, for some reason or another, had fallen into disuse since those early days. Her coachmaker, by a grant made on May 29tli in the first year of her reign, Avas one Anthony Silver. We may seek the cause of A\dieeled conveyances going out of use in the tAvo centuries before this date in the steady and continuous decay of the 4 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE roads consequent upon the troubled state of the kingdom in that intervening space. Re- bellions, pestilences, foreign wars, and domestic strife had marked that epoch. The Wars of the Roses themselves lasted thirty years, and in all that while the social condition of the people had not merely stood still, but degenerated. Towns and districts were half depopulated, and the ancient highways fell into disuse. It is signifi- cant that the first General HighAvay Act, a measure passed in 1555, was practically coincident with the reintroduction of carriages. Queen Mary's Coronation carriage — or, as it was called in the language of that time, " coach " — was draAvn by six horses, less for reasons of display than of sheer necessity, for, with a less numerous and powerful team, it would probably have been stuck fast in the infamously bad roads that then set a gulf of mud between the twin cities of London in the east and Westminster in the west. Only three other carriages followed her Majesty on that historic occasion, and the ladies who attended rode horseback. Two years after this new departure mention is found of a " coach " — still, of course, a carriage — made for the Earl of Rutland by one Walter Rippon, who in the same year appears to have built a new one for the Queen. The next patron of carriages seems to have been Sir Thomas Hoby, sometime Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Erench Court : that Sir Thomas who lies beside his brother, Sir Philip, THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 5 in their magnificent tomb in the little Berkshire village chnrcli of Eisham, beside the Thames. He owned a carriage in 156G. The jirogressive age of Elizabeth now opens. In 1564, six years after her accession, she was using a carriage l^rought over from Holland by a certain William Boonen, himself a Hollander. Boonen, indeed, became her Majesty's coachman, but his services cannot often have been required, for, if we are to believe Elizabeth's own words to the Erench Ambassador in 1568, driving in these early carriages, innocent of springs, must have been as uncomfortable as a journey in a modern builder's cart or an ammunition- waggon would be. When his Excellency waited upon her, she w^as still suffering " aching pains, from being knocked about in a coach driven too fast a few days before." Little wonder, then, that the great Queen used her coach only when occasions of State demanded. She journeyed to her palace at Greenwich by water, between Greenwich and her other palace of Eltham on horseback, and to Nonsuch and Hampton Court and on her many country pro- gresses in like manner, resorting only to wheels with advancing years. How bad were even the roads esj)ecially repaired for her coming may be judged from a contemporary description of her journey along that "new highway" whose " perfect evenness " is the theme of the writer. " Her Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a base sort lifted it on 6 s7\i(;/u\\ir// ./.)■/> ,1/.///, /.y /ins or )(>a7; \\\\\\ tluMT |n>K's." Majt^stv iniist havo Ixhmi soiv pill to it lo li>olv uini(>siii' on such »)(.*(.';vsi()iis, and in lh,> h.ul coiulition o{ all ivkuIs al tliat tiiut> wf I'md a iii>\\ siu'iiil'u'aiuu^ ii) \\u' coinM liiu^ss of Sii- \\'alt(>r KaliMU'li. NNlioat (IrctMiw ic'h llirow his V(d\tM cloak upon iho urouml for I'lli/alu'th to walk o\c\'. Illi.aluMh \>as an acconiplisluul horsiMvoniau. aiul i( is not surin"isinu\ uniKn- tluvst^ I'ircMiiu- stani'os. that slu^ niado full us^m^I' the accomplish- UKMU. cvMUinuiui;- on all possibh^ public occasions to apiH>ar in this manner. On lon^-ci' journeys she roile on a pillion hehiml a niounteJ chaniher- lain. hohlinu" on to him l\\ his waisthelt just as hulies continued to ilo for centuries yet to cinne. The curious in these thiuii's may t'uul interest in the tact that the moilern ^a-ov^m's hwthern waist- belt. \\hich now serves no practical function, is meridv a strange surN ival oi that oUl necessity of fiMuinine travel. The commonly-receivcil opinion that Kli/.abeili objected to carriaii'cs from the snpposcd •' etVeminacy "' (^i usiuii' them receives a severe sluH'k from her cavriau'e experiences. Avhich make it quite idn ions that travelling- in the earliest o{ them was only to be induli^'cd in hy persons of the stroni^cst frame and in the rudest health. She w lu\ mounted on her palfrey before her troops at Tilbury, w hen the Armada threatened. could justly claim that thouirh but a woman she had the spirit of a Kiuir— aye. and a Kinir of Eiiicland-- quailed before the riirours of a carria^ro- drive. In lo7i> the Earl of Arundel imported one of 'J UK IXJ RODL'CIION 01' CARRfAGRS 7 tli('S(! new Jtfid stmnge machinos from Germany. J low riov^l ;i(id stranf^f3 thoy wore may he gathered from tlif; pai-ticidar mention thus accorded them in tlie annals of tfie time. When we consider how l)ad was tlie condition evfjn of the streets of London, it will he* ahundantly evident that a desire for disphiy rather than comfort hrought ahout the increasing use of carriages that marked the closing years of Elizaheth's reign. By 1001 they had hecome so comparatively numerous that it was sought to ohtain an Act restraining their excessive use and forljidding men riding in them. This proje'cted r)idinance especially set forth the enervating nature of riding in carriages; hut it would seem that the real ohjection was the growing magnificence displayed in this way hy the wealthy, tending to overshadow the puhlic appearances of lloyalty itself. Whatever the real reason of this disahling measure, it was i^ejected on the second reading and never hecame law, and four years later both hackney and private carriages were in common use in London. Carters and waggoners hated them with a Intter hatred, called them "hell-carts," and heaped abuse upon all who usf;d them. Both their primitive con- struction and the fearful condition of the roads rendered their use impossible in the country. Teams of fewer than six horses were rarely seen dj-auijig coaches in what were then regarded as London suburbs, districts long since included in Central London ; and perhaps even the haughty and arrogant Duke of Buckingham, favourite of 8 STAG&'COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE James I. and Charles, was misjudged when, in 1619, the people, seeing his carriage drawn hy that number, " wondered at it as a novelty, and imputed it to him as a mastering pride." Had he employed fewer horses he certainly would have been obliged to get out and walk, or to have again resorted to the use of the sedan-chair, in which, before he had set up a carriage, he was used to be carried, greatly to the indignation of the j)opulace, to whom sedan-chairs were at that time novelties. " The clamour and the noise of it was so extravagant," we are told, "that the people would rail upon him in the streets, loathing that men should be brought to as servile a condition as horses." Yet no one ever thought of denouncing Buckingham or any other of the magnificos when they lolled in easy seats under the silken hangings of their state barges and were rowed by the labour of a dozen lusty oarsmen on the Thames. The work was as servile as the actual carrying of a passenger, but the innate conservatism of man- kind could not at first perceive this. On the Avhole, Buckingham therefore has our sympathy. The most innocent doings of a favourite with Uoyalty are capable of being twisted into haughty and malignant acts, and had it not been for Bucking- ham's position at Court his displays would not have brought him the hatred of the people and the rivalry of his own order which they certainly did arouse. The Earl of Northumberland was one of those who were thus goaded into the rivalry of display. Hearing that the favourite had six THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 9 horses to his carriage, he thought that he might very well have eight, " and so rode," we are told, "from London to Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration." The first public carriages, according to a state- ment made to Taylor, the "water poet," hy Old Parr, the centenarian, were the "hackney-coaches," established in London in 1605. " Since then," says Taylor, writing on the subject at different times betAveen 1623 and 1635, " coaches have increased with a mischief, and have ruined the trade of the watermen by hackney-coaches, and now multiply more than ever." The "watermen" were, of course, those who plied with their boats and barges for hire upon the Thames, chiefly between London and Westminster, the river being then, and for long after, the principal highway for traffic in the metropolis. So greatly, indeed, was the river traffic for the time affected, that the sprack-witted Taylor relinquished his trade of waterman and embarked upon the more promising career of pamphleteering. " Thirty years ago," he says, in one of these out- bursts, " The World runnes on Wheeles," " coaches were few " : — Then upstart helcart coaches were to seeke, A man could scarce see twenty in a weeke, But now I thinke a man may daily see More than the whirries on the Thames can be. Carroches, coaches, jades and Flanders mares Doe rob us of our shares, our wares, our fares; Against the ground we stand and knock our heeles, Whilest all our profit runs away on wheeles. to STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE " This," we find him saying, on another occasion, " is the rattling, rowling, rumbling age, and the world runnes on wheeles. The hackney-men, Avho were wont to have furnished travellers in all places with fitting and serviceable horses for any journey, are (by the multitude of coaches) undone by the dozens." The bitter cry of Taylor and the Tliames watermen may or may not have been hearkened to, but certainly hackney-coaches were prohibited in 1635. This, however, was probably due rather to Royal whim or prejudice than to any consideration for a decaying trade. It was an arbitrary age, and it only needed a Star Chamber order for public carriages, considered by the Court to be a nuisance, to be suppressed. The reasons advanced read curiously at this time : "His Majesty, perceiving that of late the great numbers of hackney-coaches were grown a great disturbance to the King, Queen, and nobility through the streets of the said city, so as the common passage was made dangerous and the rates and prices of hay and provender and other provisions of the stable thereby made exceeding dear, hath thought fit, with the advice of his Privy Council, to publish his Royal pleasure, for reformation therein." His Majesty therefore commanded that no hackney-coaches should be used in London unless they were engaged to travel at least three miles out of town, and owners of such coaches were to keep sufiicient able horses and geldings, fit for his Majesty's THE' INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES ii service, "whensoever his occasion shall require them." This despotic measure was amended in 1637, when fifty hackney-coachmen for London were licensed, to keep not more than twelve horses each. This meant either tliat three hundred or a hundred and fifty public carriages then came into use, according to Avhether tAvo or four horses were harnessed. " And so," says Taylor, " there grew up the trade of coach-huilding in England." These early carriages, whether hackney or private, were not only without springs, hut were innocent of windows. In their place were shutters or leather curtains. The first " glass coach " mentioned is that made for the Duke of York in 1661. Pepys at this period becomes our principal authority on this subject. On May 1st, 1665, he is found witnessing experiments with newly- designed carriages with springs, and again on September 5th, finding them go not quite so easy as their inventor claimed for them. Yet, since private carriages were clearly becoming the fashion, Mr. Secretary-to-the-Admiralty Pepys must needs have one ; and accordingly, on December 2nd, 1668, he takes his first ride : " Al)road with my wife, the first time that I ever rode in my own coach." Pepys always delighted in being in the fashion. He would not be in advance of it, and not, if he could help it, behind. The fact, then, of his setting up a carriage of his own is sufiicient to show how largely the moneyed classes had begun 12 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE to go about on wheels. But better evidence still is found in the establishment, May 1677, of the Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers, whose arms still bear rej)resentations of the carriages in use at that period. The armorial bearings of the Coach-makers are, when duly tricked out in their proper colours, somewhat ARMS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF COACH AND HARNESS MAKERS. striking. Stated in plain terms, done into English out of heraldic jargon, they consist of a blue shield of arms with three coaches and a chevron in gold, sup23orted on either side by a golden horse, harnessed and saddled in black studded with gold ; with blue housings garnished with red, and fringed and j^urfled in gold. The horses are further adorned with plumes of four feathers in gold, silver, red, and blue. A crest above displays THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 13 Plicebiis driving his chariot, and the motto beneath declares that "After clouds rises the sun." The hackney-carriages of London in 1669, the year following Pepys' establishment of his own private turn-out, numbered, according to the memoirs of Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who travelled England at that time, eight hundred. The age of public vehicles was come. CHAPTER II THE HORSEMEN "The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity." — Pennant, 1739. Long before wheeled conveyances of any kind were to be hired in this country, travellers were accustomed to ride post. To do so argued no connection with that great department we now call the Post Office, although that letter-carr\ing agency and the custom of riding 2:)ost obtain their name from a common origin. The earliest provision for travelling post seems to have been in the reign of Henry YIII., when the office of " Master of the Postes " was established. Sir Brian Tukc then held that appointment, and to him were entrusted the arrangements for securing relays of horses on the four great post roads then recognised : the road from London to Dover, on which the carriers came from and went to foreign parts ; the road to Plymouth, where the King's dockyard was situated ; and the great roads to Scotland and Chester, and on to Conway and Holy- head. These relays of horses were established exclusively for use of the despatch-riders who went on affairs of State ; but by the time of Elizabeth THE HORSEMEN 15 these messengers Avere, as a favour, already accustomed to carry any letters that might be given into their charge and could be delivered without going out of their way ; while travellers constantly called at the country post-houses, and on pretence of going on the Queen's business, obtained the use of horses, which they rode to exhaustion, or overloaded, or even rode away with altogether. These abuses were promptly suppressed when James I. came to the English throne. In 1603, the year of his accession, a proclamation was issued under which no person claiming to be on Govern- ment business Avas to be supplied with horses by the postmasters unless his application was supported by a document signed by one of the officers of State. The hire of horses for public business was fixed at twopence-halfpenny a mile, and in addition there was a small charge for the guide. A very arbitrary order was made that if the post-houses had not sufficient horses, the constables and the magistrates were to seize those of private owners and impress them into the service. Post-masters, who were salaried officials, were paid at the very meagre rate of from six- pence to three shillings a day. They Avere generally innkeepers on the main roads ; other- wise it is difficult to see hoAV they could have existed on these rates of pay. Evidently these were considered merely as retaining fees, and so, in order to give them a chance of earning a more living Avage, they Avere permitted to let out horses i6 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE to " others riding poste with horse and guide about their private business." Those private and un- official travellers could not demand to be supplied with horses at the official rate : what they were to pay was to be a matter between the post-masters and themselves. In practice, however, the tariff for Government riders ruled that for all horsemen, as made clear in Eynes Morison's Itinerary, 1617, where he says that in the south and west of England and on the Great North Road as far as Berwick, post-horses were established at every ten miles or so at a charge of twopence-halfpenny a mile. It was necessary to have a guide to each stage, and it was customary to charge for baiting both the i^uide's and the traveller's horses, and to give the guide himself a few pence — usually a four- penny-piece, called "the guide's groat" — on parting. It was cheaper and safer for several travellers to go together, for one guide Avould serve the whole company on each stage, and it was not prudent to travel alone. Morison says that, although hiring came expensive in one way, yet the sjieed it was possible to maintain saved time and consequent charges at the inns. The chief requisite, however, was strength of body and ability to endure the fatigue. As to that, the horsemen of the period were, equally with those of over a hundred years later, mentioned by Pennant, " a hardy race." In March, 1603, for example, Robert Gary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, eager to be first in acclaiming James VI. of Scotland as James I. of England, THE HORSEMEN 17 left London so soon as the last Lreatli had left the body of Queen Elizabeth, and rode the iOl miles to Edinburgh in three days. He reached Doncaster, 158 miles, the first night, Widdrington, 137 miles, the second, and gained Edinburgh, 106 miles, the third day, in spite of a severe fall by the way. About the same time a person named Coles rode from London to Shrews- bury in fourteen hours. When Thomas Witherings was appointed Master of the Post, in 1635, the Post Office, as an institu- tion for carrying the correspondence of the public, may be said to have started business, although as early as 1603 private persons were forbidden to make the carrying of letters a business. Like all such ordinances, this seemed made only to be broken every day. It was particularly unreason- able because, before Witherings came upon the scene in 1635 and reorganised the posts, there existed no means l)y Avliich letters could be sent generally into the country. Only the post-riders on business of State on the four great roads were in the habit of taking letters, and their doing so was a matter of private arrangement. The postmasters now, on the appointment of Witherings, first officially made acquaintance Avith letters, and their name began to take on something of its modern hieaning. They still supplied horses to the King's messengers and the King's liege subjects, and held a monopoly in these businesses. In 1657 the so-called " Post Office of England " VOL. I. 2 tS STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE was established l)y Act of Parliament, and the oifice of Postmaster-General created, in succession to that of Master of the Posts. His business was defined as " the exclusive right of carrying letters and the furnishing of jDOst-horses," and these two functions — the overlordship of what were officially known for generations afterwards as the " letter 2^ost " and the "travelling post" — the long line of Postmasters- Greneral continued to exercise for a hundred and twenty-three years. In IG08 the mileage the country postmasters were entitled to charge was, according to an advertisement of July 1st in that year, increased from twopence-halfpenny to threepence, and on the Chester E l)(>e, were the most con- venient ])oi'ts ol" (Muharkat ion loi* lindand. No direct road to Holyhead existed until 1 T'^-^ when coaches hci^an to run to Ihat i)ort. HcM'ore that time, those who wished to cross IVom Holyhead i;'enerally rode horsehack. h'ew Ncntured across country hy Llani^'ollen ami Melt ws-y-C'oed ; most, lik(^Swirt, leavini;' ci\ilisation Ix^hind at Chester, took hors(» and i^uide. and i^oini;' hy Ivhuddlan and Conway, darcnl the i)r, oil a. Loyue of mutt(tii \v\-\ i^ood, l)ut the worst ale in the world, and no wine, foi- the day hefore I came here a vast nnmherwent to Ircdaiid afticr haviiii;- drunk out all the wine. There was stale l)e(M*, and I t r \ ed a rtn-eit of Oyster sludls whiidi I i^ot |)owdered on |)iii-pose ; hut it was i;'oo(l for nothiiii;'. I walked on ihe rocd^s in the cvenini;-, and then went to hed and dreamt I liad i»-ot 20 falls from m\ Horse. '* Momlaij, S,'/)/. L>:.. The ('ai)taiii talks of sailini;- at ll*. The talk i;'oes olV, the wind is fair, hut he sa\s it is too tierce. I h(die\e he wants more Companx. 1 had a raw Chicken for THE HORSEMEN 39 dinner and lirandv with water for \\\\ drink. I walked nioriiini;' and at'ternooii ainoiiL;- the rocks. Tliis eveiiiiii;' AVatt tells me that inv laiid-Iadv whispered Iiiiii tliat the (Ji-aftoii |)a('k('t-l)o;»t just come in had hroiiulit iioi- is bottles of Irisli Chiret. I s('('iii-(m1 one, and siipjx'd on part of a neat's t()nu,'ue wliich a fri(?nd at liondon liad i;i\(Mi AVatt to ])iit up for in(\ and drank a ])int of the wine, which was Itad enoULih. Xot a son! is yet come to Jlolyliead, e.vcept a youni^' f(dh)w who smiles when lie meets me and would fain he my companion, hut it has not come to that yet, I Avrit ahiindance of verses this day ; and sevei'al useful hints, tho' 1 say it. I went to hed at ten and dreamt abundance of nonsense. Ti(('stM-i()(Is tlio watm- spiirtrd up sex (>ral 1'cet hiii'li. It rainoil all iui>'lit aiul liath raiiunl siiico diniun". But now the sun shines and I will take my at'teruoou walk. It was tiercor and wilder weatlun* than yesterday, yet the Captain now dreams of sailinii". To say tlu^ truth Michaelmas is the worst season in the year. Is this strang:e stuff ? Wliy, Avhat would you liave me do r I liave writ verses and ]mt d frighten(\l either by tlu> solitude or the meanness of lodging, eating or drinking. I shall say nothing ahout the suspense I am in about my dearest friend because that is a case extraordinary, and tluM'efore by way oi comfort. 1 will sjieak as if it A\ere not in my thoughts, and only as a 2)asseuger who is in a scurvy, unprovided com- fortless place without one companion, and who THE nOKSE.VEX 41 theivt'oiv ^\ants to he at lionu^ a\ Iumh^ Ih' liatli all convonieiicos proi)er for a i;vutleniaii of (quality. I cannot road at nii;'lit, and T liavc^ no hooks to read in tlio day. I have no suhjeet at present in my head to write upon. I dare not send my linen to he Avashed for fear of heing- called away at half an hour's warning, and then I must leave them heliind, which is a serious Point. I live at great (^xpense without one comfortahle hit or suj). 1 am afraid of joyning Avitli ])assengers for fear of g-etting acquaintance Avith Irish. Tlie days are short and I have live hours a niglit to sjjend hy myself hefore I go to Bed. I should he glad to converse Avitli Farmers or shoj^keepers, hut none of them speak English. A Dog is hotter company than the Vicar, for I rememher him of old. AVhat can T do l)ut write everything' that comes into my liead ': AVatt is a boohy of that sj^ecies which I dare not suffer to he familiar Avith me, for he would ramp on my shoulders in half an hour. But the worst part is in my half-hourly longing, and hojies and vain ex2)ectations of a Avind, so that I live in susjieuse which is the worst circumstance of human nature. I am a little wrung from two scurvy disorders, and if I should relapse there is not a AVelsli house-cur that would not have more care taken of him than I, and whose loss would not he more lamented. I confine myself to my narroAV chamber in all unwalkahle hours. The Master of the jjacquet-hoat, one Jones, hath not treated me with the least civility, although AVatt gave him my name. In short I come from being 42 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE used like an Emperor to he used worse than a Dog at Holyhead. Yet my hat is Avorn to pieces hy answering the civilities of the poor inhahitants as they pass hy. The women might he safe enough who all wear hats yet never pull them ofp, and if the dirty streets did not foul their petticoats by courtesying so Ioav. Look you ; be not impatient, for I only wait till my watch makes 10 and then 1 will give you ease and myself sleep, if I can. O' my conscience you may knoAv a AVelsh dog as well as a Welsh man or woman, by its peevish passionate way of barking. This paper shall serve to answer all your questions about my journey, and I will have it printed to satisfy the kingdom. Forsau et haec oliui is a damned lye, for I shall always fret at the remembrance of this imprison- ment. Pray pity your Watt for he is called dunce, pnppy a.nd lyar 500 times an hour, and yet he means not ill for he means nothing. Oh for a dozen bottles of Deanery Avine and a slice of bread and butter ! The wine you sent us yesterday is a little upon the sour. I Avish you had chosen a better. I am going to bed at ten o'clock because I am weary of being up. " Wednesday. — To-day we were certainly to sayl : the morning AA^as calm. Watt and I walked up the mountain Marucia, properly called Holy- head or Sacrum Promontorium l)y Ptolemy, 2 miles from this toAvn. I took breath 59 times. I looked from the top to see the WickloAV hills, but the day Avas too hazy, Avhich I felt to my sorroAV ; for returning we Avere overtaken by a furious THE HORSEMEN 43 shower. I got into a Welsh cabin almost as l)ad as an Irish one. There were only an old Welsh woman sifting flour who understood no English, and a l)oy ayIio fell 'a roaring for fear of me. Watt (otherwise called unfortunate Jack) ran home for my coat, but stayed so long that I came home in worse rain without him, and he was so lucky to miss me, but took good care to convey the key of ni}^ room where a fire Avas ready for me. So I cooled my heels in the Parlour till he came, but called for a glass of Brandy. I have been cooking myself dry, and am now in my night goAvn. . . . And so I AA^ait for dinner. I shall dine like a King all alone, as I ha\'e done these six days. As it hapj^ened, if I had gone straight from Chester to Park-gate 8 miles I should have been in Dublin on Sunday last. Noav Michaelmas aj^proaches, the Avorst time in the year for the sea, and this rain has made these parts uuAvalkable, so I must either Avrite or doze. Bite, Avlien we Avere in the Avild cabin I order Watt to take a cloth and Avipe my wet goAvn and cassock : it happened to be a meal-bag, and as my goAvn dryed it Avas all daul3ed Avitli flour Avell cemented Avitli the rain. AYliat do I but see the gown and cassock Avell dryed in my room, and A\hile Watt Avas at dinner I Avas an hour rubbing the meal out of them, and did it exactly^ He is just come up, and I ha\'e gravely bid him take them doAvn to rub them, and I Avait Avhether he Avill find out AA^hat I haAX been doing. The Bogue is come up in six minutes, and says there Avere but few specks 44 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE (tlio' he saAV a thousand at first), but neither wondered at it, nor seemed to suspect me who laboured like a horse to rub them out. The 3 packet boats are now all on their side, and the weather grown worse, and so much rain that there is an end of my walking. I Avish you would send me word how I shall dispose of my time. I am as insignificant a person here as parson Brooke is in Dublin ; by my conscience I l^elieve Caesar would l3e the same Avithout his army at his l)ack. Well, the longer I stay here the more you Avill murmur for Avant of packets. WhocA^er AAould AA^sli to live long should Kac here, for a day is longer than a Aveek, and if the aa eather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Yet here I could Mac with two or three friends in a aa arm house and good wine ; much better than being a slave in Ireland. But my misery is that I am in the very AA^orst part of Wales under the very Avorst circumstances, afraid of a relapse, in utmost solitude, impatient for the condition of our friend, not a soul to converse Avith, hindered from exercise by rain, caged uji in a room not half so large as one of the Deanery closets ; my Boom smokes into the ])argain, but the Aveather is too cold and moist to be Avithout a fire. There is or should be a proverb here : When Mrs. Welch's chimney smokes, 'Tis a sign she'll keep her folks. But Avhen of smoke the room is clear. It is a sign Ave shan't stay here. All this to divert thinking. Tell me, am not I a comfortable wag ? The Yatcht is to leave for Lord Carteret on the llth THE HORSEMEN 45 of Octol)er. I fancy ho and I shall conic over together. I have opened my door to let in the wind that it may drive out the smoke. I asked the wind Avliy he is so cross ; he assures me 'tis not his fault, hut his cursed Master, Eolus's. Here is a young Jackanapes in the Inn Avaiting for a wind Avho Avould fain he my companion, and if I stay here much longer I am afraid all my pride and grandeur will truckle to comply with him, especially if I finish these leaves that remain ; hut I will write close and do as the Devil did at mass, pull the paper with my teeth to make it it hold out. " Thursday. — ^'Tis allowed that we learn patience hy sulfering. I have not spirit enough now left me to fret. I was so cunning these three last days that whenever I hegan to rage and storm at the weather I took special care to turn my face towards Ireland, in hope hy my hreath to push the wind forward. Eut now I give up. . . . AVell, it is now three in the afternoon. I have dined and revisited the master ; the Avind and tide serve, and I am just taking hoat to go to the ship. So adieu till I see you at the Deanery. ''Friday, 3IicI/ael>nas Day. — You will now know something of Avhat it is to he at sea. We had not heen half an hour in the ship till a fierce wind rose directly against us ; we tryed a good while, hut the storm still continued ; so we turned hack, and it was 8 at night dark and rainy hefore the ship got hack, and at anchor. The other passengers Avent back in a boat to Holyhead ; but to prevent 46 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE accidents and broken shins I lay all night on board, and came back this morning at 8. Am now in my chamber, where I must stay and get a fresh stock of patience." So ends this curious diary. This is the last time that Swift is known to have visited England, and it has always been assumed, from the lack of evidence of his again touching these shores, that he never did return. But he was mentally active until 1736, and it was not until 174^5 that he died, in madness and old "^ktve ou^ Ihree. age. Meanwhile, P 0 , , , there still exists in- r^. 0 ^ , disputable evidence ^^y^WJj^ of his travelling ^ Y^\ ec^^^vy^ 7c.wv along the Holyhead ?W^(? Road in 1730; for '/3/^ an old diamond- EPIGRAM SCRATCHED WITH A DIAMONL- shapcd paUC Of O'hlSS, RING ON A WINDOW-PANK BY DEAN , O ' SWIFT. tor m e r 1 y in a window of the "Pour Crosses" Inn at Willoughby, and deeply tinged with a greenish hue, as much old glass commonly is, may be found in private possession at Rugby, inscribed by him with a diamond ring. The handwriting compares exactly Avith that of his diary and other manuscripts still extant, and the ferocity of the humour in the lines is charac- teristic of him. Other windows, at Chester and elsewhere, are known to have been insci'il3ed l^y him with epigrams and satirical verses, but they do not appear to have survived. The occasion of THE HORSEMEN- 47 his oflPering this advice to the hindlord of Avhat was then the " Three Crosses " has always heen said to have heen the landlady's disregard of his import- ance. Anxions to set off early in the morning, he conld hy no means hurry the good woman over the preparation of his hreakfast. She told liiu; "he must wait, like other people." He waited, of necessity, hut employed the time in this manner. John Wesley was of this varied company of horsemen, and in a long series of years rode into every nook and corner of England. His " Jour- nal," abounding Avith details of his adventures on these occasions, proves him to have heen a hard rider and among the most robust and enduring of travellers in that age. He rode incredible dis- tances in the day, very frequently from sixty to seventy miles. Once, in 1738, he travelled in this Avay from London to Shipston-on iStour, a distance of 82| miles, and ended the long day, as usual Avith him, in religious counsel. "About eight," he says, " it being rainy and very dark, we lost our Avay, but before nine came into Shipston, having rode over, I know not hoAV, a narroAv footbridge Avhich lay across a deep ditch near the town. After supper I read prayers to the people of the inn, and explained the Second Lesson ; I hope not in vain." The next day this indefati- gable traveller and missioner rode 59 miles, to Birmingham, Hednesford, and Stafford ; and the next a further 53 miles, to Manchester, feeling faint (and no Avonder !) on the Avay, at Altrincham. In November 1745, riding from NcAvcastle-on- 48 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE Tyne to Wednesbury, he did not experience many difficulties until he came, in the dark, to Wednes- bury Town-end, where he and his comj^anion stuck fast. That is indeed a bad road in which a horse sticks. However, j^^ople coming Avith candles, Wesley himself got out of the quagmire and went off to preach, Avliile the horses were disengaged from their awkward jiosition by local experts. The spot where Wesley Avas bogged is now a broad and firm macadamised road through Wednesbury, part of the great Holyhead Road. Eighteen years before this happening, an Act of Parliament had been passed for repairing and turnpiking the road between Wednesbury and Birmingham ; but, although the turnj)ike gates may have been in existence, the road itself cer- tainly does not seem to have been repaired, and must have remained in the condition described in the preamble to that Act, when it was " so ruinous and bad that in the winter season many parts thereof are impassal3le for Avaggons and carriages, and very dangerous for travellers." At the same time, the road on the other side of Wednesbury Avas "in a ruinous condition, and in some places very narroAv and incommodious " ; so it is evident that Wednesbury Avas in the unenviable but by no means unique position of l)eing islanded amid execrable and scarcely jiracticable roads. In his old age Wesley occasionally made use of coaches and chaises, Avliich Avere then a great deal better and more numerous than they had THE HORSEMEN 49 been forty years earlier, Avlieii he commenced his labonrs ; but he did not give up the saddle until very near the last. In 1779, being then in his seventy-seventh year, he was still so active that on one day he rode from Worcester to Bi-econ, sixty miles, and preached on his arrival there. In 1782, when eighty, he still travelled, according to his own computation, four or five thousand miles a year, rose early, preached, and possessed the faculty of sleeping, night or day, Avhenever he desired to do so. When he began to travel he rose at the most astonishing hours — hours un- known even to the early-rising, hard -riding, hard- living travellers of that time. Let us look at his record for Pebruary 1746, along the Great North Hoad : — ■ " \Wi Fehniary. — I rose soon after three. I was wondering the day before at the mildness of the weather, such as seldom attends me in my journeys ; but my wonder noAV ceased. The wind Avas turned full north, and blew so exceeding hard and keen that when Ave came (from London) to Hatfield neither my companions nor I had much use of our hands or feet. After resting an hour, Ave bore up again through the Avind and snow, Avhicli drove full in our faces ; but this Avas only a squall. In Baldock fiekl the storm began in earnest ; the large hail drove so vehemently in our faces that we could not see, nor hardly breathe ; hoAvever, before two o'clock Ave reached Baldock, Avliere one met and conducted us safe to Potton. About six I preached to a serious congregation. VOL. I. 4 50 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE " Yltli. — ^We set out as soon as it was well light ; but it was hard work to get forward, for the frost would not well break or bear ; and, the untracked snow covering all the roads, we had much ado to keep our horses on their feet. Mean- time the wind rose higher and higher, till it was ready to overturn both man and beast. However, after a short bait at Bugden, Ave pushed on, and were met in the middle of an open field with so violent a storm of rain and hail as we had not had before ; it drove through our coats, great and small, boots, and everything, and yet froze as it fell, even upon our eyebrows, so that we had scarce either strength or motion left when Ave came into our inn at Stilton. " We now gave up our hopes of reaching Grrantham, the snoAV falling faster and faster. However, we took the advantage of a fair blast to set out, and made the best of our way to Stamford Heath ; but here a new difficulty arose from the snoAV lying in large drifts. Sometimes horse and man were Avell nigh swallowed up, yet in less than an hour avc Avere lu'ought safe to Stamford. Being Avilling to get as far as we could, Ave made but a short stop here ; and about sunset came, cold and AA^eary, but avcII, to a little town called Brig Casterton. " 18^//. — Our servant came up and said, ' Sir, there is no travelling to-day ; such a quantity of snow has fallen in the night that the roads are quite filled up.' I told him, 'At least we can Avalk tAventy miles a day, Avith our horses in our THE HORSEMEN 51 hands.' So in the name of God we set out. The north-east Avind was piercing as a sword, and had driven the snow into such uneven heaps that the main road was not passable. However, we kept on on foot or on horseback, till we came to the White Lion at Grantham" — from whence Mr. Wesley continued his journey to Ep worth, his birthplace, in Lincolnshire. Wesley's economy of time and his methods when riding are indicated in an interesting way in his observations on horsemanship : — " I went on sloA\'ly, through Staffordshire and Cheshire, to Manchester. In this journey, as well as in many others, I observed a mistake that almost universally prevails ; and I desire all travellers to take good notice of it, which may save them both from trouble and danger. Near thirty years ago 1 was thinking, ' How is it that no horse ever stumbles while I am reading ? ' (History, poetry, and philosophy, I commonly read on horseback, having other employment at other times.) No account can possibly be given but this— because when I throw the reins on his neck, I set myself to observe : and I aver that in riding above a hundred thousand miles, I scarce ever remember any horse, except two, (that would fall head over heels any way,) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein pre- vents stumbling is a capital blunder. I have repeated the trial more frequently than most men in the kingdom can do. A slack rein will 52 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE prevent stumbling, if anything will, but in some horses nothing can." Dr. Johnson's is a figure more often associated with coach and chaise travelling than with horse- manship, but in his younger days he could ride horseback with the best. He only lacked the money to afford it. His wedding-day — when he took the first opportunity of teaching his Tetty marital discipline — was passed in a journey from Derby. His wife rode one horse and he another. " Sir," he said, a few years later, " she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her husband like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up Avitli me ; and when I rode a little slower she passed me and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice, and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I Avas fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it ; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears." It has already been noted that judges and barristers formerly rode circuit on horseback. As Pielding says, "a grave serjeant-at-law con- descended to amble to Westminster on an easy pad, with his clerk kicking his heels behind him." In such cases, and when a lady rode pillion behind her squire, clutching him by the THE HORSEMEN- 53 waistbelt, the " double horse " was used. This, which was by no means a zoological freak, Avas the type of horse asked for and supplied by postmasters to two riders going in this fashion on one animal. Like the brewers' double stout, the " double horse " was specially strong, and possessed more the physique of the cart-horse than the park hack. It Avas chiefly for the use of the ladies thus riding that the " upping blocks," or stone steps, still occasionally seen outside old rustic inns, were placed beside the road. They enabled them to get comfortably seated. Travellers from Scotland to London about the middle of the eighteenth century were accustomed to advertise for a companion. Thus, in the Edm- hnrgli Courant for January 1st, 1753, we tind : — " A Gentleman fets off for London Tomorrow Morning, and will either j^oft it on horfes or a Poft-Chaife, fo wants a Companion. He is to be found at the Shop of Mr. Sands, Bookfeller." It was then generally found cheap, and some- times profitable as well, to buy a horse when starting from Edinburgh, and to sell him on arrival in London. Prices being higher in the Metropolis, the canny travellers who adopted this plan often got more for the horse than they had given. This method had, .however, the defect of not working in reverse, and so those Scots who returned would have had to hire at some con- siderable expense, or buy dear to sell cheap, a thing peculiarly abhorrent to the Scottish mind. -L'r. Johnson would have characteristically brushed 54 STAGE-COACH AND mAiL IN DAYS OF YORE this argument away by declaring tliat the Scot never did return. During many long years Scots travelling in their own country followed an equally economical plan. "The Scotch gentry," said Thomas Kirke in 1679, " generally travel from one friend's house to another ; so seldom require a change-house. Their way is to hire a horse and a man for two- pence a mile; they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him, and carries his luggage to boot. The " change-house " was, of course, an inn ; and from this custom, when every man's house was an hotel, the Scottish inns long remained very inferior places. Yielding throws a very instructive light upon the device hit upon l)y any two travellers who wished to go together and yet had only one horse between them. This was called " Eide and Tie." He says : " The two travellers set out together, one on horseback, the other on foot. Now, as it generally happens that he on horseback outgoes him on foot, the custom is, that when he arrives at the distance agreed on, he is to dismount, tie the horse to some gate, tree, post, or other thing, and then proceed on foot ; when the other comes up to the horse, he unties him, mounts, and gallops on, till, having passed by his fellow- traveller, he likewise arrives at the place of tying. And this is that method of travelling so much in use among our prudent ancestors, who knew that horses had mouths as well as legs, and that they THE HORSEMEN- 55 Could not use the latter without being at the expense of suftering the heasts themselves to use the former." Not until the first decade of the nineteenth century had gone ])y did the horseman wholly disappear from the road into or on to the coaches. Let us attem^^t to fix the date, and j^ut it at 1820, when the fast coaches began to go at a pace equal or superior to that of the saddle-horse. The curious may even yet see the combined upping- blocks and milestones placed for the use of horse- men on the road across Dunsmore Heath. In thus giving 1820 as the date of the horse- man's final disajipearance, it need not be supposed that Cobbett and his Bural Rides are forgotten, He covered England on horseback some years later, but his journeys are not on all fours Avith those of the horsemen whose only desire was quickly to get from start to finish of their journeys. He halted by the way, and from the vantage-point of the saddle cast a keenly scruti- nising eye upon the agricultural methods of the various districts, as seen across the toj^s of hedge- roAvs, or delayed his travels to harangue the farmers on market-days. Nor is the existence forgotten of those country gentlemen and City merchants Avho, seventy years ago, rode to and from the City on horseback ; but they also formed an exception. Already, by some ten years or so, the commercial travellers, as a l)ody, had left the saddle and taken to Avhat Avas, in its first incep- tion, essentially the vehicle of the commercial 56 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE representative. This was the " gig-" The gig at once became a favourite middle-class convey- ance. Thurtell, the flashy betting-man, vulgar rone, and murderer, Avas thought by a witness " a respectable man : he kept a gig." This aroused the scorn of Carlyle, avIio coined the word " gigmanity." The early commercial travellers, in fact, were long known as "riders," from their custom of riding horseback from town to town, sometimes with a led pack-horse when their samples were unusually Inilky or heavy. The " London riders " sometimes found mentioned in old literature were therefore London commercials. The successive names by which these " ambassadors of commerce," as they have sometimes been grandiloquently styled, were known are themselves highly illumi- nating. They were, in succession, "bagmen," "riders," "travellers," and "commercial gentle- men." They are now " representatives." CHAPTER III DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE Meanwhile the first stage-coaches had been put upon the chief roads out of London, and had begun to ply betAveen the capital and the principal towns. Stage-coaches are, on insufficient authority, said to have begun about 1640, but no particulars are available in support of that statement, and in considering this point we are bound to look into the social state of England at that time, and to consider the likelihood or otherwise of a public service of coaches being continued throughout those stormy years which preceded, accompanied, and followed the great Civil War that opened with the raising of the King's standard at Not- tingham in 1042, and ended with the Battle of Naseby in June 1645. That victory ended the war in favour of the Parliament men, but the political troubles and their attendant social dis- placements continued. It has been said that hawking parties pursued their sport between the opposed armies on Marston Moor, and the inference has been drawn that the nation was not disturbed to its depths by what we are usually persuaded was a tremendous struggle between King and Parliament. Certainly the 58 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE Associated Counties of East Anglia were little att'ected by the contest, but theirs was an excep- tional exj^erience, l)rouglit al)out l)y that associa- tion, entered upon for mutual protection against either side, and to prevent the scene of warfare being pitched within those limits. It is not likely that any service of coaches ran in the disturbed period, when confidence was so rudely shaken ; and it was not until the Commonwealth had been established some years that the first coaching advertisement of Avhich Ave have any knowledge appeared. In writing thus, it is not forgotten that some- where about the year 1610 a foreiii^ner from the wilds of Pomerania obtained a Royal patent grant- ing him, for the term of fifteen years, the exclusive right of running coaches or waggons between Edinburgh and Leith. We have no details of this purely local service, but it is to be sujiposed that it was little more than a stage- waggon carrying goods and passengers too infirm to ride horseback between Edinburgh and its seaport. We are equally ignorant of the length of time the service lasted. The next reference to stage-coaches is equally detached and inconclusive. It is found in a booklet issued by John Taylor, describing a journey he made to the Isle of Wight in 1648. He and his party set out on Octol)er 19th to see the captive Charles the Eirst, their " gracious Soveraigne, afilicted Lord and Master," im- prisoned at Carisbrooke Castle. They " hired the JDAIVN OF THE COACHING AGE ^9 Southami^ton Coacli, Avliicli comes weekly to the Eose, near Holborn Bridge " — a statement that at least proves the existence of a pul)lic yehicle of sorts. Bnt it is the first and h\st reference to the Sontham^iton Coach that has come down these two hundred and fifty-odd years. If Tayk)r tells us nothing of its history, he at least gives a descrip- tion of the journey that retains something of its original amusing qualities, and, with the lapse of time, becomes something of an historic docu- ment : — We took our coach, two coachmen and four horses, And uieirily from London made our courses. We wheel'd the top of th' heavy hill call'd Holborne (Up which hath been full many a sinful soule borne), And so along we jolted past St. Gileses, Which place from Braiuford six (or neare) seven miles is. To Stanes that night at five o'clock ^^e coasted, W'here (at the Bush) we had bakVl, boyl'd, and rcasted. Bright .Sol's illustrious Rajes the day adorning, We past Bagshot and Bawwaw Friday morning. That night we lodg'd at the White Hart at Alton, And had good meate — a table with a salt on. Next morn w'arose with blushing cheek'd Aurora ; The wayes were faire, but not so faire as Flora, For Flora was a goddesse, and a woman, And (like the highwayes) to all men was Common. Our Horses, with the Coach, which we went into, Did hurry us amaine, through thick and thine too ; With fiery speede, the foaming bit they champt on, And brought us to the Dolphin at Southampton. Southampton, eighty miles from their starting- point, was therefore a three days' journey in the autumn of 164<8. That they were careful not to 6o STAGE-CO ACB AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE be on the road after dark is evident from the time they got to Staines, the first stojiping-phxce. The sun sets at exactly 5 p.m. on October 19th. The reference to a place called " Bawwaw," lietween Bagshot and Alton, is not to be explained by any scrutiny of maj^s. Thenceforward until 1657 stage-coaches are not mentioned in the literature of the age, and we set foot upon firm ground only with the advertisement in the Mercurius PoUticus of April 9th in that year :— " 1^0 R t/ie co)ivenie7it acconiniodation of Paffoigers from attd betwixt the Cities of London and WeflcheRer, there is provided fevered Stage- Coaches ivhich go from the George Inn without Alderfgate itpon every Moiiday, Wednefday, and Friday to Coventry, /;/ Tivo days for Twe?ity five fhiilings, to Stone in Three days for Thirty f hill i?igs, and to Chefler in Four days for Thirty five fhiilings, and from thence to return upon the fame days ; which is performed with much safety to the Faffengers, having frefh Horfes once a day. In Mondays Intelligence lafl the feverall fims and rates ivere ly the Frititer miflaken." The objective of the first stage-coach ever established being Chester naturally provokes in- quiry. There seems to have been no other stage upon any road in that pioneer year. The j^re- ference for Chester argues a large traffic already existing on that road : men riding joost-horses, women riding j^illion behind friends, relatives, or servants, or possibly in some stage-waggon whose historv has not come down to us. The coach can DAJVJV OF THE COACHING AGE 6i only have been established to satisfy a pre-existent demand. The question Avhy there should have been more travellers on this route than any other is answered in this being the road to Ireland then generally followed, and Chester itself the port of embarkation for that country. Coventry and Stone were only served incidentally. The following spring witnessed an amazing burst of coaching activity, for the Mercuvlns Politi ciis in April contained an advertisement announcing stage-coaches on the Exeter and Great North roads, to begin on the 26th of that month. They ran from the "George" Inn, Aldersgate Street Without:— "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Eridays to Salisbury in two days for xx^ Blandford and Dorchester in two days and a half for xxx', Burput in three days for xxx', and Exmaster, Hunnington, and Exeter in four days for xl'. "Stamford in two days for xx^ Newark in two days and a half for xxx% Doncaster and Eerribridge for xxxv% and York in four days for XL\" Every Monday and Wednesday others Avere to set forth for, " Ockinton and Plimouth for L-. " Edinburgh, once a fortnight for £i apeece. "Darneton and Eerryhill for l, Durham for LV', and Newark for £iii." Every Eriday, " To Wakefield in four days for xl'." This advertisement then concluded by inviting passengers to another " George " Inn : — 62 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IX DAYS OF YORE " Let them re2:)air to the George Inn on Hol- borii Bridge, and they shall he in good Coaches with good Horses at and for reasonable rates, to Salishury, Blandford, Exmaster, Hunnington, Exeter, Ockinton, Plimouth, and Cornwal." The extraordinarily misspelt names of some of the j^laces mentioned in these notices show how' ill-known the country then was. Por " Burput " we must read Bridport ; for " Hunnington," Honi- ton; and for "Exmaster," Axminster; "Ockin- ton" is j^robahly Okehampton. At this time, and for yery many years yet to come, the stage-coaches Ayere strictly fair-weather seryices. With eyery recurrent spring they were brought out from their retirement, and so early as Michaelmas were taken off the roads and laid up for the winter. HoAy the pioneer coach to Chester fared in its second season is hid from us, but the announcement of its third year, in 1659, is instructiye : — ■ " These are to giye notice, that from the George Inn, without Aldersgate, goes eyery Monday and Thursday a coach and four able horses, to carry passengers to Chester in fiye days, likewise to Coyentry, Cosell (Coleshill), Cank, Litchfield, Stone, or to Birmingham, Wolyerhampton, Shrewsbury, Xewport, AVhit- cliurch, and Holywell, at reasonable rates, by us, who haye performed it two years. " AViLLIAM DUXSTAX. "Henry Earle. "William Eowler." DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE 63 It now took a day lono;er to reach Chester — assuming' that the promise to perform the journey in four days ever was kept ; and it will be observed that Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and other places, on a different route than that through Lichfield and Stone, are named in the manner of an alternative. The Chester stage of this year, in fact, varied its itinerary to suit its passengers. The "by us, who have performed it two years," looks suspiciously like an opposition already threatened; while the "four able horses" insisted on (but not mentioned in the first announcement) reads like an imjirovement upon a former team that was not able. Those, of course, were times before horses Avere generally changed on the way, and the same long-suffering beasts that dragged the coaches from London often brought them to their destination. According to the first advertisement of this Chester stage, quoted above, this particular coach was an exception to the usual 2^i"^ctice, and actually had fresh horses once a day. A stage seems to have plied between London and Oxford in 1661, but new coaches for a time were few, and it is said that there were but six in 1662. In the folloAving year a coach of sorts ran from Preston in Lancashire to London ; and, as may be gathered from a letter from Edward Parker to his father, it was a very primitive contrivance : — " I got to London on Saturday last ; my journey was noe way pleasant, being forced to 64 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE ride in the boote all the waye. The company y* came np with mee were persons of greate qualitie, as knightes and ladyes. My journey's expense was 30'. This travel! hath soe indisposed mee, y* I am resolved never to ride up againe in y^ coatche. I am extremely liott and feverish. What this may tend to I know not. I have not as yet advised my doctor." Our natural curiosity on that head cannot he satisfied, for the Parker corresj^ondence ends abruptly there ; but we fear the worst. Eeading that testimony to the quality of early coach- travelling, we may find it not altogether without significance that from this year forAvard to 16G7 little is heard of coaches. Perhaps those who gave the early ones a trial Avere glad to get back to their saddles and ride horseback again. How- ever that may be, certainly coaching history, except by inference, is in those years a blank. We may infer services to other towns from oblique and scattered references, but direct information is lacking. That a stage-coach — or possibly more than one — was on the road between London and Norwich in 1665 is to be gathered from the proclamation issued in that East Anglian city on July 20tli of that terrible year of the Great Plague, Avliich destroyed half the population of London : " Prom this dale," ran that ordinance, " all ye passage coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London, and come from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons." Alreadv, before that notice was issued, Avavfarers DAJVN OF THE COACHING AGE 65 from that doomed city had heen struck down l^y the deadly and mysterious disease, and at Norwich itself travellers hailing from the centre of infection had died, swiftly and in circumstances that struck terror into the hearts of the people. Not that plagues were things unknoAvn ; for Hohson, the Caml)ridge carrier, had died from the vexation and enforced idleness of the Camhridge edict of 1631, forbidding intercourse with London, even then ravaged with an infectious disorder. What were the first stage-coaches like ? If we are to credit Taylor's description of the earliest coaches, some of them must have resembled the present Irish jaunting-car, or Bianconi's mid-nineteenth century coaches, in the manner of carrying passengers. He tells us, in his fanciful way, that a coach, "like a perpetual cheater, wears two bootes and no spurs, some- times having tAvo pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature) it makes faire ladies weare the boote ; and if you note, they are carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in that miserable manner, and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it makes j^eople imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways, as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach ; and it is a dangerous kind of carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered." This boot, or this pair of boots — which did not in the least resemble, in shape or position, the fore and hind boots of a later age — was a method of carrying the outsides in days before the imj^rovement of VOL. I. 5 66 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE roads rendered it possible for any one to ride on the roof without incurring the danger of being flung off. No illustration of this type of coach has ever been found, but it seems possible that the back-to-back boots, to carry four, were built on to the hinder part of the coach, and really formed the first attem2)t to carry outsides. This type of coach described by Taylor must have been freakish and ephemeral. Those in general use were very different, resembling in their construction the private carriages and London hackney-coaches of the lime, and vary- ing from them only in being built to hold a number of peojDle — usually six, but on occasion eight. In Sir Robert Howard's comedy. The Committee, printed in 1665, the Reading coach brings six passengers to London. The body was covered with stout leather, nailed on to the frame with broad-headed nails, whose shining heads, gilt or silvered, picked out the general lines of the structure, and were considered to give a pleasing decorative effect. Windows and doors were at first unknown. In their stead were curtains and wooden shutters, so that the interior of an early coach on a wet or chilly day, when the curtains were drawn, must have been a close and dismal place. It was this feature that gave Taylor an opportunity of comparing a coach with a hypocrite : "It is a close hypocrite, for it hath a cover for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness." The first vehicle with glass windows was the DAJViV OF THE COACHING AGE 67 private carriage of the Duke of York, in 1(3G1, and we do not begin to hear of glazed windows in stage-coaches until the beginning of the eighteenth century, Avhen " glass coaches " were announced. It is, indeed, unlikely that glass could in any case have been introduced for the jiurjiose of country travelling at an earlier date, for it Avould need to have been of extraordinary strength and thickness to survive the shocks and crashes of travel of this period. All these vehicles were low hung, for the heavy body, slung by massive leather braces from the uj^right posts springing from the axle- trees of front and hind wheels, Avas too responsive to any and every rut and irregularity of the road to be placed at the height to which the coaches of a century later attained. In the excessive jolting then incidental to travelling, the body of a coach swayed laterally to such an extent that it Avould often swing, in the manner of a pendulum, quite clear of the underworks. Occupants of coaches were thus often afflicted with nausea, not unlike that of sea-sickness, and to be " coached " Avas at that time an exj^ression Avhich meant the getting used to a violent motion at first most emphatically resented by the human stomach. Although the body of a coach enjoyed a wide range of motion sideAAays, it had not by any means the same freedom back and forth. A severe strain, in the continual plunging and jolting, Avas there- fore throAvn upon the suj)i)orting uprights, so that 68 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE they not iiifroqiiontly ij^avc way under the ordeal, and suddenly threw passen£^ers and coachman in one common heaji of ruin. To aid him in makini;' such roadside repairs as these and otlier early de- fects of construction often rendered necessary, the coachman carried with him a hox of tools placed under his seat, and it is from this circumstance that the name of " hammercloth " — the hangings decorating the coachman's seat on many a State carriage — was derived. Bad as was the situation of the passengers, that of the coachman was infinitely worse. His was a seat of torture, for it was placed immediately over the front pair of wheels, and, totally unprovided with springs, transmitted to his hody the full force of every shock Avith which those wheels descended into holes or encountered stones. In 16G7 a London and Oxford coach is found, performing the fifty-four miles in two days, halting for the intervening night at Beaconsfield ; and in the same year the original Bath coach appears, in this portentous announcement : — " FLYING MACHINE. " All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on their Road, let them repair to the ' Bell Savage ' on Ludgate Hill in London, and the ' White Lion ' at Bath, at Loth which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Mondav, Wednesday, and Friday, DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE 69 which performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets forth at five o'clock in the morning. " Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, Avho are allowed to carry fourteen Pounds Weight— for all above to pay three-halfx^ence per Pound." This is the first appearance of the epithet " Flying " in the literature of coaches. Possibly it was used in this first instance in order to dis- tinguish the new conveyance from a stage-waggon that must for many years before have gone the journey, as well as to justify the higher fare charged by the new vehicle. The waggon would have conveyed passengers at anything from a halfpenny to a penny a mile ; by " Plying Machine " it came to threepence. The term " Plying," for a coach that consumed three days in performing a journey of 109 miles, raises a smile; but it w^as only relative, and in contrast with the pace of the Avaggons of that period, which would probably have made it a six-days' trip. This Bath coach would seem to have set the fashion in nomenclature, ior in April 1669 a " Plying Coach " began to fly between Oxford and London. It was, it will be noticed, a " coach," and not a " machine " ; the term " machine " did not come into general use until about seventy years later. But although the 70 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE Oxford coach did not call itself hy so high- sounding a title, it made a hetter pace than the Bath affair, doing the fifty-four miles in one day, between the hours of six o'clock in the morning and seven in the evening. Moreover, its fare — twelve shillings, reduced tAvo years later to ten — was somewhat cheaper. Perhaps one was ahvays charged higher rates on the fashionable Bath Eoad. How, in this thirteen years' interval between 1657 and 1669, had the older stages progressed ? The Chester stage was going its way, promising to do the distance in five days, but taking six^ a sad falling off from the original four ; of the others, presumably continuing, we hear nothing further, and of new ventures there is not a whisper. Yet it is surely not to be supposed that, at a time when coaches ran to Bath, to York, to Coventry, and to Norwich, such a place (for instance) as Bristol would be Avithout that convenience. Por Bristol Avas then Avhat Glasgow is now — the second city. London came first, with its half a million inhabitants ; Bristol came next, with some 28,000, and NorAvich third, with 27,000. It is, then, only fair to assume that other coaches existed of Avhose story nothing has survived. A strong reason for coming to this con- clusion is found in the pul)lication in 1673 of Cresset's violent tirade against coaches, not, surely, called forth apropos of the already old- established stages, but provoked, doul)tless, by some sudden increase, of which a\ e, at this lapse DAJVJV OF THE COACHING AGE 71 of time, know nothing. What brief John Cresset coukl have hekl for the inn-keepers and horse- breeders, and for the other trades supposed to be injuriously affected by the increase of stage- coaches, we knoAv not, nor, indeed, anything of Cresset himself, except that he lived in the Charterhouse. Between London, York, Chester, and Exeter he calculated that a total number of fifty-four persons travelled weekly, making a grand total for those roads of 1,872 such travellers in a year. A brief examination of his arithmetic shoAvs — as we have already pointed out — that the coaches of that age lay up for the winter months. His indictment of coaches is to be found in his Grand Concern of England Explained, and is very vigorous indeed, and — as we see it nowadays — extravagantly silly : — " Will any man keep a horse for himself and another for his servant all the year round, for to ride one or two journeys, that at pleasure, when he hath occasion, can slip to any place where his business lies for two or three shillings, if within twenty miles of London, and so proportionately to any part of England ? No, there is no man, unless some noble soul that seems to abhor being confined to so ignoble, base, and sordid a way of travelling as these coaches oblige him to, and who prefers a public good before his own ease and advantage, that will keep horses." According to this vehement counsel for the suppression of stage-coaches, they brought the 72 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE country gentlemen up to London on the slightest pretext — sometimes to get their hair cut — with their wives accompanying them ; and when they were hoth come to town, they would " get fine clothes, go to plays and treats, and by these means get such a habit of idleness and love for pleasure that they are uneasy ever after. " Travelling in these coaches can neither prove advantageous to men's health or business, for Avhat advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into their coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in them from place to place till one, two, or three hours within night, insomuch that sitting all day in the summer time stifled with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter time starving or freezing with cold, or choked Avith filthy fogs ? They are often brought to their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get a sujiper, and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men's health or business, to ride all day with strangers often- times sick, or with diseased persons, or young children crying, to whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are j^oisoned with their nasty scents, and crip2:)led by the crowd of their boxes and bundles ? Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire, afterwards to sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out ? " DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE 73 Cresset was also of opinion that the greater numl)er of the many roadside inns woukl lose their trade owing to the rapidity of coach-travelling. Here, at least, he exceeded his brief, for coaches by no means attained so speedy a rate of travel as that reached by horsemen. Thoresby, ten years later, is a case in point. He was wont to travel horseback between Leeds and London in four days, but when he journeyed from York to London in the coach, no greater distance than from Leeds, it took six days. Swift, too, in 1710, rode from Chester to London in five days ; when the de- generating Chester stage, which had started to perform it in 1657 in four days, had already taken one additional day, and was about to take another. Cresset, summing up such ol)jectionable things as " rotten coaches" and traces, and coachmen "surly, dogged, and ill-natured," advocated the total sup- pression of such methods of travelling, or at least — counsels of moderation prevailing — of most of them. In conclusion, he proposed that coaches should be limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and forwards once a week. Unhappily for Cresset's peace of mind, coaches did not decay. Nor did they wilt and Avither before the onslaught of another writer, who, under the pen-name of " A Country Tradesman," pub- lished a pamphlet in 1078, called The Ancient Trades Decayed, Repaired Again. According to this writer, if coaches Avere suppressed, more wine and beer would be drunk at the inns, to the great 74 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE increase and advantage of the Excise ; and the breed of horses would be improved, in consequence of the gentlemen who then rode in coaches being obliged to return to horse-riding. In 1673, in an announcement of stages to York, Chester, and Exeter, the journey to Exeter is put at " eight days in summer, ten in winter." Here was at least one coach that had already begun to run throughout the year, but its summer performance justified the remarks of those ancients who, seeing the original " four-days " announce- ment of 1658, had shaken their heads and sus- pected it would never last. The year 1678 saw a coach on the road between the important seaport of Hull and the city of York, proljably in connection Avith the York stage between that and London; l)ut our only know- ledge of its existence at so early a date is — ^to put it in rather an Irish way — a reference to its having been taken off. Ralph Thoresby, the Yorkshire antiquary, is our authority. In his diary he notes that he landed at Hull in November of that year, and that the stage coach was already over for the winter. This Hull and York coach we may suppose to have been in connection Avith a York and London stage already existing — that original vehicle, started in 1658 and alluded to in 1673, Avliich was to perform the journey in four days, the fare 40s. The first detailed account of the '•' York Old Coach," as it came to be known, is found in an old advertisement broadside discovered some years since at the back of an old draAver at the " Black DAllW OF THE COACHIiVG AGE 75 Swan," in York. It is dated 1706, and is evidently an announcement of the coach resuming its season after one of its annual hibernations : — YORK Four Days Stage-Coach. Segxns an Friday ihc i7ih of April 1 706. ALL that are defitovu to pafj from LoTUjfcn to Tcrrt^ or from Tor\ to Lorubn, or any other Place on-thai Road, Let them RepAir lo the BlaJ^Swanm Mdbodrn in London J aud to the hhic\SiPart m Coney At boihw^ich Places, ihey may be rctovcdma Staec Coach every MonAay, ^cdnejday and Friday, TvljKh performs the whole Jourrxeyin Four Days, ({/" God permiij.) And fet6 forth at Five m 'heMornmg. And Tctums from Torf^ to Stamford in two d^yj, and from Stamford by Hunttngton to London m two days moTc. And the lite Stages on theu reiurru Alkranng mJi Faffeagtr n\ wei^t, and all 4bovc jrf 4 Ponad. r benjamin Kinsman, Performed By I Henry Harrijoa, \WalUT Bayne\ Alio ih is gives Notice that Ncwcafllc Stage Coach , fcts out from York, every Monday, and Fnday, and from Ncwcaftle evety Monday, and Friday. OLD COACHING BILL, PRESERVED AT THE "BLACK SWAN," YORK. It still took four days, as it had done when first estahlished close upon half a century before. Clearly times and coaches alike moved slowly. 76 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE That York even then displayed its sub-metro- politan character will be seen from the footnote to the handbill, relating to the Newcastle coach. Local services apparently radiated from the city to Hull, Leeds, Wakefield, and other places. Meanwhile, other provincial towns had not been idle, and we must needs make a slight divergence here to give an outline of what Glasgow was attempting in local intercommunication. Nothing thus early was on the road between Glasgow and London, but strenuous efforts were made to link Glasgow and Edinburgh (forty-four miles apart) together by a public service so early as 1678, when Provost Camj^bell and the magistrates of Glasgow agreed with William Hoorn, of Edinburgh, for a coach to go on that road once a week : "a suffi- cient strong coach, drawn by sax able horses, whilk coach sail cojitine sax persons and sail go ance ilk week, to leave Edinburgh ilk Monday morning, and to return again (God willing) ilk Saturday night." To travel those forty-four miles was, therefore, the occupation of three days. Even thus early we see the beginnings of that spirit of municipal enterprise which has in modern times carried Glasgow so far. Now the local tramway, water, gas, and electric lighting authority, she, so early as the seventeenth century, essayed a public service of coaches. Like much else in early coaching histor}^ this is merely a fragment ; but again, in 1743, Glasgow is found returning to the question, in an attempt of the Town Council to set up a stage-coach or PAWN OF THE COACHING AGE 77 " lando," to go once a Avcek in Avinter and twice in summer. The attempt failed, and it Avas not until 1749 that the first conveyance to ply rei^'ularly bet\veen Glasgow and Edinhurgh Avas established. This Avas the " CaraAan," Avhicli made the passage in tAvo days each Avav. It AAas succeeded in 1759 by the "Ply," Avhich brought the time doAvn to a day and a half. In 1697, according to an entry in the diary of Sir William Dugdale, under date of July 1 6th, a London and Birmingham coach, by Avay of Ban- bury, Avas then running ; but such isolated refer- ences are quite obscured by the flood of light thrown upon coaching by the Avork of De Laune, The Fresetit Slate of London, dated 1681. In his pages is to be found a complete list of all the stage-coaches, carriers, and Avaggons to and from London in that year. The carriers and Avaggons are A^ery numerous, and there are in all 119 coaches, of AAhicli number betAveen sixty and seventy are long-distance conveyances, the remainder serving places up to tAventy or twenty-five miles from London. In that list Ave find that, although a marvellous expansion of coaching had taken place, some of the j)laces already catered for in 1658 are abandoned. The Edinburgh stage does not appear, and nothing is to ])e found on that road farther north than York. The reason for the omission AA'as, doubtless, that York, then relatively a more important place than now, had its OAvn Avell-organised coaching busi- nesses. Travellers from London for Edinburgh 78 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE would secure a place to York, and, arriving there, book again by a York and Edinburgh coach. The Edinburgh stage from London, once a fortnight, is, indeed, not heard of again until 17oi. Many of the coaches mentioned l:»y De Laune went twice and thrice a Aveek, and a large propor- tion of those to places not beyond twenty or twenty-five miles from London made double journeys in the day. Thus Windsor had no fewer than seven coaches, six of them in and out daily. The age, it will be conceded, was not Avithout enterprise. But the omissions are striking ; Okehampton, Plymouth, and Cornwall, in- cluded in the purview of the pioneers of 1G58, are not mentioned. Liverpool, Sheffield, New- castle, Leicester, Hereford and others were outside their activities. No one, it seemed, wanted to go to Glasgow ; Manchester men were content to ride horseback ; Leeds, now numbering some 430,000 inhabitants, and increasing by 2,000 a year, was a town of only 7,000, and the clothiers rode to York and caught the London coach there. To Bath and Bristol, however, there were five coaches; to Exeter, four; to Guildford, three; to Cambridge, Braintree, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Gloucester, Lincoln and Stamford, Norwich, Ox- ford, Portsmouth, Reading, Saffron Walden, and Ware, two each. Despite the four coaches between Exeter and London mentioned by De Laune in 1681, the Mayor of Lyme Begis, having in October 1081 uro-ent official business in London, is found, in DAWN OF THF COACHING AGE 79 comjjany witli one servant, hiring post-horses from Lyme to Salishury. It is quite clear that if there had been a coach serving at the time, he would have caught it at Charniouth, a mile and a half from that little seaport ; but there was, for some unexplained reason, a break in the service, and it was not until Salisbury was reached, sixty miles along the road, that he found a stage. The coach fare from Salisbur}^ to London foi' self and servant was 30s., and he spent, " at several stages, to gratify coachmen," 4^. Oc/. With the existence of such a volume of trade as that disclosed by De Laune, it is not surprising to find that the scolding voices of opponents to coaching had by this time died down to a mere echo. Instead of reviling coaches, the writers of the age extolled their use and convenience. Thus Chamberlayne, in the 1684 edition of his Fresent State of Great Britain, the JFhltakers Al- manack of that period, says : " There is of late such an admirable commodiousness for both men and women to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world ; and that is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endamaging of one's health and one's body by hard jogging or over-violent motion, and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five miles, but with such velocity and speed in one hour as tbat the post in some foreign countries cannot make but in one day." Those 8o STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORD foreign countries liaAe our respectful sympatliy, for Chamberlayne in thus extolling our superiority was singing the praises of four miles an hour ! Prom the limho of half-forgotten things we dra": occasional references to coaches towards the close of the seventeenth century. In Ai:>ril 1694 a London and Warwick stage was announced to go every Monday, to make the journey in two days, " performed (if God permit) by Nicholas Rothwell " ; and in 1696 the " Confatharrat " coach was already spoken of as a familiar object on the London and Norwich road. All Ave know of the " Confatharrat " is that it came to the " Four Swans," in Bishopsgate Street Within. Its curious name is probal)ly the seventeenth-century spelling of the word " confederate," and the coach itself Avas, no doubt, run by an association, or " con- federacy," of owners and innkeepers, in succession to some unlucky person Avho singly had attempted it and failed. On some roads enterprise slackened. Thus, in 1700, the "Ely " coach to Exeter slept the fifth night from London at Axminster, Avhere the next morning a Avoman " shaved the coach," and on the afternoon of the sixth day it crawded into Exeter. Eorty-three years earlier it had taken only four days. Nicholas RotliAvell, of the London and War- wick stage in 1691, reappears in an extremely interesting broadsheet advertisement of 1731, announcing that the " Birmingham stage-coach in two days and a half begins. May the 21th." BI R M 1 N G HAM STAGE-COACH, In Two Day3 and a half; begins May tbc 24th, '173 J. SETSont from the Sipan-hn in Birmimhamy every MonJayzt fix a Clock in the Morning. through ti/arwick. Banbury and Alesbury^ to the Red Lion Innyix Alder fgatf ftrecu London, cvery^ Wednffday Morning: And returns from the fold Red Hon Inn every Iburjdaj Morning ac five a Clock the fame Way to the Swan-Jnn in Btrmingbam every Saturday, at 2 1 Shillings each Paffengcr. and 18 Shillings from WV»>/V/f, who has libcrry tocarry 14 Pounds in Weiahc, and all above to pay One Penny a Pound, Perform d (if God permit) By Nicholas Rothwell. The Weekly Wag^n feu o« wen TutfJ'J fr