Produced by Chris Curnow, Charlie Howard, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is shown within _underscores_; boldface
text is shown within =equals signs=. Other notes will be found at the
end of the text.
STAGE-COACH
AND MAIL IN
DAYS OF YORE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
=The Brighton Road=: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
=The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-day and in
Days of Old.
=The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
=The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old
Highway.
=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.
=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two
Vols.
=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.
=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
=The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great
Fenland Highway.
=Cycle Rides Round London.=
=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: Two Vols.
[_In the Press._
[Illustration:
THE MAIDENHEAD AND MARLOW POST-COACH, 1782.
_From a contemporary painting._
]
STAGE-COACH
AND MAIL IN
DAYS OF YORE
_A PICTURESQUE HISTORY
OF THE COACHING AGE_
VOL. I
BY CHARLES G. HARPER
[Illustration]
_Illustrated from Old-Time Prints
and Pictures_
LONDON:
CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED
1903
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
[Illustration: PREFACE]
_“Hang up my old whip over the fireplace,” said Harry Littler, of the
Southampton “Telegraph,” when the London and Southampton Railway was
opened, in 1833,--“I shan’t want it never no more”: and he fell ill,
turned his face to the wall, and died._
_The end of the coaching age was a tragedy for the coachmen; and even
to many others, whose careers and livelihood were not bound up with the
old order of things, it was a bitter uprooting of established customs.
Many travellers were never reconciled to railways, and in imagination
dwelt fondly in the old days of the road for the rest of their lives;
while many more never ceased to recount stories of the peculiar
glory and exhilaration of old-time travel, forgetting the miseries
and inconveniences that formed part of it. But although reminiscent
oldsters have talked much about those vanished times, they have rarely
attempted a consecutive story of them. Such an attempt is that essayed
in these pages, confined within the compass of two volumes, not because
material for a third was lacking, but simply for sake of expediency.
It is shown in the body of this book, and may be noted again in this
place, that the task of writing anything in the nature of a History of
Coaching is rendered exceeding difficult by reason of the disappearance
of most of the documentary evidence on which it should be based; but I
have been fortunate enough to secure the aid of Mr. Joseph Baxendale
in respect of the history of Pickford & Co., of Mr. William Chaplin,
grandson of the great coach-proprietor, and of Mr. Benjamin Worthy
Horne, grandson of Chaplin’s partner, for information concerning
their respective families. Colonel Edmund Palmer, also, communicated
interesting notes on his grandfather, John Palmer, the founder of
the mail-coach system. To my courteous friend, Mr. W. H. Duignan, of
Walsall, whose own recollections of coaching, and whose collections of
coaching prints and notes I have largely used, this acknowledgment is
due. Mr. J. B. Muir, of 35, Wardour Street, my obliging friend of years
past, has granted extensive use of his collection of sporting pictures,
and Messrs. Arthur Ackermann & Son, of 191, Regent Street, have lent
prints and pictures from their establishment._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY,
_April 1903_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 1
II. THE HORSEMEN 14
III. DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE 57
IV. GROWTH OF COACHING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 87
V. THE STAGE-WAGGONS AND WHAT THEY CARRIED: HOW THE POOR
TRAVELLED 103
VI. THE EARLY MAIL-COACHES 146
VII. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: 1800–1824 181
VIII. COACH LEGISLATION 194
IX. THE EARLY COACHMEN 221
X. THE LATER COACHMEN 231
XI. MAIL-GUARDS 249
XII. STAGE-COACH GUARDS 272
XIII. HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED 282
XIV. GOING BY COACH: BOOKING OFFICES 320
XV. HOW THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS DOWN
THE ROAD 333
[Illustration: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
1. THE MAIDENHEAD AND MARLOW POST-COACH, 1782. (_From a
contemporary Painting_) _Frontispiece_
2. THE STAGE-COACH, 1783. (_After Rowlandson_) 83
3. THE WAGGON, 1816. (_After Rowlandson_) 115
4. THE STAGE-WAGGON, 1820. (_After J. L. Agasse_) 121
5. THE ROAD-WAGGON: A TRYING CLIMB. (_After J. Pollard_) 131
6. THE STAGE-WAGGON, 1816. (_By Rowlandson_) 137
7. PICKFORD’S LONDON AND MANCHESTER FLY VAN, 1826. (_After
George Best_) 141
8. JOHN PALMER AT THE AGE OF 17. (_Attributed to Gainsborough,
R.A._) 149
9. JOHN PALMER. (_From the Painting by Gainsborough, R.A._) 153
10. THE MAIL-COACH, 1803. (_From the Engraving after George
Robertson_) 169
11. JOHN PALMER IN HIS 75TH YEAR. (_From an Etching by the
Hon. Martha Jervis_) 175
12. MRS. BUNDLE IN A RAGE; OR, TOO LATE FOR THE STAGE.
(_After Rowlandson_, 1809) 183
13. THE SHEFFIELD COACH, ABOUT 1827. (_From a contemporary
Painting_) 187
14. THE “BIRMINGHAM EXPRESS” LEAVING THE “HEN AND CHICKENS.”
(_From a contemporary Painting_) 191
15. “MY DEAR, YOU’RE A PLUMPER”: COACHMAN AND BARMAID.
(_After Rowlandson_) 223
16. THE OLD “PRINCE OF WALES” BIRMINGHAM COACH. (_After H.
Alken_) 233
17. IN TIME FOR THE COACH. (_After C. Cooper Henderson,
1848_) 243
18. STUCK FAST. (_After C. Cooper Henderson, 1834_) 267
19. THE “READING TELEGRAPH” PASSING WINDSOR CASTLE. (_After
J. Pollard_) 297
20. THE EXETER MAIL, 1809. (_After J. A. Atkinson_) 301
21. THE BRIGHTON “COMET,” 1836. (_After J. Pollard_) 307
22. MATTHEWS’ PATENT SAFETY COACHES ON THE BRIGHTON ROAD 313
23. A COACH-BREAKFAST. (_After J. Pollard_) 349
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
Vignette (_Title-page_)
Preface vii
List of Illustrations xi
Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore 1
Arms of the Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers 12
Epigram Scratched with a Diamond-ring on a Window-pane by Dean
Swift 46
Old Coaching Bill, Preserved at the “Black Swan,” York 75
Old Birmingham Coaching Bill 81
Coaching Advertisement from the _Edinburgh Courant_, 1754 89
One of Three Mail-coach Halfpennies struck at Bath, 1797 173
Moses James Nobbs, the Last of the Mail-guards 265
[Illustration: STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE]
CHAPTER I
THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES
“Ah! sure it was a coat of steel,
Or good tough oak, he wore,
Who first unto the ticklish wheel
’Gan harness horses four.”
The lines quoted above are not remarkably good as poetry. Nay, it is
possible to go farther, and to say that they are exceptionally bad--the
product of one of those corn-box poets who were accustomed to speak of
steam as a “demon foul”; but if his lines are bad verse, the central
idea is good. That man who first essayed to drive four-in-hand must
indeed have been more than usually courageous.
To form anything at all like an adequate idea of the Coaching Age,
it is first necessary to discover how people travelled before that
age dawned. As a picture is made by contrasted light and shade, so is
the story of the coaching period only to be properly set forth by
first narrating how journeys were made from place to place before the
continuous history of wheeled traffic begins. That history, measured
by mere count of years, is not a long one. It cannot, in its remotest
origin, go back beyond the first appearance of the stage-waggon,
about 1590, when the peasantry of this kingdom began to obtain an
occasional lift on the roads, and sat among the goods which it was
the first business of those waggons to carry. The peasant, then, was
the first coach-passenger, for while he was carried thus, everyone
else, in all the estates of the realm, from King and Queen down to
the middle classes, rode horseback, and it was not until 1657 and the
establishment of the Chester Stage that the Coaching Age opened for the
public in general.
If, then, we please to pronounce for that event as the true beginning,
and allow 1848, the year when one of the last coaches, the Bedford
“Times,” was withdrawn from the London and Bedford road in consequence
of the opening of the Bletchley and Bedford branch railway, to be
the end, we have the beginning, the growth and perfection of the old
coaching era, and its final extinction, all comprised within a period
of a hundred and ninety-one years.
Wheeled conveyances are generally said by the usual books of reference
to take their origin in this country with the introduction of Queen
Mary’s Coronation carriage in 1553; but, so far from that being
correct, mention of carriages is often found in authorities of a
period earlier by almost two centuries. Thus, in her will of September
25th, 1355, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, bequeathed her “great
carriage, with the covertures, carpets, and cushions,” to her eldest
daughter; and carriage-builders at the close of Edward III.’s reign
charged £100 and £1000 for their wares. Carts were not unknown to the
peasantry; Froissart tells us that the English returned from Scotland
in 1360 in “charettes,” a kind of carriage whose make he does not
specify; and ladies are discovered in 1380 travelling with the baggage
in “whirlicotes,” which were cots or beds on wheels, or a species of
wheeled litter. We have, by favour of one of the old chroniclers, a
fugitive picture of Richard II., at the age of seventeen, travelling in
one of these whirlicotes, accompanying his mother, who was ill.
But such instances do not prove more than occasional use, and it
certainly appears that when Queen Mary rode from the Tower of London
to Westminster on her Coronation Day, September 20th, 1553, in her
State coach, she thereby revived the use of carriages, which, for some
reason or another, had fallen into disuse since those early days. Her
coachmaker, by a grant made on May 29th in the first year of her reign,
was one Anthony Silver.
We may seek the cause of wheeled conveyances going out of use in the
two centuries before this date in the steady and continuous decay of
the roads consequent upon the troubled state of the kingdom in that
intervening space. Rebellions, pestilences, foreign wars, and domestic
strife had marked that epoch. The Wars of the Roses themselves lasted
thirty years, and in all that while the social condition of the people
had not merely stood still, but degenerated. Towns and districts were
half depopulated, and the ancient highways fell into disuse. It is
significant that the first General Highway Act, a measure passed in
1555, was practically coincident with the reintroduction of carriages.
Queen Mary’s Coronation carriage--or, as it was called in the language
of that time, “coach”--was drawn by six horses, less for reasons of
display than of sheer necessity, for, with a less numerous and powerful
team, it would probably have been stuck fast in the infamously bad
roads that then set a gulf of mud between the twin cities of London
in the east and Westminster in the west. Only three other carriages
followed her Majesty on that historic occasion, and the ladies who
attended rode horseback.
Two years after this new departure mention is found of a
“coach”--still, of course, a carriage--made for the Earl of Rutland by
one Walter Rippon, who in the same year appears to have built a new one
for the Queen.
The next patron of carriages seems to have been Sir Thomas Hoby,
sometime Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the French Court:
that Sir Thomas who lies beside his brother, Sir Philip, in their
magnificent tomb in the little Berkshire village church of Bisham,
beside the Thames. He owned a carriage in 1566.
The progressive age of Elizabeth now opens. In 1564, six years after
her accession, she was using a carriage brought over from Holland
by a certain William Boonen, himself a Hollander. Boonen, indeed,
became her Majesty’s coachman, but his services cannot often have
been required, for, if we are to believe Elizabeth’s own words to the
French Ambassador in 1568, driving in these early carriages, innocent
of springs, must have been as uncomfortable as a journey in a modern
builder’s cart or an ammunition-waggon would be. When his Excellency
waited upon her, she was still suffering “aching pains, from being
knocked about in a coach driven too fast a few days before.”
Little wonder, then, that the great Queen used her coach only when
occasions of State demanded. She journeyed to her palace at Greenwich
by water, between Greenwich and her other palace of Eltham on
horseback, and to Nonsuch and Hampton Court and on her many country
progresses in like manner, resorting only to wheels with advancing
years. How bad were even the roads especially repaired for her coming
may be judged from a contemporary description of her journey along that
“new highway” whose “perfect evenness” is the theme of the writer. “Her
Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a
base sort lifted it on with their poles.” Majesty must have been sore
put to it to look majestic on such occasions, and in the bad condition
of all roads at that time we find a new significance in the courtliness
of Sir Walter Raleigh, who at Greenwich threw his velvet cloak upon the
ground for Elizabeth to walk over.
Elizabeth was an accomplished horsewoman, and it is not surprising,
under these circumstances, that she made full use of the
accomplishment, continuing on all possible public occasions to appear
in this manner. On longer journeys she rode on a pillion behind a
mounted chamberlain, holding on to him by his waistbelt just as
ladies continued to do for centuries yet to come. The curious in
these things may find interest in the fact that the modern groom’s
leathern waistbelt, which now serves no practical function, is merely
a strange survival of that old necessity of feminine travel. The
commonly-received opinion that Elizabeth objected to carriages from
the supposed “effeminacy” of using them receives a severe shock from
her carriage experiences, which make it quite obvious that travelling
in the earliest of them was only to be indulged in by persons of the
strongest frame and in the rudest health. She who mounted on her
palfrey before her troops at Tilbury, when the Armada threatened, could
justly claim that though but a woman she had the spirit of a King--aye,
and a King of England--quailed before the rigours of a carriage-drive.
In 1579 the Earl of Arundel imported one of these new and strange
machines from Germany. How novel and strange they were may be gathered
from the particular mention thus accorded them in the annals of the
time. When we consider how bad was the condition even of the streets
of London, it will be abundantly evident that a desire for display
rather than comfort brought about the increasing use of carriages
that marked the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign. By 1601 they had
become so comparatively numerous that it was sought to obtain an Act
restraining their excessive use and forbidding men riding in them.
This projected ordinance especially set forth the enervating nature
of riding in carriages; but it would seem that the real objection was
the growing magnificence displayed in this way by the wealthy, tending
to overshadow the public appearances of Royalty itself. Whatever the
real reason of this disabling measure, it was rejected on the second
reading and never became law, and four years later both hackney and
private carriages were in common use in London. Carters and waggoners
hated them with a bitter hatred, called them “hell-carts,” and heaped
abuse upon all who used them. Both their primitive construction and
the fearful condition of the roads rendered their use impossible in
the country. Teams of fewer than six horses were rarely seen drawing
coaches in what were then regarded as London suburbs, districts long
since included in Central London; and perhaps even the haughty and
arrogant Duke of Buckingham, favourite of James I. and Charles, was
misjudged when, in 1619, the people, seeing his carriage drawn by
that number, “wondered at it as a novelty, and imputed it to him as a
mastering pride.” Had he employed fewer horses he certainly would have
been obliged to get out and walk, or to have again resorted to the use
of the sedan-chair, in which, before he had set up a carriage, he was
used to be carried, greatly to the indignation of the populace, to whom
sedan-chairs were at that time novelties. “The clamour and the noise of
it was so extravagant,” we are told, “that the people would rail upon
him in the streets, loathing that men should be brought to as servile a
condition as horses.” Yet no one ever thought of denouncing Buckingham
or any other of the magnificos when they lolled in easy seats under
the silken hangings of their state barges and were rowed by the labour
of a dozen lusty oarsmen on the Thames. The work was as servile as the
actual carrying of a passenger, but the innate conservatism of mankind
could not at first perceive this. On the whole, Buckingham therefore
has our sympathy. The most innocent doings of a favourite with Royalty
are capable of being twisted into haughty and malignant acts, and had
it not been for Buckingham’s position at Court his displays would not
have brought him the hatred of the people and the rivalry of his own
order which they certainly did arouse. The Earl of Northumberland was
one of those who were thus goaded into the rivalry of display. Hearing
that the favourite had six horses to his carriage, he thought that he
might very well have eight, “and so rode,” we are told, “from London to
Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.”
The first public carriages, according to a statement made to
Taylor, the “water poet,” by Old Parr, the centenarian, were the
“hackney-coaches,” established in London in 1605. “Since then,” says
Taylor, writing on the subject at different times between 1623 and
1635, “coaches have increased with a mischief, and have ruined the
trade of the watermen by hackney-coaches, and now multiply more than
ever.” The “watermen” were, of course, those who plied with their
boats and barges for hire upon the Thames, chiefly between London and
Westminster, the river being then, and for long after, the principal
highway for traffic in the metropolis. So greatly, indeed, was the
river traffic for the time affected, that the sprack-witted Taylor
relinquished his trade of waterman and embarked upon the more promising
career of pamphleteering.
“Thirty years ago,” he says, in one of these outbursts, “The World
runnes on Wheeles,” “coaches were few”:--
Then upstart helcart coaches were to seeke,
A man could scarce see twenty in a weeke,
But now I thinke a man may daily see
More than the whirries on the Thames can be.
Carroches, coaches, jades and Flanders mares
Doe rob us of our shares, our wares, our fares;
Against the ground we stand and knock our heeles,
Whilest all our profit runs away on wheeles.
“This,” we find him saying, on another occasion, “is the rattling,
rowling, rumbling age, and the world runnes on wheeles. The
hackney-men, who were wont to have furnished travellers in all places
with fitting and serviceable horses for any journey, are (by the
multitude of coaches) undone by the dozens.”
The bitter cry of Taylor and the Thames watermen may or may not have
been hearkened to, but certainly hackney-coaches were prohibited in
1635. This, however, was probably due rather to Royal whim or prejudice
than to any consideration for a decaying trade.
It was an arbitrary age, and it only needed a Star Chamber order for
public carriages, considered by the Court to be a nuisance, to be
suppressed. The reasons advanced read curiously at this time: “His
Majesty, perceiving that of late the great numbers of hackney-coaches
were grown a great disturbance to the King, Queen, and nobility
through the streets of the said city, so as the common passage was
made dangerous and the rates and prices of hay and provender and other
provisions of the stable thereby made exceeding dear, hath thought
fit, with the advice of his Privy Council, to publish his Royal
pleasure, for reformation therein.” His Majesty therefore commanded
that no hackney-coaches should be used in London unless they were
engaged to travel at least three miles out of town, and owners of such
coaches were to keep sufficient able horses and geldings, fit for his
Majesty’s service, “whensoever his occasion shall require them.”
This despotic measure was amended in 1637, when fifty hackney-coachmen
for London were licensed, to keep not more than twelve horses each.
This meant either that three hundred or a hundred and fifty public
carriages then came into use, according to whether two or four horses
were harnessed. “And so,” says Taylor, “there grew up the trade of
coach-building in England.”
These early carriages, whether hackney or private, were not only
without springs, but were innocent of windows. In their place were
shutters or leather curtains. The first “glass coach” mentioned is
that made for the Duke of York in 1661. Pepys at this period becomes
our principal authority on this subject. On May 1st, 1665, he is found
witnessing experiments with newly-designed carriages with springs, and
again on September 5th, finding them go not quite so easy as their
inventor claimed for them. Yet, since private carriages were clearly
becoming the fashion, Mr. Secretary-to-the-Admiralty Pepys must needs
have one; and accordingly, on December 2nd, 1668, he takes his first
ride: “Abroad with my wife, the first time that I ever rode in my own
coach.”
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF COACH AND HARNESS
MAKERS.]
Pepys always delighted in being in the fashion. He would not be in
advance of it, and not, if he could help it, behind. The fact, then,
of his setting up a carriage of his own is sufficient to show how
largely the moneyed classes had begun to go about on wheels. But
better evidence still is found in the establishment, May 1677, of the
Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers, whose arms still bear
representations of the carriages in use at that period. The armorial
bearings of the Coach-makers are, when duly tricked out in their proper
colours, somewhat striking. Stated in plain terms, done into English
out of heraldic jargon, they consist of a blue shield of arms with
three coaches and a chevron in gold, supported on either side by a
golden horse, harnessed and saddled in black studded with gold; with
blue housings garnished with red, and fringed and purfled in gold.
The horses are further adorned with plumes of four feathers in gold,
silver, red, and blue. A crest above displays Phœbus driving his
chariot, and the motto beneath declares that “After clouds rises the
sun.”
The hackney-carriages of London in 1669, the year following Pepys’
establishment of his own private turn-out, numbered, according to the
memoirs of Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who travelled England at that
time, eight hundred. The age of public vehicles was come.