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from the plough, could not save the halfpenny a mile in summer, and some family coach from being imbedded in a what more in winter.* quagmire.

Stage

This mode of travelling, which by Public carriages had recently been Englishmen of the present day would much improved. During the be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed coaches. years which immediately fol- to our ancestors wonderfully and indeed lowed the Restoration, a diligence ran alarmingly rapid. In a work published between London and Oxford in two a few months before the death of Charles days. The passengers slept at Bea- the Second, the flying coaches are exconsfield. At length, in the spring of tolled as far superior to any similar 1669, a great and daring innovation vehicles ever known in the world. Their was attempted. It was announced that velocity is the subject of special coma vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, mendation, and is triumphantly conwould perform the whole journey be- trasted with the sluggish pace of the tween sunrise and sunset. This spirited continental posts. But with boasts like undertaking was solemnly considered these was mingled the sound of comand sanctioned by the Heads of the plaint and invective. The interests of University, and appears to have excited large classes had been unfavourably afthe same sort of interest which is ex- fected by the establishment of the new cited in our own time by the opening of diligences; and, as usual, many persons a new railway. The Vicechancellor, by were, from mere stupidity and obstia notice affixed in all public places, pre- nacy, disposed to clamour against the scribed the hour and place of departure. innovation, simply because it was an The success of the experiment was com- innovation. It was vehemently argued plete. At six in the morning the car- that this mode of conveyance would be riage began to move from before the fatal to the breed of horses and to the ancient front of All Souls College; and noble art of horsemanship; that the at seven in the evening the adventurous Thames, which had long been an imgentlemen who had run the first risk portant nursery of seamen, would cease were safely deposited at their inn in to be the chief thoroughfare from LonLondon.* The emulation of the sister don up to Windsor and down to GravesUniversity was moved; and soon a dili- end; that saddlers and spurriers would gence was set up which in one day be ruined by hundreds; that numerous carried passengers from Cambridge to inns, at which mounted travellers had the capital. At the close of the reign been in the habit of stopping, would be of Charles the Second, flying carriages deserted, and would no longer pay any ran thrice a week from London to the rent; that the new carriages were too chief towns. But no stage coach, indeed hot in summer and too cold in winter; no stage waggon, appears to have pro- that the passengers were grievously anceeded further north than York, or noyed by invalids and crying children: further west than Exeter. The ordinary that the coach sometimes reached the day's journey of a flying coach was about inn so late that it was impossible to get fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, supper, and sometimes started so early when the ways were bad and the nights that it was impossible to get breakfast. long, little more than thirty. The Ches-On these grounds it was gravely recomter coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the carriage. For accidents were so frequent that it would have been most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about twopence

* Anthony à Wood's Life of himself.

mended that no public coach should be permitted to have more than four horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if this regulation were adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old mode of travel

*Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Angliæ Metropolis, 1690.

men.

ling. Petitions embodying such opini-| Whatever might be the way in which a ons as these were presented to the King journey was performed, the tra- Highwayin council from several companies of vellers, unless they were numethe City of London, from several pro-rous and well armed, ran considerable vincial towns, and from the justices of risk of being stopped and plundered. several counties. We smile at these The mounted highwayman, a marauder things. It is not impossible that our known to our generation only from books, descendants, when they read the history was to be found on every main road. The the opposition offered by cupidity waste tracks which lay on the great routes and prejudice to the improvements of near London were especially haunted the nineteenth century, may smile in by plunderers of this class. Hounslow their turn.* Heath, on the great Western Road, and Finchley Common, on the great Nor thern Road, were perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated near a hundred years earlier by the greatest of poets as the scene of the depredations of Falstaff. The public authorities seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with the plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette that several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen, but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity. That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who appear to have received John Cresset's Reasons for Suppressing from the innkeepers services much Stage Coaches, 1672. These reasons were resembling those which Farquhar's afterwards inserted in a tract, entitled "The Boniface rendered to Gibbet.* Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called forth some answers which I have consulted.

In spite of the attractions of the fying coaches, it was still usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on horseback. If the traveller wished to more expeditiously he rode post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as by any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by steam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses. The King, however, and the great officers of state, were able to command relays. Thus Charles commonly went in one day from Whitehall to Newmarket, a distance of about fiftyfive miles through a level country; and this was thought by his subjects a proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn by six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford, and again at Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a mode of conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury confined to princes and ministers.†

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* See the London Gazette, May 14. 1677, August 4. 1687, Dec. 5. 1687. The last confession of Augustin King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and had been educated at

cious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men; how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies.* In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an im

It was necessary to the success and ransom the rest by dancing a coranto even to the safety of the highwayman with him on the heath; how his vivathat he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race ground. Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart. Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but pro-portant fact that such tales, whether tected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely All the various dangers by which the to the poor what he had taken from the traveller was beset were greatly rich; that his life was once spared by increased by darkness. He was the royal clemency, but that he again therefore commonly desirous of having tempted his fate, and at length died, in the shelter of a roof during the night; 1685, on the gallows of York. It was and such shelter it was not difficult to obrelated how Claude Duval, the French tain. From a very early period the inns of page of the Duke of Richmond, took to England had been renowned. Our first the road, became captain of a formidable great poet had described the excellent gang, and had the honour to be named accommodation which they afforded to first in a royal proclamation against the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. notorious offenders; how at the head of Nine and twenty persons, with their his troop he stopped a lady's coach, in horses, found room in the wide chamwhich there was a booty of four hun-bers and stables of the Tabard in dred pounds; how he took only one Southwark. The food was of the best, hundred, and suffered the fair owner to Cambridge, but was hanged at Colchester in

March 1688, is highly curious.

Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face

at Will's coffeehouse?

Gibbet. Yes, sir, and at White's too.

Beaux' Stratagem.

† Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the Judge:

"What say you now, my honoured Lord,
What harm was there in this ?
Rich, wealthy misers were abhorred
By brave, freehearted Biss."

false or true, were heard by our ancestors with eagerness and faith.

Inns.

and the wines such as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later, under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries. The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them. There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their horses, could without

* Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published im mediately after the execution. Oates's Eixiv Baoiλiký. Part I.

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difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding, the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables. Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of every rank. The traveller best where the means of locomotion are sometimes, in a small village, lighted on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was drunk in London.* The innkeepers too, it was said, were not like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of The mode in which correspondence passing their evenings in the parlour of was carried on between distant some neighbouring house of public places may excite the scorn of entertainment. They seem to have the present generation; yet it was such thought that comfort and freedom could as might have moved the admiration in no other place be enjoyed in equal and envy of the polished nations of anperfection. This feeling continued tiquity, or of the contemporaries of during many generations to be a Raleigh and Cecil. A rude and impernational peculiarity. The liberty and fect establishment of posts for the conjollity of inns long furnished matter to veyance of letters had been set up by our novelists and dramatists. Johnson Charles the First, and had been swept declared that a tavern chair was the away by the civil war. Under the Comthrone of human felicity; and Shen-monwealth the design was resumed. stone gently complained that no private At the Restoration the proceeds of the roof, however friendly, gave the wan- Post Office, after all expenses had been derer so warm a welcome as that which paid, were settled on the Duke of York.

all modern hotels. Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being supposed equal, the inns will be

worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of that description will be found, except at places where strangers are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.

was to be found at an inn.

Post

Office.

On most lines of road the mails went Many conveniences, which were un-out and came in only on the alternate known at Hampton Court and White- days. In Cornwall, in the fens of Linhall in the seventeenth century, are in colnshire, and among the hills and lakes * See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, of Cumberland, letters were received Harrison's Historical Description of the Is- only once a week. During a royal proland of Great Britain, and Pepys's account of gress a daily post was despatched from his tour in the summer of 1668. The excel- the capital to the place where the court lence of the English inns is noticed in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. sojourned. There was also daily com

munication between London and the monopoly; and the courts of law deDowns; and the same privilege was cided in his favour.* sometimes extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an hour.*

The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found profitable. If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour without being supplied, he might hire a horse wherever he could.

The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly increasing. In the year of the Restoration a committee of the House of Commons, after strict inquiry, had estimated the net receipt at about twenty thousand pounds. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of fifty thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand pounds. The charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty miles, and threepence for a longer distance. The postage increased in proportion to the weight of the packet. At present a single letter is carried to the extremity of Scotland or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has long ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the department amount to more than eighteen hundred thousand pounds, and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds. It is, therefore, scarcely possible to doubt that the numher of letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which was so conveyed at the time of the accession of James the Second.

To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office. But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore down the pla- No part of the load which the old cards in which the scheme was an-mails carried out was more im- Newspanounced to the public. The excitement portant than the newsletters. pers. caused by Godfrey's death, and by the In 1685 nothing like the London daily discovery of Coleman's papers, was then paper of our time existed, or could at the height. A cry was therefore exist. Neither the necessary capital nor raised that the penny post was a Popish the necessary skill was to be found. contrivance. The great Doctor Oates, Freedom too was wanting, a want as it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion fatal as that of either capital or skill. that the Jesuits were at the bottom of The press was not indeed at that mothe scheme, and that the bags, if ex-ment under a general censorship. The amined, would be found full of treason.‡ licensing act, which had been passed The utility of the enterprise was, how-soon after the Restoration, had expired ever, so great and obvious that all oppo-in 1679. Any person might therefore sition proved fruitless. As soon as it print, at his own risk, a history, a serbecame clear that the speculation would be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an infraction of his

* Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 35.; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliæ Metropolis, 1690; London Gazette, June 22. 1685, August

15. 1687.

* Angliæ Metropolis, 1690.

† Commons' Journals, Sept. 4. 1660, March 1. 168; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public Revenue, Discourse IV.

I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than 2,800,0007.; and the net † London Gazette, Sept. 14. 1685. receipt was about 1,200,000. The number Smith's Current Intelligence, March 30. of letters conveyed by post was 478,000,000. and April 3. 1680.

(1857.)

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