CHAPTER XIV

THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHING DAYS

This is the time, now that we have passed the threshold of a new era, when old landmarks are disappearing everywhere around us as we gaze, and the Old England that we have known is being dispossessed and disestablished by a new and strange, an inhospitable and alien England of foreign plutocrats--this is the psychological moment for a brief review of what this England of ours was like in the old days of stage-coach and mail.

If we could recapture those times we should find them spacious days, of much fresh air, illimitable horizons, a great deal of solid, unostentatious comfort for the stay-at-homes, and also of much discomfort for the traveller; but although no sensible person, fully informed of the conditions of life in the long ago, would wish he had been born into those times, yet among their disadvantages and the discomforts incidental to travel scarce more than two generations ago, there were to be found, as a matter of course, not a few things which would be looked upon with rapture by the modern sentimentalist. That was the era when the Suburb was unknown anywhere else than around London, and even London’s suburbs were sparse, scattered, sporadic, and separated by great distances from one another. Taking coach from the City, where the merchants and the shopkeepers commonly lived over their business premises, you came presently, north, south, east, or west, through suburban Stamford Hill, Sydenham, Clapton, or Kensington, to rural Edmonton, Croydon, Romford, or Chiswick, and so presently to the Unknown. _That_ was, of itself, a charm in the old order of things--a charm lost long since in these crowded times, when constant and intimate travel have made us familiar with distant towns, and by consequence incurious and incapable of surprises. Everything is known, if not at the first hand of personal observation, at least by proxy of our reading in guide-book history, or by the debilitating photograph, which leaves nothing to the imagination, and renders us travelled in the uttermost nooks and corners of the land, even though we be bedridden, or thoroughgoing _habitués_ of the armchair and the fireside. The picture-postcard--the lowest common denominator of the photograph--has come to give the last touch of satiety, the final revulsion of repletion. The Land’s End has long since been exploited, John o’ Groat’s is merely at the end of a cycle ride, the “bottomless” caverns of the Peak have been plumbed, every unscalable mountain climbed. “_Connu!_” we exclaim when we are told any fact. No surprises are left. We may never before have journeyed to Edinburgh, but photographs have rendered us so long familiar with its castle and rock that we cannot recollect a time when we were not familiar with the physical geography of the “modern Athens,” and we seem to have been born with a knowledge of the geographical peculiarities of every other place. We are, therefore, naturally bored and unresponsive in situations where our grandfathers were surprised and delighted; but although possessed thereby with a profound dissatisfaction with ourselves, we cannot hope to win back to the unsophisticated joys of old time.

Would that it could be done! The wish is everywhere evident, but only Lethean waters could sweep away the useless lumber of mental baggage that destroys imagination and blunts the senses. The many efforts made to bring back the “properties”--to speak in the theatrical sense--of old time are pitiful or ridiculous, as your humour wills it. These are the days when things quaint and old-fashioned are revived for sake of their quaintness, sometimes in spite of their inconvenience and unsuitability; when ingle-nooks and open hearths with fire-dogs are built into modern houses for effect, although slow-combustion stoves are infinitely more comfortable and less wasteful of fuel. Our forbears, who did not know slow-combustion stoves, were not the creatures of sentiment that we are, and would soon have abolished open hearths for the close stoves had they been given the chance, just as they would have exchanged the tallow dip for electric lighting had the opportunity offered. We do not know the feelings with which the first gentlemen to use carpets abolished the old rush-strewn halls and the manners and customs contemporary with them; but if their sense of smell was as acute as our own, they must have noticed with great relief the absence of the dirt and festering bones that found a hiding-place beneath those rushes. All the marvellous changes in habits of living--the cheapening of food, the conversion of the luxuries of a former age into the ordinary requirements of this, and even the alterations in the face of the country and the houses of towns and villages--are due to those increased facilities of intercourse which, owing to the gradual improvement in roads, the coaches and waggons of yore were first able to give. When public vehicles began to ply into the country, this England of ours was not only a land of wide unenclosed heaths and commons, but the people of one county--nay, even the inhabitants of towns and villages--were markedly different in thought and prejudices, in speech and clothing, from those of others; while local style in building, and the various building materials obtained locally, gave each successive place that appearance of something new and strange which the traveller does not always meet with nowadays in far distant lands. As the drainage of lakes and fens, the filling up of the valleys and the reduction of the hills, have quite revolutionised the physical geography of wide areas, often changing the natural history of the districts affected, so has cheap, constant and quick travelling and conveyance of materials helped to reduce places and people to one dead level. Romance flies abashed from the level, monotonous road, where, years before, in some darkling hollow between the hills, ringed in by dense woodlands, it lurked in company with the highwayman. We do not desire the return of those gentry, but what would literature have done without them? Highway and turnpike improvements long ago sliced off the most aspiring hilltops, and, carrying the roads through cuttings, used the material thus cut away for the purpose of filling up the gullies and deep depressions. Where the early coaches toiled, often axle-deep, through the watersplashes formed by the little rills and streams that ran athwart the way, later generations have built bridges, or have done things infinitely worse; so that a watersplash has become a rare and curious object, noteworthy in a day’s journey. Only recently, on the Dover Road, near Faversham, has such a watersplash--one of the most picturesque in the country--been abolished. Ospringe was a little Kentish Venice, with a clear-running shallow stream occupying the whole of the roadway, with raised footpaths for pedestrians at either side, and ancient gabled cottages looking down upon the pretty scene. Alas! the sparkling stream now goes under the road, in a pipe.

In the old days, no traveller going north along the Great North Road left Alconbury without first seeing that the priming of his pistols was in order, while the passengers by mail or stage secretly put their watches and jewellery between their skin and their underclothing, or deposited their purses in their boots, before the coach topped Alconbury Hill. For at “Aukenbury,” as Ogilby in his old road-maps styles it, you were on the threshold of a robbing-place only less famous than Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, or those other notorious dark or daylight lurks (for day or night mattered little in those times), Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common. The name of this ill-reputed place was “Stonegate Hole.” It is marked distinctly on the maps of Ogilby and his successors, between the sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth milestones from London, by the Old North Road, measured from Shoreditch, and passing through Ware, Royston, and Caxton.

Passing Papworth Everard, you came in those days, on the left hand, just before reaching the fifty-sixth milestone, to “Beggar’s Bush,” where you probably saw the tramps, vagrants and footpads of that age skulking, on the chance of robbing some traveller unable to take care of himself. Here, in sight of these wretches, you ostentatiously toyed with your pistol holsters, or loosened your sword in its scabbard, and so passed on scathless. On leaving Alconbury, however, the horseman generally preferred company, because the highwaymen of Stonegate Hole were well armed, and, by consequence, courageous.

What, exactly, was Stonegate, or Stangate, Hole? It was the deep and solitary hollow that then existed at the foot of the northward slope of Alconbury Hill, known now as Stangate Hill. The name derived from this road being a part of the old Roman “Ermine Street,” formerly a stone-paved way, and the “Hole” was formed by a rise that immediately succeeded the descent. Quite shut in by dense woods, it was an ideal spot for highway robbery. When, in the later coaching era, the road was lowered through the crest of the hill, and the earth was used to raise it in the hollow, Stonegate Hole disappeared. Bones were found during the progress of the works, supposed relics of unfortunate travellers who had met their death at the hands of the highwaymen. A more or less true story was long told of an ostler of the “Wheatsheaf,” the inn that once stood on the hilltop. He, it seems, used to help in putting in the coach-horses when the teams were changed, and would then take a short cut across the fields, and be ready for the coach when it came down the road. The coachman, guard, and passengers, who did not know that the shining pistol-barrel he levelled at them was really a tin candlestick, were duly impressed by it, and yielded their valuables accordingly.

A tale used to be told of one of the old “London riders,” or “bagmen,” who lay at the “Wheatsheaf” overnight and set forth the next morning. His saddle-bags were full, and so weighted with samples of his wares that he could scarce sit his horse, and had to be helped into the saddle by an ostler. Once up, his eyes only with difficulty peered over this mountainous weight, but in this manner he set forth. He had not gone far before he thought he had lost his way, when fortunately he perceived another horseman, and hailed him. The stranger took no notice; and so our traveller ranged up alongside him with the question. Instead of replying, the stranger thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and withdrew what the traveller imagined to be a pistol. Recollections of the evil repute of the place suddenly rushed into the traveller’s mind, and, putting spurs to his horse, he dashed away from the supposed highwayman, and did not draw rein until in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon.

There he met a party of horsemen, who determined to hunt the highwayman down, and so, with the traveller, hurried on to Stonegate. “There he is!” cried the traveller, as they came in view of a peaceful-looking equestrian, ambling gently along.

“You are mistaken, sir,” said one of the party: “that is our Mayor, the Mayor of Huntingdon.”

But the bagman asserted he was right, and so, to end the dispute, the whole party rode up, and one wished “Mr. Mayor” good morning. It was indeed that worthy man, and although he again, instead of making answer, drew something from his pocket, it produced no alarm among his fellow-burgesses, for _they_ at least knew him for a very deaf man, and had often seen him reach for that ear-trumpet which he now drew forth, clapped to his ear, and asked them what it was they said.

Swift, who, travelling between London, Chester, Holyhead and Dublin, remarked upon the many nations and strange peoples he passed on the way, serves to emphasise these notes upon the fading individuality of places and people. The dialect of “Zummerzet” has not wholly decayed, but it has become so modified that when old references to its Bœotian nature are found, the reader who knows modern Somerset, and does not consider these changes, concludes that its grotesque speech was greatly exaggerated; just as he cannot be made to implicitly believe the remarkable and oft-repeated story told by William Hutton of the visit of himself and a friend to Bosworth in 1770, when the people set the dogs at them, for the only reason that they were strangers; or that other tale of the savagery of the Lancashire and Yorkshire villagers, who, when a person unknown to them appeared, conversed as follow:--

“Dost knaw ’im?”

“Naya.”

“Is’t a straunger?”

“Ay, for sewer.”

“Then pause ’im; ’eave a stone at ’un; fettle ’im.”

No inoffensive stranger in country districts is likely to meet with that reception nowadays. The stranger in those times was regarded, as he generally is in savage countries, as necessarily an enemy; but travel has changed all that, and it has been reserved for the London “hooligan,” who has been taught better, to perpetrate, in the very centre of civilisation, the barbarous methods of the uninstructed peasantry of generations ago.

Stories like these are only incredible when the circumstances of the age are unknown. In times when a stranger might easily enough prove to be a highwayman, or at the very least, some Government emissary intent upon collecting hearth-money, window-tax, or one of the very many duties then levied upon necessaries of life, a strange face might be that of an enemy, and at any rate was unlikely to be that of a friend. Sightseers were unknown. No one stirred from home if he could find an excuse for staying by his own fireside. “What do you want here?” asked the Welsh peasants of the earliest tourists; and declined to believe them when they said they journeyed to view the Welsh mountains. “For Christianity’s sake, help a poor man!” implored an early traveller in Scotland, fainting by the way. The door was slammed in his face. “Surely you are Christians?” exclaimed the unhappy man. “There are no Christians here,” replied the half-savage Scot: “we are all Grants and Frasers.” That last is, perhaps, rather a savagely humorous than a true story, but the mere existence of it is significant. More authentic--nay, well established--is the statement that even so late as 1749, in Glasgow, two people of the same name would commonly be distinguished by some physical peculiarity; or else, if one was travelled and the other not, the one who had been to the capital would be “London John,” or James, according to what his Christian name might be.

A course of reading in the “travels” of the authors and diarists who ambled about England, on horseback or otherwise, in the old days, sufficiently demonstrates the aloofness and isolation, and the essential differences that divided the country districts. When the Dukes of Somerset resided at Petworth, in Sussex, the roads were so bad that it was next to impossible to get there, and when once there it was equally difficult to get away. Petworth is only forty-nine miles from London, but the Duke of Somerset maintained a house at Godalming, sixteen miles along the road, where he could halt on the way and pass the night. His steward generally advised the servants some time before his Grace started, so that they might be on the road “to point out the holes.” When the Emperor Charles VI. visited Petworth, his carriage was attended by a strong escort of Sussex peasants, to save it from falling over. In spite of their efforts, it was several times overturned, and that was a very sore and bruised Emperor who supped that night with the Duke. Similar adventures befel Prince George of Denmark, husband of Queen Anne, visiting Petworth from Windsor. He went in some state, with a number of carriages. “The length of way was only forty miles, but fourteen hours were consumed in traversing it; while almost every mile was signalised by the overturn of a carriage, or its temporary swamping in the mire. Even the royal chariot would have fared no better than the rest, had it not been for the relays of peasants who poised and kept it erect by strength of arm, and shouldered it forward the last nine miles, in which tedious operation six good hours were consumed.”

The travellers of that era, knowing how strange the country must be to most people, gravely and at length described places that in these intimate times an author would feel himself constrained to apologise for mentioning, except in a personal and impressionistic way; and they not only so describe them, but there is every reason to believe their writings were read with interest. More interesting than their dry bones of topographical history are the accounts they give of manners, customs, and thoughts common to the time when travellers were few and little understood. When, in 1700, the Reverend Mr. Brome, rector of the pleasant Kentish village of Cheriton, determined to make the explorations of England that took him, in all, three years, he was obliged, as a matter of course, to wait until the spring was well advanced and the roads had again become passable. Setting forth at last, one mild May day, his friends and parishioners accompanied him a few miles, and then, with the fervent “God be with you’s” that were the

## parting salutations of the time, instead of the lukewarm “Good-bye’s”

of to-day, turned back home-along, and expected to hear of him no more. But he _did_ return, as his very dull and jejune book, chiefly of stodgy historical and topographical information, published in 1726, sufficiently informs us.

“Weeping Cross” is the name of a spot just outside Salisbury, supposed to have taken its name from being the spot where friends and relatives took leave of travellers, with little prospect in their minds of seeing them again. There is another “Weeping Cross” on the London side of Shrewsbury, near Emstrey Bank, about a mile from the town and overlooking the descending road, whence the progress of the travellers could be followed until distance at last hid them from view. There are, doubtless, other places so named throughout the country. The oft-repeated legendary statement that travellers usually made their wills before setting out is thus seen to be reasonable enough, but it is specifically supported by the author of _Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland_, who, writing about 1730, says: “The Highlands are but little known, even to the inhabitants of the low country of Scotland, for they have ever dreaded the difficulties and dangers of travelling among the mountains; and when some extraordinary occasion has obliged any one of them to such a progress, he has, generally speaking, made his testament before he set out, as though he were entering upon a long and dangerous sea-voyage, wherein it was very doubtful if he should ever return.”

When Mrs. Calderwood, of Polton and Coltness, made a journey from Scotland into England in 1756, she wrote a diary, a very much more entertaining and instructive affair than the Reverend Mr. Brome’s book--which, indeed, could have been compiled from other works without the necessity of travelling, and, but for a few fleeting glimpses of original observation, actually gives that impression. Mrs. Calderwood tells us that at Durham she went to see the Cathedral, where the woman who conducted her round the building did not understand her Scottish ways (nor indeed did Mrs. Calderwood comprehend everything English). “I suppose, by my questions, the woman took me for a heathen, as I found she did not know of any other mode of worship but her own; so, that she might not think the Bishop’s chair defiled by my sitting down in it, I told her I was a Christian, though the way of worship in my country differed from hers.” Mrs. Calderwood, quite obviously, had never heard of St. Cuthbert and his antipathy to women, so respected at Durham that womankind were not admitted within certain boundaries in his Cathedral church; nor was she familiar with hassocks, for she narrates how the woman “stared when I asked what the things were that they kneeled upon, as they appeared to me to be so many Cheshire cheeses.”

The modern tourist along our roads finds a deadly sameness overspreading all parts of the country. The same cheap little suburban houses of stereotyped fashion, built to let at from £25 to £30 a year, that sprawl in mile upon mile on the outer ring of London, are to be found--nay, are insistently to the foreground--wherever he goes. They form the approach to, the outpost of, every town, large or small, he enters, and are built in the same way, and of the same materials, whether he travels farther north, south, east, or west. It was not so, need it be said, in the old times. Then the coach passenger with an eye for the beautiful and the unusual had that sense abundantly gratified along almost every mile of his course, for when men did not build on contract, and when the contractor, had he existed, would not have been able to work outside his own district, there was individuality in building design. We all know the truth of the adage that “variety is charming,” and of variety the travellers had their fill. And not only was there variety in design, but an endless change of materials gratified the eyes of those who cared for these things. London, with its dingy brick, was succeeded, as one penetrated westwards, by the weather-boarded cottages of Brentford and Hounslow, by the timber framing and brick nogging of the next districts, by the chalk and flint of Hampshire and Wilts; and at last, when one had come to the stone country, by the yellow ferruginous sandstone of Ham Hill, that characterises the houses and cottages between Shaftesbury, Crewkerne and Chard. Coming into Devon, the yellow stone was replaced by the rich red sandstone, or the equally red “cob” of that western land; and a final change was found when, the Tamar passed and Plymouth left behind, the massive granite churches, houses and cottages astonished the new-comer to those parts. No one could build with other than local materials in those days. The material might be, like the granite, stubborn and difficult, and expensive to work, but it would have been still more expensive to bring other materials to the spot, and so the local men worked on their local stone, and in course of time acquired that peculiar mastery of it and that way of expressing themselves which originated that “local style” whose secret is so ardently sought by modern architectural students. You cannot transplant the old style of a locality. Like the wilding plucked from its native hedgerow, it dies, or is cultivated into something other than its original old sweet self and becomes artificial. Cynic circumstance has so decreed it that, while these ancient local growths have in modern times been copied in London and the great towns, the rural neighbourhoods have been cursed with an ambition to copy London, while everywhere cheap red brick is ousting the native stone, flint, or wood.

When the fashionables travelled down by coach to Bath, one might safely have offered a prize for every brick house to be found there, for Bath was, and is, built of the local oolite known as “Bath stone.” The prize would never have been claimed; but something like a modern miracle is now happening, for even at Bath red brick has underbid the native stone and gained an entrance.

Nothing escapes the modern desecrating touch. “Auld Reekie” itself--Edinburgh, that last stronghold of the Has Been--is not the same “beloved town” that Sir Walter Scott knew. The French Renaissance character of its grandiose new buildings does not alone tend to change it into something alien to sentiment and ancient recollection; but that which our ancestors would have thought a mere impossibility, that which themselves would, and ourselves should, stigmatise as a crime committed against History and the Picturesque, has almost come to pass. In short, the deep ravine where the Nor’ Loch stagnated of old, where the Waverley Station is now placed, has been deprived of something of its apparent depth, and the Castle Rock of a corresponding height, by the towering proportions of the vast buildings that fill up the valley and desecrate the site of the northern capital.

Sturdy survivals of olden days are the local delicacies that first obtained a wider fame from that time when they were set before the coach passengers at the country inns where the coach dined, or had tea, or supped, and were so greatly appreciated that supplies were carried away for the benefit of distant friends. Some, however, of these delicacies have disappeared. No longer does Grantham produce the cakes mentioned by Thoresby in 1683. Grantham, he says, was “famous in his esteem for Bishop Fox’s benefactions, but it is chiefly noted of travellers for a peculiar sort of thin cake, called ‘Grantham Whetstones.’” What precisely were the cakes known by this unpromising name we cannot say, for the making of them is a thing of the past.

Stilton cheese, never made at Stilton, obtained its name exactly in the manner already described. It was a cheese made at Wymondham, in Leicestershire, but its merits were first discovered by the coach-parties who dined at the “Bell” at Stilton, whose landlord obtained his supply from Wymondham, and drove a roaring trade in old cheeses sold to the coaches to take away. “Stilton” cheese is now only a conventional name, like that of “Axminster” carpets, made nowadays at Kidderminster.

To bring home with him bags and boxes of local delicacies was to the old coach-traveller as much an earnest of his travels as the bringing back of a storied alpenstock is to the tourist in Switzerland. The Londoner, returning home from Edinburgh, could come back laden with a number of things which, easily obtainable now, were then the spoils only of travel. From Scotch shortbread the list would range to Doncaster butterscotch, York hams, Grantham gingerbread, and Stilton cheeses. On other roads he might secure the cloying Banbury cake, still extant, and as sickly-sweet and lavish of currants as of yore; the famous Shrewsbury cakes, manufactured by the immortal Pailin, who left his recipe behind him, so that the cakes of Shrewsbury still continue in the land; Bath buns, phenomenally adhesive and sprinkled with those fragments of loaf sugar without which the exterior of no Bath bun is complete; the cheese of Cheddar; the toffee of Everton; pork pies from Melton Mowbray; or a barrel of real natives from Whitstable. All or any of these, I say, he might carry home with him, while few places were so unimportant in this particular way that he could not ring the changes on gastronomic rarities as he went.

All these things were the products of that old English tradition of good cheer and hospitality which lasted even some little way into the railway age. Journeys were cold, but hearts were warm, and the more rigorous your travelling the better your welcome. It would seem, and actually be, absurd to surround a modern arrival by railway with the circumstance that greeted the advent of the coach. In the bygone times the guest had no sooner alighted at his inn and proceeded to his room than a knock came at his door, and lo! on a tray a glass of the choicest port or cordial the house contained. To this day the courteous old custom survives at the “Three Tuns,” in Durham, whose traditional glass of cherry brandy is famous the whole length of the great road to the north.

[Illustration: “ALL RIGHT!” THE BATH MAIL TAKING UP THE MAIL-BAGS.

_From the contemporary lithograph._ ]

For the little folks who travelled by coach, either with their own people or, like Tom Brown, in charge of the guard, warm motherly hearts beat in the bosoms of the stately landladies of the age, all courteous punctilio to their grown-up guests, but sympathy itself to the wearied youngsters. Such was Mrs. Botham, of the “Pelican,” at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road--that “Pelican” of whose “enormous bill” some waggish poet had sung at an early period. Mrs. Botham, an awesome figure--like Mrs. Ann Nelson, of the “Bull,” Whitechapel, dressed in black satin--unbent to the youngsters, for whom, indeed, she had always ready a packet of brandy-snaps.

The earlier travellers were even more welcomed, not by the innkeepers alone, whose welcome was not altogether altruistic, but by the country folk in general.

The annual reappearance of the early stage-coaches was a much greater event to the villagers and townsfolk of the more remote shires than we moderns might suppose, or feel inclined to believe, without inquiry. But we must consider the winter isolation of such places in those remote times, and then some faint glimmering sense of their aloofness from the world will give us an understanding of the relief with which they again saw real strangers from the outer world. In the long winter months, when days were short and roads only to be travelled by the most daring horsemen, spurred to the rash deed only by the most urgent necessity, the passing stranger was rare, and excited remark, and the company in the inn parlour or by the ingle-nook discussed him, both because of his rarity and by reason of their own raw material for the making of conversation being run very low indeed. We should be more thankful than we generally are that our lot was not cast in a seventeenth-century village, for winter in such surroundings was dulness incarnate. Because they could not obtain fodder to keep the sheep and cattle in good condition through the winter, the farmers and graziers of that time killed them before that season set in, and the villagers lived upon salted meat. Every house had its salt-beef tub and its bacon-cratch under the kitchen ceiling, well stocked with hams and sides; but vegetables were so scarce as to be practically unobtainable.

Every household brewed its own beer and kept a stock of cider, and most housewives were cunning in the preparation of metheglin, a sickly-sweet and heavy drink that revolts the modern palate, but was then greatly appreciated. Evenings were not long, even though it grew dark before four o’clock, for folks went to bed by seven or eight. There was little inducement to sit up late, because only the feeblest illumination was possible to any but the very rich, and the yeomen, the farmers and the cottagers had to rest content with the dim sputtering glimmer of the tallow dips that every eight or ten minutes required the attentions of the snuffers. “When the night cometh,” we read in the Bible, “no man can work”; but that is a statement which, literally true at the time when the Bible was done into English, can now only be read and understood figuratively. No one could work by the artificial illumination then possible.

Conceive, then, the joy with which returning spring was greeted--spring, that brought back light and fresh food and intercourse with the world, outside the rural parish. Mankind had travelled far from those prehistoric times of annual terror, when the ignorant savage saw the sun’s light going out with the coming of winter, and so, with abject fear, passed the darkling months until the vernal solstice brought him hope again. No one in the Old England of two hundred and fifty years ago trembled lest the sun should not return at his appointed time; but when the sap rose and the birds began to sing again, and warmth and light had begun to replace the fogs and mists of winter, the hearts of all rejoiced.

May Day was then the great merrymaking festival, but the first coach that ventured along the roads, now beginning to set after the winter’s rains, had a welcome of its own. At Sutton-on-Trent, on the Great North Road, the springtide custom of welcoming the early coaches was royally observed, and kept up for many years. No coach, during a whole week of jollity, was suffered to proceed through that jovial village without it halted and ate and drank as only Englishmen could then drink and eat. Guards, coachmen and passengers were freely feasted, willy-nilly. Young and old plied them with the good things, spread out upon a tray covered with a beautiful damask napkin, and heaped with plum-cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, and exquisite home-made bread and biscuits; while ale, currant and gooseberry wines, cherry brandy, and occasionally spirits, were eagerly pressed upon the strangers. Half a dozen damsels, all enchanting young people, neatly clad, rather shy, but courteously importunate, plied the passengers.

Thoresby records a similar custom at Grantham, near by, on one of his journeys. Under date of May 4th, 1714, he says: “We dined at Grantham, and had the usual solemnity, being the first passage of the coach this season; the coachman and horses decked with ribbons and flowers, and the town music and young people in couples before us.” The “town music” was what we should nowadays call the Town Band.

When such courtesies obtained along the roads the coachmen and guards would have been churlish not to have, in some prominently visible manner, done honour to the season. And, indeed, May Day and springtime decorations were features on most coaches. The coachman’s whipstock was ornamented with gay ribbons and bunches of flowers, while the coachman himself wore a floral nosegay that rivalled a prize cabbage in size. The guard was no less remarkable a figure, and his horn was wreathed with the most lively display of blossoms. Festoons of flowers and sprays of evergreens so draped and covered the coach that the insides, peering out upon the festivities, very closely resembled those antic figures, the “Jacks-in-the-Green,” that used on May Day to prance and make merry from the midst of an embowering canopy of foliage, even so late as thirty years ago, in London streets. The horses, too, bore their part. Their new harness and saddle-cloths, the rosettes and wreaths of laurel on their heads, smartened them up so that even the animals themselves were conscious of the occasion, and bore themselves with becoming pride.

Those old customs are, as a matter of course, gone. Coaches no longer dash through the old “thoroughfare” villages; and when, with the advent of spring, the motorist appears upon the road, the villagers, rather than welcoming his appearance, curse him for the clouds of dust he leaves behind. Motor-cars, they tell us, are to repeople the old coaching-roads, whose prosperity is, through them, to return, and the picturesque old wayside inns, with their memories of the coaching age, are to once again experience the rush of business. It may be so, but no one will regret the fact more than the lover of Old England, who, in the repeopling of the roads, sees their modernising inevitable, and the equally inevitable bringing “up to date” of those quaint, quiet, and comfortable hostelries so dear to the genuine tourist. It is true, they do not dine you elaborately--as your extravagant motorist complains--but life is not all chicken and champagne, and it will be a sorry day when the plain man, fleeing the gaudy glories of hotels at fashionable resorts, finds the unsophisticated inns of the countryside remodelled on the same plan. Already the picturesqueness of the old roads is threatened. They are, if you please, too hilly, too narrow, or not straight enough for that new tyrant of the highways, the owner of a high-powered motor-car, and plans have actually been drawn up by irresponsible busybodies for straight and broad new tracks, or for the remodelling of the old roads on the same principle. Roadside trees and avenues keep the surface damp and muddy after rain, and so, as rubber-tyred cars are apt to skid and side-slip on mud, the same voices call for the abolition of wayside trees. Old England is in a parlous state, when these things can be advocated and no indignant protests rise.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY

1610. Patent granted for an Edinburgh and Leith waggon-coach.

1648. Southampton weekly stage casually mentioned.

1657. Stage-coaches introduced: the London and Chester Stage.

1658. First Exeter Stage.

” First York and Edinburgh Stage.

1661. First Oxford Stage.

” Glass windows first used in carriages: the Duke of York’s carriage.

1662. Only six stage-coaches said to have been existing.

1665. Norwich Stage first mentioned.

1667. Bath Flying Machine established.

” London and Oxford Coach, in 2 days, established.

1669. London and Oxford Flying Coach, in 1 day, established.

1673. Stages to York, Chester, and Exeter advertised.

1679. London and Birmingham Stage, by Banbury, mentioned.

1680. “Glass-coaches” mentioned.

1681. Stage-coaches become general: 119 in existence.

1706. London to York in 4 days.

1710 Stage-coaches provided with glazed windows. (about).

1730. “Baskets” or “rumble-tumbles” introduced about this period.

1734. Teams of horses changed every day, instead of coaches going to end of journey with same animals.

” Quick service advertised: Edinburgh to London in 9 days.

1739. According to Pennant, gentlemen who were active horsemen still rode, instead of going by coach.

1742. London to Oxford in 2 days.

” London to Birmingham, by Oxford, in 3 days.

1751. London to Dover in 1½ days.

1753. Outsides carried on Shrewsbury Stage.

1754. London and Manchester Flying Coach in 4½ days.

” Springs to coaches first mentioned: the Edinburgh Stage.

” London and Edinburgh in 10 days.

1758. London and Liverpool Flying Machine in 3 days.

1760. London and Leeds Flying Coach advertised in 3 days: took 4.

1763. London and Edinburgh only once a month, and in 14 days.

1776. First duty on stage-coaches imposed.

1780. Stage-coaches become faster than postboys.

1782. Pennant describes contemporary travelling by light post-coaches as “rapid journeys in easy chaises, fit for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of Sybaris.”

1784. Mail-coach system established.

1800 Fore and hind boots, framed to body of coach, became general. (about).

” Coaches in general carry outside passengers.

1805. Springs under driving-box introduced.

1819. “Patent Safety” coaches come into frequent use, to reassure travelling public, alarmed by frequent accidents.

1824. Rise of the fast day-coaches: the Golden Age of coaching.

” Stockton and Darlington Railway opened: first beginnings of the railway era.

1830. Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened: coaching first seriously threatened.

1838. London and Birmingham Railway opened: first great blow to coaching; coaches taken off Holyhead Road as far as Birmingham.

1839. Eastern Counties Railway opened to Chelmsford.

1840. Great Western Railway opened to Reading.

” London and Southampton Railway opened to Portsmouth: coaches taken off Portsmouth Road.

1841. Great Western Railway opened to Bath and Bristol: coaches taken off Bath Road.

” Brighton Railway opened: coaching ends on Brighton Road.

1842. Last London and York Mail-coach.

1844. Great Western Railway opened to Exeter: last coaches taken off Exeter Road.

1845. Railways reach Norwich.

” Eastern Counties Railway opened to Cambridge.

1846. Edinburgh and Berwick Railway opened.

1847. East Anglian Railway opened to King’s Lynn.

1848. “Bedford Times,” one of the last long-distance coaches withdrawn.

” Eastern Counties Railway opened to Colchester.

” Great Western Railway opened to Plymouth.

1849. Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway opened.

1850. Chester and Holyhead Railway opened.

1874. Last of the mail-coaches: the Thurso and Wick Mail gives place to the Highland Railway.

INDEX

Accidents, i. 206, 274, 281, 307, 310; ii. 28, 96–122

Allen, Ralph, Post Office reformer, i. 146

Amateur coachmen (for individuals, _see_ Coaching Notabilities)

” ” penalty for allowing them to drive, i. 209

” ” rise of, i. 231

” ” incident on the road with, ii. 91–3

” ” originated about 1800, ii. 239

” ” account of the, ii. 239–59

Balloon coaches, appear about 1785, i. 296

“Basket,” the, described, i. 96, 99; miseries of travelling in, i. 101, 295

Baxendale, Joseph, ii. 127–43, 207

Besant, designer of mail-coaches, i. 178

Bonnor, Charles, i. 168, 171

“Booking,” i. 320–23

” -clerks, responsibilities of, i. 320

” ” described by Dickens, i. 322, 330

” -offices, i. 320–23

” ” described by Dickens, i. 122, 330

Boonen, Wm., Queen Elizabeth’s coachman, i. 5

Brighton, first coach to, 1756, i. 134; first Sunday coach to, 1792, i. 198

Buckingham, Earl of, sets up a carriage, i. 7

Bugles (_see_ Key Bugles)

Byers, ----, professional informer, i. 214–17

Canals, ii. 130, 133

“Caravan,” origin of word, ii. 128, 129

Carriages, introduction of, i. 2–13; become fashionable, i. 11

Carriers, the, i. 65; antiquity of, i. 103; account of, i. 103–45; restrictions on, 1622–29, i. 195; forbidden to travel on Sundays, 1627, i. 196

Cary, Robert, rides horseback to Edinburgh, 1603, i. 16

Coach and Harness Makers Company, founded 1677, i. 12

“Coach and six through Act of Parliament,” origin of saying, i. 86

Coaches:-- Mail-coaches, general account of, i. 146–80; to be exempt from tolls, i. 156; Post Office officials resist introduction of, i. 157; established 1784, i. 158; originally diligences, or light post-coaches, i. 160; system extended 1785, i. 163; continually breaking down, i. 174; new type of, introduced, i. 178; Besant’s patent coach, i. 178; Besant’s coach condemned by Matthew Boulton 1798, i. 179; always four-horsed, i. 180; coachmen of, subject to severe penalties for misdemeanours, i. 211; used for illegal sale of game, i. 254; for smuggling, i. 256; outside passengers of, limited to three, i. 258; bring early news, i. 260; cross-country, shabby, ii. 2; increased number of, injure roads, ii. 5; stage-coaches unable to compete with, ii. 5; exemption of from tolls injurious to Turnpike Trusts, ii. 4–9; paid toll in Ireland from 1798 ii. 9; exemption repealed as regards Scotland, 1813, ii. 9; tyrants of the road, ii. 10; exposed to dangers, ii. 10; pre-eminence of declines from 1824, on introduction of fast day-coaches, ii. 11; additional number of passengers permitted, ii. 12; mileage paid to contractors for, ii. 12–15; contractors disinclined to do business with Post Office, ii. 15; railways begin to supplant, 1830, ii. 16; procession of, on King’s birthday, ii. 17–22; list of, starting from London 1837, ii. 23; the fastest, 1836, ii. 27; number of, 1838, ii. 27; West of England routes cut up by railways, ii. 36–9; horses sold off, ii. 39; last of the mails, ii. 40; described, ii. 40–47 Waude’s mail-coach, 1830, ii. 43–7; go seven days a week, ii. 148; freedom of from attack, ii. 148; robberies of, frequent, ii. 149; attacked by lioness, ii. 151; adventures of, in snow, ii. 152–5, 159–62, 166–9, in floods ii. 162–6, 169; West of England, started from Piccadilly, ii. 207 Mail-coaches:-- Banff and Inverness, ii. 165 Bath, ii. 22, 23 Birmingham, ii. 23 ” and Liverpool, ii. 169 Brighton, ii. 23, 24, 101 ” Day, ii. 313 Bristol, established 1784, i. 158–60; ii. 1, 17, 22, 23, 149, 207 Cambridge Auxiliary, ii. 215 Canterbury and Deal, ii. 27 Carlisle and Edinburgh, ii. 27 ” ” Glasgow, ii. 23, 24, 27, 108 Carmarthen and Pembroke, ii. 15, 215 Cheltenham and Aberystwith, i. 264; ii. 119 Chester, ii. 15, 23, 215 Derby and Manchester, ii. 40 Devonport (Quicksilver), i. 246, 264, 303; ii. 22, 23, 28, 31–6, 39, 122, 182, 207, 227, 252, 295, 308, 312 Dover, ii. 15, 23, 24, 150 ” Foreign, ii. 215 Edinburgh, ii. 23, 24, 39, 75, 295 ” and Glasgow, ii. 166 Exeter, New, i. 264 ” ii. 22, 23, 28, 31, 35, 106, 151 Falmouth, ii. 23, 31, 35 Glasgow, i. 247; ii. 1–3 Gloucester and Carmarthen, ii. 23 ” ii. 22, 28, 215 Halifax, ii. 23, 106 Hastings, ii. 23, 24, 215, 237 Holyhead, ii. 15, 23, 207, 315 Hull, ii. 23 Ipswich, ii. 150, 312 Lancaster and Kirkby Stephen, ii. 152 Leeds, ii. 23, 24 Liverpool, ii. 23 ” and Manchester, ii. 12 ” and Preston, ii. 27 Louth, ii. 23, 28, 106, 235 Lynn and Wells, ii. 23, 235 Manchester, ii. 23 Norwich, by Newmarket, ii. 15, 23, 215 Plymouth and Falmouth, ii. 314 Poole, ii. 160 Portsmouth, ii. 23, 24, 160 Southampton, ii. 22, 23 Stroud, ii. 22, 23 Wick and Thurso, ii. 40 Worcester, ii. 23, 215, 318 Yarmouth, ii. 23, 24 York, ii. 150 Stage-coaches, first established 1657, i. 2; considered vulgar, i. 25; patent for Edinburgh and Leith waggon-coach granted, 1610, i. 56; said to have begun about 1640, i. 57; John Taylor travels by the Southampton coach, 1648, i. 58–60; Chester Stage, first regular stage-coach, established 1657, i. 60; Exeter, Okehampton, Plymouth, Newark, Darlington, Ferryhill, York, Durham, Edinburgh and Wakefield stages established 1658, i. 61; itinerary varied to suit prospective travellers, i. 63; Oxford coach, 1661, i. 63; Preston, Lancashire, 1662, i. 63; horses went whole journey, i. 63; changed once a day, i. 63; Norwich coach, 1665, i. 64; lack of full information, about 1660–80, i. 64–74; early stages described by Taylor, the Water Poet, i. 65; described, i. 65–7, 82; first provided with glazed windows, about 1710, i. 67; agonies of travelling in, i. 63, 67, 72; Bath Flying Machine, 1667, i. 68; De Laune’s _Present State of London_, 1681, contains first lists of, i. 77–9; general in 1681, i. 77; opposition to, dies down, i. 79; fares moderate, 1684, i. 79; winter still, in 1731, largely a season of no coaches, i. 82; easily outpaced by pedestrians, about 1750, i. 82–85; six horses and a postilion generally used, 1754–1783, i. 85, 86, 90; horses changed oftener than once a day, i. 87; consequent acceleration, i. 88; beginnings of competition and rivalry, i. 89; agreements between proprietors, i. 89; consequent deceleration of coaches, i. 90; Edinburgh stage a “glass machine on steel springs,” 1754, i. 89; of 1750, described by Sir Walter Scott, i. 97; outside passengers first provided with seats, about 1800, i. 181; fore and hind boots introduced, about 1800, i. 181; contempt of insides for outsides, i. 181, 210; “Land Frigate,” London and Portsmouth, i. 182; springs under driving-boxes introduced about 1805, i. 185; ii. 240; shorter stages adopted, about 1800, i. 186; travel at night, from about 1780, i. 186; ii. 66; speed increased, i. 189; duty levied, 1776, i. 205; duty increased 1783 and 1785, i. 206; accidents increase, i. 206; Gamon’s Acts, regulating number of passengers, 1788–90, i. 206–9; severity of Acts of 1806 and 1811, regulating, i. 209–12; the law constantly broken, i. 212; rise and progress of the professional informers, i. 213–18; duties reduced, 1839, i. 218–20; provincial coaches despised, i. 245; first begin to be named, i. 282; opposition and rivalry of, i. 282–8; “machine” becomes a favourite term, about 1754, i. 286; introduction of “diligences,” about 1776, i. 287; “diligences,” originally fast, become slow, i. 288–92; Shillibeer’s Brighton Diligence, i. 290–92; the Post-Coaches and Light Post-Coaches, a fast and exclusive type, i. 292–5; objectionable company in, i. 294; “Accommodation” coaches, slow and capacious, introduced about 1800, i. 295; generally acquire names from about 1780, i. 295; the principles and system of naming described, i. 295–317; the public alarmed by increasing accidents, 1810–20, i. 310; “patent safety,” i. 309–16; Waude’s coaches, ii. 16; fast day coaches begin, 1824, ii. 173–87; attain speed of eleven and twelve miles an hour, ii. 179, 185; Cobbett on, ii. 182; gas-lighting of, proposed, ii. 186; Glasgow and Paisley coaches lit by gas 1827, ii. 186; increased comfort and elegance of, ii. 186; “short stages,” the, ii. 187–93; threatened by railways, ii. 208; rivalry, 1830–36, ii. 215–17; threatened by steam-carriages, 1824–38, ii. 260–68; run off by railways, ii. 269–74; long survived on branch routes, ii. 281; ended generally 1848, ii. 292 Stage-coaches (mentioned at length):-- Age, Brighton, ii. 247, 252 Amersham and Wendover stage, ii. 281 Bath Flying Machine, 1667, i. 68 Bedford Times, i. 2 Beehive, Manchester, ii. 162, 229–31 Birmingham Flying Coach, 1742, i. 92 ” Improved Flying Coach, 1758, i. 92 ” and Shrewsbury Long Coach, 1753, in 4 days, i. 95 ” stage, 1697, by Banbury, i. 77; in 2½ days, 1731, i. 80 Chesham stage, ii. 281 Chester stage, 1657, in 4 days, i. 60; in 5 days, i. 62; in 6 days, 1710, i. 73 Coburg, Brighton, ii. 97 ” Edinburgh and Perth, ii. 108 Comet, Brighton, established 1815, i. 305–8, 312 ” Southampton, ii. 207 “Confatharrat,” Norwich, 1695, i. 80, 282 Coronet, Brighton, ii. 251 Criterion, Brighton, ii. 105 Defiance, Exeter, ii. 235 ” Manchester, ii. 207, 228 Derby Dilly, the, i. 239 Duke of Beaufort, Brighton, ii. 101 Edinburgh stage, once a fortnight, 1658, i. 61; in 10 days summer, 12 winter, 1754, i. 89; once a month, in 12 days, 1763, i. 90 Emerald, Bristol, ii. 207 Estafette, Manchester, ii. 186 Everlasting, Wolverhampton and Worcester, i. 238–40 Exeter Fly, in 6 days, 1700, i. 80 ” Flying Stage, 1739, generally 6 days, i. 90 ” Fast Coach, 1752, every Monday, in 3½ days summer, 6 winter, i. 91 Exeter stage, in 4 days, 1658, i. 61; in 8 days summer, 10 winter 1673, i. 74 Expedition, Norwich, ii. 150 Fowler’s Shrewsbury stage, 1753, in 3½ days, i. 95 Glasgow and Edinburgh stage, 1678, in 3 days, i. 76; 1743, i. 76 ” ” ” Caravan, 1749, in 2 days, i. 77 Glasgow and Edinburgh Fly, 1759, in 1½ days, i. 77 Gloucester Old Stage, ii. 240 Greyhound, Birmingham, ii. 207 Hull and York stage, 1678, i. 74 Independent Tally-Ho, Birmingham, ii. 215 Land Frigate, Portsmouth, i. 182 Lark, Leicester and Nottingham, ii. 110 Leeds Flying Coach, 1760, in 4 days, i. 93 Lewes and Brighthelmstone Flying Machine, 1762, i. 283 ” stage, i. 283 Liverpool Flying Machine, 1758, in 3 days, i. 93 Magnet, Cheltenham, ii. 207 Maidenhead and Marlow Post-Coach, i. 294 Manchester Flying Coach, 1754, in 4½ days, i. 92 Nelson, Newcastle-on-Tyne, i. 67 Newcastle Flying Coach, 1734, in 9 days, i. 87 Nimrod, Shrewsbury, ii. 215 Norwich stage, 1665, i. 64 Oxford Flying Coach, 1669, in 1 day, i. 69 ” stage, 1661, in 2 days, i. 63, 68 Peveril of the Peak, Manchester, ii. 107, 229, 237 Potter, Manchester and Stafford, ii. 150 Preston, Lancashire, stage, 1662, i. 63 Prince of Wales, Birmingham and Shrewsbury, i. 185, 231; ii. 240, 307 Quicksilver, Brighton, ii. 102–5 Red Rover, Brighton, ii. 311 ” Liverpool, ii. 207 ” Manchester, ii. 162, 229, 277 Regent, Stamford, ii. 207 Rocket, London and Portsmouth, ii. 320 Rockingham, Leeds, ii. 81 Safety, Cambridge, i. 241 Salop Machine, the “original,” 1774, i. 98 Shrewsbury Caravan, 1750, in 4 days, i. 119 Sovereign, Patent Safety, Brighton, i. 311 Stag, Shrewsbury, ii. 216 Star, Cambridge, i. 241; ii. 257, 299 Taglioni, Windsor, i. 316 Tally-Ho, Birmingham, ii. 214, 237 ” Plymouth and Falmouth, ii. 314 Tantivy, Birmingham, i. 278, 317; ii. 185, 207, 237 Telegraph, Cambridge, ii. 207, 299 ” Exeter, i. 300–303; ii. 34, 39, 227, 295, 313 ” Manchester, i. 300; ii. 185, 207, 227–9 Telegraph, Southampton, ii. 306 ” Norwich, by Newmarket, ii. 15, 150 Times, Bedford, i. 2; ii. 217 ” Brighton and Southampton, ii. 113 ” Cambridge, i. 241 True Blue, Leeds and Wakefield, ii. 97 Umpire, Liverpool, ii. 217 Union, King’s Lynn, i. 250; ii. 300, 302–5 Wakefield stage, 1658, in 4 days, i. 61 Warwick ” 1694, once a week, in 2 days, i. 80 Wellington, Newcastle-on-Tyne, ii. 66–95 Wonder, Shrewsbury, ii. 49, 185, 215, 227, 306 Worcester Old Fly, ii. 241 York stage, 1658, in 4 days, i. 61; 1673, i. 74; 1706, i. 75

Coaching Age, began 1657, i. 2, 60; end of, ii. 260–91; long survived on branch routes, ii. 281; ended generally by 1848, ii. 292

Coaching Notabilities:-- Barrymores, Earls of, ii. 241 Cotton, Sir St. Vincent, ii. 246–51, 257 Jones, C. Tyrwhitt, ii. 251 Kenyon, Hon. Thomas, ii. 233 Lade, Sir John, ii. 241 Lennox, Lord William, i. 278, 347 Mellish, Colonel, ii. 241, 245 Mytton, John, ii. 245 Peyton, Sir Henry, ii. 233 Stevenson, Henry, ii. 247, 251–4 Warburton, R. E. E., i. 317–19 Warde, John, i. 185, 231, 317; ii. 240 Worcester, Marquis of (afterwards 7th Duke of Beaufort), ii. 101, 251

Coachmen, forbidden to allow amateurs to drive, i. 209; penalties on, for misdemeanours, i. 209–11; the early, i. 221–30; the later, i. 231–48; the “flash men,” i. 235; denounced violently by Borrow, i. 235–8; described, ii. 72–4, 83–7, 91–4; ii. 174–7; “shoulder” fares and “swallow” passengers, ii. 200–203; contempt of, for railways, 1833–37, ii. 268; lose their occupation, ii. 278–81; what became of the, ii. 292–321

Coachmen:-- Abingdon, John, ii. 318 Bailey, Jack, i. 231; ii. 240 Brewer, Sampson, ii. 315 Carter, Philip, ii. 311 Clements, Wm., ii. 311 Cracknell, E., i. 318; ii. 185 Creery, Jack, ii. 152 Cross, Thomas, i. 238; ii. 299–306 Emmens, Joe, i. 228 Hayward, Sam, ii. 306 Holmes, Charles, ii. 316 Howse, Jerry, ii. 186 Jobson, John, ii. 307 Layfield, Tom, ii. 91 Marsh, Matthew, ii. 308 Parker, ----, ii. 319 Peers, Jack, ii. 306 Pickett, A., i. 315; ii. 306 Pointer, Robert, ii. 320 Salisbury, Harry, ii. 185 Salter, Wm., ii. 316 Simpson, Harry, ii. 308 Thorogood, John, i. 238 Vaughan, Dick, ii. 299 Vickers, Dick, ii. 315 Walton, Jo, i. 241; ii. 257, 299 Ward, Charles, i. 238; ii. 120, 311–15 ” Harry, i. 238, 246; ii. 311 Williams, Bill, ii. 257–9 Wilson, John, i. 238–40 ” William, i. 240

Coachmen killed:-- Aiken, ----, ii. 106 Austin, ----, ii. 106 Burnett, ----, ii. 107 Cherry, ----, ii. 116 Crouch, Thomas, ii. 107 Draing, James, ii. 115 Eyles, ----, ii. 116 Fleet, ----, ii. 101 Frisby, ----, ii. 110 Roberts, Thomas, ii. 106 Skinner, Henry, ii. 317 Upfold, William, ii. 113 Vaughan, Dick, ii. 299 Walker, Joseph, ii. 98 Wilkes, John, ii. 318

Coach-proprietors, alarmed by establishment of mail-coaches, 1784, i. 160; provide driving-boxes with springs, 1805, i. 185; petition against Bill regulating stage-coaches, 1788, i. 208; liabilities of, i. 208–10; prosecuted and fined, i. 216; relief of, at close of coaching age, by reduction of duties, i. 218–20; begin to name their coaches, i. 282; indisposed to adopt “safety” coaches, 1805, i. 309; obliged by public opinion to do so, 1819, i. 311–16; hazardous business of, from 1824, ii. 173; cut fares in competition, 1834, ii. 187; bitter rivalry among, i. 283, ii. 215–18; of short stages, ii. 187; business of, described, ii. 194–238; spirited struggle of, against railways, ii. 273–8; misled by irresponsible newspaper talk, ii. 274–7

Coach-proprietors:-- Alexander, Israel, ii. 102 Batchelor, James, of Lewes, i. 283–5 Brawne, S., i. 283 Bretherton, of Liverpool, ii. 238 Capps, Thomas Ward, of Brighton, ii. 253 Carter, of Shrewsbury, i. 109 Chaplin, William, of the “Swan with Two Necks,” Lad Lane, ii. 34, 141, 173–5, 195–210, 212, 228, 238, 312 Chaplin, William Augustus, ii. 210 Chaplin & Horne, ii. 209 Cooper, Thomas, of Thatcham, ii. 173 Costar & Waddell, of Oxford, ii. 186 Cripps, William, of Brighton, ii. 251 Cross, John, of the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, ii. 300 Fagg, Thomas, of the “Bell and Crown,” Holborn, ii. 235 Gilbert, William, of the “Blossoms” Inn, Lawrence Lane, ii. 237 Goodman, S., of Brighton, ii. 102–5 Grey, Robert, of the “Bolt-in-Tun,” Fleet Street, ii. 237 Hearn, Joseph, of the “King’s Arms,” Snow Hill, ii. 237 Hine, ----, of Brighton, ii. 181 Horne, Benjamin Worthy, of the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, ii. 15, 141, 208, 210–25 Horne, Henry, ii. 223 ” William, ii. 210–13, 215 Jobson, J., of Shrewsbury, ii. 215, 307 Mountain, Mrs. Sarah Ann, of the “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill, ii. 214, 236 Nelson, Mrs. Ann, of the “Bull” Inn, Whitechapel, i. 300; ii. 227, 232–5, 236; ii. 313, 343 Nelson, John, ii. 235 ” Robert, of the “Belle Sauvage,” Ludgate Hill, ii. 215, 229–35 Roberts, ----, of the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, ii. 213 Rothwell, Nicholas, of Warwick, i. 80–85 Sherman, Edward, of the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, ii. 186, 207, 215, 216, 217, 226–8, 229, 231, 273–8 Shillibeer, George, i. 290–92 Taylor, Isaac, of Shrewsbury, ii. 215, 216, 307 Teather, Edward, of Carlisle, ii. 238 Tubb, J., i. 283–5 Waddell, of Birmingham, ii. 238 Ward, Charles, ii. 313–15 Waterhouse, William, of the “Swan with Two Necks,” Lad Lane, ii. 196 Webb, Frederic, of Bolton, ii. 238 Wetherald, J. & Co., of Manchester, ii. 238, 278 Whitchurch, Best & Wilkins, of Brighton, i. 312–15 Willans, Wm., of the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, ii. 227 Worcester, Marquis of (afterwards 7th Duke of Beaufort), ii. 101

Coach travelling, on the roof, described by Moritz, 1782, i. 99–102; by mail, 1798, described by Boulton, i. 179; passengers booked in advance, i. 321; miseries of early morning, i. 325–32; about 1750, described in _Roderick Random_, i. 333; courtesies to ladies, 1714, i. 335; romance of, i. 336; severe test of a gentleman, i. 337; humours of coach-dinners, i. 337–47; coach-breakfasts, i. 347–51; social gulf between inside and outside passengers, i. 351; described by De Quincey, i. 351–3; humour in, i. 353; adventures described, i. 355; savage idea of humour, i. 356–8; practical joking, i. 357; outside the most desirable place in summer, ii. 67; in 1772, ii. 48–65; in 1830, ii. 66–95; miseries of, in winter, ii. 155–8, 169

“Comet” coaches, begin about 1811, i. 304–8

Commercial travellers, known successively as “riders,” “bagmen,” “travellers,” “commercial gentlemen,” “ambassadors of commerce,” and “representatives,” i. 56; come into existence about 1730, i. 118; adventure of a, ii. 328

“Common stage-waggons,” a term specified by General Turnpike Act of 1766, i. 204

Cornets-à-piston, popular with guards, i. 280

Cresset, John, denounces stage-coaches, 1662, i. 26, 70–74

Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, prophesies railways and balloons, ii. 260, 282

“Derby Dilly,” the, i. 289

Dickens, Charles, on coach booking-offices, i. 322; on miseries of early morning travelling, i. 325–32; on coaching prints, ii. 110; Christmas stories, ii. 162; at the “Bull,” Whitechapel, ii. 234

Diligences, a species of Light Post-Coach, i. 160, 287–92; originally fast, and carried three inside passengers only, i. 287; became slow, i. 288–90; Shillibeer’s Brighton Diligence, i. 290–92

“Double Horse,” the, i. 53

Eliot, George, foreshadows tube railways, ii. 282–5

Elizabeth, Queen, suffers from riding in carriage, i. 5; prefers riding horseback, i. 5

Fares, by stage-coach, a shilling for every five miles, 1684, i. 79; London and Bath, £1 5s., 1667, i. 69; Bath Flying Machine, 3d. a mile, 1667, i. 69; London and Oxford, 12s., 1669, i. 71; 10s., 1671, i. 71; Liverpool Flying Machine, about 2½d. a mile, 1758, i. 93; reduced in competition on Brighton Road, 1762, i. 284; in competition with railways, 1838, ii. 273; Shrewsbury and London Long Coach, 18s., 1753, i. 95; Shrewsbury and London Caravan, 15s., 1750, i. 119; Shrewsbury and London Stage, inside, £1 1s., 1753, i. 119; Shrewsbury and London Machine, inside, 30s., 1764, i. 120; Newcastle and London, 1772, ii. 63; 1830, ii. 67, 95; reduced all round, 1834, ii. 187

Fares, Short stages, ii. 189

” Waggon, from ½d. to 1d. a mile, i. 69, 139; ½d. a mile, or 1s. a day, i. 120, 131

Floods, ii. 165–70

Fly Boats, i. 140; ii. 130

” Vans, London and Falmouth, 1820, i. 136–9

“Flying Coach,” the first, 1669, i. 69

“Flying Machines,” the first, 1667, i. 68; described, i. 68–93, 283–5

Flying Stage-waggon, London and Shrewsbury, in 5 days, 1750, i. 118

Gamon, Sir Richard, legislates on coaching, i. 206–8

Gay, John, the Poet, his _Journey to Exeter_, 1715, i. 28–33

Goods, carriage of, by pack-horses, i. 106–111; ii. 124; by sledges, called “Truckamucks,” i. 107; pack-horses partly replaced by waggons about 1730, i. 117; cost of carriage, 1750, i. 135; by road and canal, about 1830, i. 140; carrying firms, ii. 123–43, 207–10

Guards, generally, “shoulder” fares and “swallow” passengers, ii. 200–203

Guards of mails, not to fire off blunderbusses unnecessarily, i. 209; servants of General Post Office, i. 249; gross excesses of early, i. 250–52; Post Office responsible for excesses, i. 251; how armed and equipped, i. 251–60; extravagant behaviour restricted, i. 252; appointments eagerly sought, i. 252; salary small, 10s. 6d. weekly, i. 253; “tips” render appointments valuable, i. 253; illegal purveyors of game, i. 254; trusted and confidential messengers, i. 255; as smugglers, i. 256; bravery of, and devotion to duty, i. 256; number of, i. 256; responsibilities of, i. 258; purveyors of news, i. 259; their duties, i. 261; instructions to, i. 262; prosperity of, i. 262; position poor on cross-country mails, i. 263; salaries raised, 1842, i. 263; forbidden to play key-bugle, i. 280; devoted to duty, ii. 160; rashness of, ii. 165

Guards of mails:-- Couldery, --, i. 265; ii. 120 Kent, Luke, ii. 319 Murrell, “Cocky,” i. 271 Nobbs, Moses J., i. 264–71; ii. 119

Guards of stage-coaches, i. 272–81; stages not always provided with, i. 272; versatile accomplishments of, i. 273; annual festivities of, i. 275–8; snowbound at Dunchurch, ii. 162

Guards of stage-coaches:-- Faulkner, Francis, ii. 320 Goodwin, Jack, ii. 162 Hadley, Robert, i. 274, 276 Lord, Joe, ii. 152 Russell, Thomas, i. 281 Young, George, i. 273

Guide-posts obligatory, 1690, i. 112

Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy, inventor of steam-carriages, ii. 261–5, 285

Hackney coaches, denounced by Taylor, i. 9; established 1605, i. 9–13

“Hammercloth,” derivation of the term, i. 68, 97

Hancock, Walter, inventor of steam-carriages, ii. 261, 264–8, 285

Hazlett, Robert, highwayman, ii. 53

Highwaymen, the, i. 85, 116, 120–23, 157, 186, 332–5; ii. 53, 59–61, 144–50, 326, 327–9

Hobson, Thomas, the Cambridge carrier, i. 65, 103–5, 205; ii. 124

Hoby, Sir Thos., sets up a carriage, 1566, i. 4

Horsemen, the, i. 14–56

Horses, generally six to a coach until about 1783–90, i. 85, 86, 90; usually same horses from beginning to end of journey until 1734, i. 63, 87; the “Double Horse,” i. 53; “parliamentary horse,” i. 218; fast coaches wear horses out quickly, 1824, ii. 173; average price paid for, 1824, ii. 176; system of working improved, 1824, ii. 176; bad-tempered, bought cheap, ii. 177

Informers, i. 213–18

Inns (mentioned at length):-- Bell and Crown, Holborn, ii. 235 Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, i. 323, 324; ii. 229, 237 Blossoms, Lawrence Lane, ii. 185, 229, 237 Boar and Castle, Oxford Street, ii. 189 Bolt-in-Tun, Fleet Street, ii. 215, 237 Bull, Whitechapel, i. 324; ii. 227, 232–5, 343 Bull and Mouth, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, i. 323, 324; ii. 67, 68, 147, 178, 214, 215, 226, 231, 273, 277 Four Crosses, Willoughby, i. 46 George, Huntingdon, ii. 74 Golden Cross, Charing Cross, i. 322, 323, 324, 329; ii. 210, 213, 214 Goose and Gridiron, St. Paul’s Churchyard, ii. 189, 296 Green Man and Still, Oxford Street, ii. 190 Hardwicke Arms, Arrington Bridge, ii. 73 King’s Arms, Snow Hill, ii. 237 Lion, Shrewsbury, ii. 215 Old Bell, Holborn, ii. 190, 282 Pelican, Speenhamland, ii. 340, 343 Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill, i. 324; ii. 67, 214, 236 Swan with Two Necks, Lad Lane, i. 323, 324; ii. 178, 195–9, 204, 228 Talbot, Shrewsbury, ii. 215 Three Tuns, Durham, ii. 340 Wheatsheaf, Rushyford Bridge, ii. 94 Winterslow Hut, ii. 151

“Journey,” original meaning of word, i. 107

Key-bugles, popular with guards, i. 279–81

Legislation, i. 194–220

Long coaches (an intermediate class of vehicle, between stage-coaches and waggons), i. 95, 119, 210, 286

Long Coach, Birmingham and Shrewsbury, 1753, 3½ days to London, i. 119

“Machines” introduced 1667, i. 68; the term in general use about 1740, i. 69, 120, 282; a favourite term, i. 286

Mail-coaches--_see_ “Coaches: Mail-coaches”

Mary, Queen, her State Coach, 1553, i. 3

Matthews’ Patent Safety Coach, i. 312

Milton, Rev. W., inventor of Patent Safety Coach, 1805, i. 309; ii. 96

Motor-cars, early (1823–38), ii. 260–68; modern, ii. 285–9, 347

Northumberland, Earl of, sets up a carriage, 1619, i. 8

Nunn, James, buyer of horses for Chaplin, ii. 204–7

Old-time travellers:-- Brome, Rev.--, tour of, 1700, ii. 333 Calderwood, Mrs., of Bolton and Coltness, 1756, ii. 334 Cary, Robert, rides from London to Edinburgh, 1603, i. 16 Charles VI., Emperor, visits Petworth, ii. 332 Clarendon, Henry, Earl of, travels from Chester to Holyhead, 1685, i. 21 Cobbett, Richard, rides horseback, i. 55; on coaches, ii. 181 Denmark, Prince George of, visits Petworth, ii. 332 De Quincey, Thomas, on contempt of inside passengers for outsides, i. 210, 351–3; prefers outside of coaches, ii. 67 Dugdale, Sir William, mentions Birmingham coach of 1697, i. 77 Fiennes, Celia, in Lancashire, 1691, surprised at finding sign-posts, i. 115 Gay, John (the poet) _A Journey to Exeter_, 1715, i. 28–33 Hawker, Col., on travelling in 1812, i. 245; on cost of journey, London to Glasgow, 1812, ii. 1–3, 4; on “Bull and Mouth” inn, 1812, ii. 227 Johnson, Dr., i. 52–3 Macready, William C. (the actor), on incredibly slow journey, Liverpool to London, 1811, i. 294 Moritz, Rev. C. H., on miseries of outside passengers, 1782, i. 98–102 Murray, Rev. James, describes a journey from Newcastle-on-Tyne to London, 1772, ii. 48–65 Parker, Edward, on miseries of coach journey from Preston, Lancashire, 1662, i. 25–63 Pepys, Samuel, often loses the road, i. 112 Somerset, Dukes of, and Petworth, ii. 332 Sopwith, Thomas, on discontinuance of York Mail, ii. 39 Sorbière, Samuel de, on waggoners, 1663, i. 127 Swift, Jonathan, Dean, his couplets for inn signs on Penmaenmawr, i. 21; on horseback journey, Chester to London, 1710, i. 33, 73; on journey London to Holyhead and Dublin, 1726, i. 33; diary of journey, London to Holyhead, 1727, i. 34–47; epigram at Willoughby, i. 46; travels by stage-waggon, i. 132; on travelling, ii. 330 Taylor, John (the “Water Poet”), travels to Southampton, 1648, i. 58–60 Thoresby, Ralph, travels by York stage to London, 1683, i. 27, 73; finds the Hull to York stage discontinued for winter season, 1678, i. 74; going horseback, often misses his way, i. 112; describes custom of treating lady passengers in coaches, 1714, i. 335; on spring festivities, 1714, ii. 346 Wesley, John, generally travelled horseback, i. 47; describes his adventures, i. 47–52; finds unpleasant company in a coach, i. 293

Omnibuses, displace “short stages,” ii. 193; “Wellington,” Stratford and Westbourne Grove, ii. 235; of Richmond Conveyance Co., ii. 296

Outside passengers first heard of, and probable origin of carrying, i. 95; miseries of, i. 98–102; first provided with seats, i. 181; treated with contempt by inside passengers, i. 210, 351–3; ii. 181

Pack-horses, i. 106–9, 111, 118;

## partly replaced by waggons about 1730, i. 117;

pack-horse trains, ii. 124

Palmer, John, Post Office reformer, account of, i. 148–80 (Appendix, Vol. I., p. 359); proposes a service of mail-coaches, i. 155; plan for, matured 1782, i. 156; establishes first mail-coach, 1784, i. 158; proposes to extend system to France, i. 163; appointed Comptroller-General 1786, i. 164; contentions with Postmasters-General, i. 165–72; his character, i. 166; betrayed by Bonnor, i. 168; dismissed, i. 172; grant to, i. 173; death of, i. 174; ancestry of, Appendix, Vol. I., p. 359; descendants, 359

“Parliamentary Horse,” the, i. 218

“Patent Safety” coaches, i. 309–16; ii. 109

Pepys, Samuel, sets up a carriage, 1668, i. 11; in travelling, often loses the road, i. 112

“Pickaxe” team, _i.e._ three horses, ii. 270

Pickford & Co., i. 139; ii. 123–43, 208 ” Matthew, ii. 125–7 ” Thomas, ii. 125–7

Poor people, how they travelled, i. 115, 131–3, 139; find it cheaper to go by rail, i. 144

Postboys, _i.e._ mail-carriers, i. 146, 152; went toll-free, ii. 5

Postes, Master of the, i. 14

Post-horses, State monopoly of, i. 14–23; monopoly abolished, 1780, i. 23; mileage charges for, i. 15; increased, i. 18

Postmaster-General, office of created, 1657, i. 18

Postmasters, _i.e._ keepers of post-horses, i. 15–18, 147

“Post Office of England” created, 1657, i. 17; re-established, 1660, i. 22

Post Office, General, i. 14–19, 20, 22–4, 46–180; declines Hancock’s offer to convey mails by steam-carriage, ii. 268

Railways:-- Mails first carried by, 1830, ii. 16; authorised to convey mails, 1838, ii. 16; run York coaches off road, 1840, ii. 39; run waggons off, ii. 138; threaten coaching, ii. 208; projected railways criticised, 1838, ii. 209; ruin the early steam-carriages, ii. 268; ridiculed, 1837, ii. 268; cut up the coach routes, ii. 270–74; bad service of trains, 1838, ii. 274; insolence of officials, ii. 274–7; public dissatisfaction with, 1838, ii. 274–7; tube railways foreshadowed by George Eliot, ii. 282–5 Grand Junction, ii. 141, 274 Highland, ii. 40 Liverpool and Manchester, ii. 16, 96, 138 London and Birmingham (now London and North-Western), ii. 141, 208, 222–5, 273, 278 London and Manchester, ii. 16, 96, 138 London and Southampton (now London and South-Western), ii. 17, 36, 209, 299 Metropolitan extended to Aylesbury 1892, ii. 281 North British, ii. 40

“Ride and Tie,” custom of, i. 54

Rippon, Walter, carriage-maker to Queen Mary, i. 4

Roads, bad state of, 1568, i. 5; dreadful condition in North Wales in eighteenth century, i. 20–22; Exeter Road described in 1752 as “dreadful,” i. 91; first General Highway Act, 1555, i. 106; mere tracks and unenclosed, 1739, i. 111; not safe for solitary travellers, i. 115; gradually improve from 1700, i. 117; growth of heavy traffic cuts them up, i. 123; ignorance of road-surveyors, i. 123; legislation to protect, 1760, i. 123–6; 1622–29, 194–6; 1752, i. 199–202; General Turnpike Act, 1766, i. 202–5; improve generally, ii. 3; shocking state of, between Carlisle and Glasgow, 1812, ii. 4; wear and tear of, by mails, ii. 4–9; and early steam-carriages, ii. 262; vulgarised by modern “improvements,” ii. 326; terrible state of, in Sussex, ii. 332; picturesqueness of, threatened by coming changes, ii. 347

Robberies from coaches, ii. 144–50

“Rumble-tumble,” i. 96, 97, 99; miseries of travelling in the, i. 101, 139

Rutland, Earl of, sets up a carriage, 1555

Shillibeer, George, his “Brighton Diligence,” i. 290–92; his omnibuses, ii. 193

Short stages, the, ii. 188–93

“Short Tommy,” the, ii. 175

“Shouldering,” _i.e._ stealing, fares, ii. 200–203

Sign-posts obligatory, 1690, i. 112

Silver, Anthony, carriage-maker to Queen Mary, i. 3

Smollett, Tobias, i. 108, 110; on travelling in 1748, i. 115–17, 334

Snowstorms, i. 261, 264–9; ii. 137, 157, 159–62, 166–9

Stage-coaches--_see_ “Coaches: stage-coaches”

Stage-waggons, established about 1500, i. 2: _see_ “Waggons”

Steam-carriages, 1823–38, ii. 217, 260–68

Sunday, a day of rest, i. 29, 90

” Trading Acts, i. 196–9; ii. 148

“Swallowing,” _i.e._ stealing, fares, ii. 200–203

Talbot, the old English hound, i. 109

“Tantivy,” meaning of the word, ii. 185

“Tantivy Trot,” coaching song, ii. 185

Telegraph coaches established, from about 1781, i. 300–303

Telegraph springs introduced, ii. 228

“Tipping,” origin and progress of, i. 228–30; of mail-guards, i. 253, 262; forbidden, i. 263; of coachmen, i. 345; ii. 1

_Tom Brown’s Schooldays_, i. 347

“Travel,” origin of the word, i. 107

“Truckamuck,” a kind of sledge, i. 107

Turnpike Acts, growth of, 1700–1770, i. 117; penalise narrow and encourage broad wheels, i. 124–6, 202–205; General Turnpike Act, 1766, i. 202–205

Turnpike keepers, i. 24, 208, 212; prosecuted by informers, i. 217; sleepy, ii. 79

Turnpike roads, not in favour with waggoners, i. 126

Turnpike tolls, i. 124; levied on waggons, i. 200–205; doubled on Sundays about 1780, ii. 147; heavy discriminatory charges against steam-carriages, ii. 262, 263

Turnpike Trusts, grievances of, against Post Office, ii. 4–9;

## action of, against steam-carriages, ii. 262, 263

“Unicorn” team, _i.e._ three horses, ii. 270

Van, origin of the name, ii. 129

Van proprietors:-- Chaplin & Horne, ii. 209, 229 Pickford & Co., i. 123–43 Russell & Co., i. 136–9

Van proprietors prosecuted for technical offences, i. 216

Vidler & Parratt, mail-coach manufacturers, i. 178; ii. 17, 18, 44

Waggons, i. 103–45; established about 1500, i. 103; increase in number and weight about 1760, i. 123; legislation directed against 1766, i. 124–6, 202–204; only disappear so late as 1860, i. 144; four-wheeled waggons forbidden 1622, i. 194; loads over 20 cwt. forbidden 1622, i. 195; restrictions on teams, i. 195–200; on loads, i. 200

Waggoners, character of the, i. 126–31; forbidden to ride on their waggons, i. 205; preyed upon by informers, i. 212–14

Waude, ----, coach-builder, ii. 16, 43–7, 228

Weller, Tony, as typical coachman, i. 221

Witherings, Thomas, Master of the Postes, i. 17

Yard-porters, status of, ii. 178

York, James, Duke of, sets up a “glass coach,” 1661, i. 11, 66

_Printed by Hazett, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks remedied.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

The symbol on page 278 is a hand, pointing to the right (“white right-pointing index”).

Shillings and pence abbreviations (s. and d.) were italicized in the original book but, for readability, that is not indicated here. Other italicized text is enclosed in _underscores_.

Volume I is available at Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) as eBook number 58667 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58667).