DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE
Meanwhile the first stage-coaches had been put upon the chief roads out
of London, and had begun to ply between the capital and the principal
towns. Stage-coaches are, on insufficient authority, said to have
begun about 1640, but no particulars are available in support of that
statement, and in considering this point we are bound to look into the
social state of England at that time, and to consider the likelihood
or otherwise of a public service of coaches being continued throughout
those stormy years which preceded, accompanied, and followed the great
Civil War that opened with the raising of the King’s standard at
Nottingham in 1642, and ended with the Battle of Naseby in June 1645.
That victory ended the war in favour of the Parliament men, but the
political troubles and their attendant social displacements continued.
It has been said that hawking parties pursued their sport between the
opposed armies on Marston Moor, and the inference has been drawn that
the nation was not disturbed to its depths by what we are usually
persuaded was a tremendous struggle between King and Parliament.
Certainly the Associated Counties of East Anglia were little affected
by the contest, but theirs was an exceptional experience, brought
about by that association, entered upon for mutual protection against
either side, and to prevent the scene of warfare being pitched within
those limits. It is not likely that any service of coaches ran in the
disturbed period, when confidence was so rudely shaken; and it was not
until the Commonwealth had been established some years that the first
coaching advertisement of which we have any knowledge appeared.
In writing thus, it is not forgotten that somewhere about the year
1610 a foreigner from the wilds of Pomerania obtained a Royal patent
granting him, for the term of fifteen years, the exclusive right of
running coaches or waggons between Edinburgh and Leith. We have no
details of this purely local service, but it is to be supposed that
it was little more than a stage-waggon carrying goods and passengers
too infirm to ride horseback between Edinburgh and its seaport. We are
equally ignorant of the length of time the service lasted.
The next reference to stage-coaches is equally detached and
inconclusive. It is found in a booklet issued by John Taylor,
describing a journey he made to the Isle of Wight in 1648. He and his
party set out on October 19th to see the captive Charles the First,
their “gracious Soveraigne, afflicted Lord and Master,” imprisoned at
Carisbrooke Castle. They “hired the Southampton Coach, which comes
weekly to the Rose, near Holborn Bridge”--a statement that at least
proves the existence of a public vehicle of sorts. But it is the first
and last reference to the Southampton Coach that has come down these
two hundred and fifty-odd years. If Taylor tells us nothing of its
history, he at least gives a description of the journey that retains
something of its original amusing qualities, and, with the lapse of
time, becomes something of an historic document:--
We took our coach, two coachmen and four horses,
And merrily from London made our courses.
We wheel’d the top of th’ heavy hill call’d Holborne
(Up which hath been full many a sinful soule borne),
And so along we jolted past St. Gileses,
Which place from Brainford six (or neare) seven miles is.
To Stanes that night at five o’clock we coasted,
Where (at the Bush) we had bak’d, boyl’d, and roasted.
Bright Sol’s illustrious Rayes the day adorning,
We past Bagshot and Bawwaw Friday morning.
That night we lodg’d at the White Hart at Alton,
And had good meate--a table with a salt on.
Next morn w’arose with blushing cheek’d Aurora;
The waves were faire, but not so faire as Flora,
For Flora was a goddesse, and a woman,
And (like the highwayes) to all men was Common.
Our Horses, with the Coach, which we went into,
Did hurry us amaine, through thick and thine too;
With fiery speede, the foaming bit they champt on,
And brought us to the Dolphin at Southampton.
Southampton, eighty miles from their starting-point, was therefore a
three days’ journey in the autumn of 1648. That they were careful not
to be on the road after dark is evident from the time they got to
Staines, the first stopping-place. The sun sets at exactly 5 p.m. on
October 19th.
The reference to a place called “Bawwaw,” between Bagshot and Alton, is
not to be explained by any scrutiny of maps.
Thenceforward until 1657 stage-coaches are not mentioned in the
literature of the age, and we set foot upon firm ground only with the
advertisement in the _Mercurius Politicus_ of April 9th in that year:--
“_FOR the convenient accommodation of Passengers from and betwixt
the Cities of_ London _and_ Westchester, _there is provided several
Stage-Coaches which go from the_ George _Inn without Aldersgate
upon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to_ Coventry, _in Two days
for Twenty five shillings, to_ Stone _in Three days for Thirty
shillings, and to_ Chester _in Four days for Thirty five shillings,
and from thence to return upon the same days; which is performed
with much safety to the Passengers, having fresh Horses once a day.
In Mondays Intelligence last the severall sums and rates were by
the Printer mistaken._”
The objective of the first stage-coach ever established being Chester
naturally provokes inquiry. There seems to have been no other stage
upon any road in that pioneer year. The preference for Chester argues
a large traffic already existing on that road: men riding post-horses,
women riding pillion behind friends, relatives, or servants, or
possibly in some stage-waggon whose history has not come down to us.
The coach can only have been established to satisfy a pre-existent
demand. The question why there should have been more travellers on this
route than any other is answered in this being the road to Ireland then
generally followed, and Chester itself the port of embarkation for that
country. Coventry and Stone were only served incidentally.
The following spring witnessed an amazing burst of coaching activity,
for the _Mercurius Politicus_ in April contained an advertisement
announcing stage-coaches on the Exeter and Great North roads, to begin
on the 26th of that month. They ran from the “George” Inn, Aldersgate
Street Without:--
“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to Salisbury in two days for XX^s,
Blandford and Dorchester in two days and a half for XXX^s, Burput in
three days for XXX^s, and Exmaster, Hunnington, and Exeter in four days
for XL^s.
“Stamford in two days for XX^s, Newark in two days and a half for XXX^s,
Doncaster and Ferribridge for XXXV^s, and York in four days for XL^s.”
Every Monday and Wednesday others were to set forth for,
“Ockinton and Plimouth for L^s.
“Edinburgh, once a fortnight for £4 apeece.
“Darneton and Ferryhill for L^s, Durham for LV^s, and Newark
for £111.”
Every Friday,
“To Wakefield in four days for XL^s.”
This advertisement then concluded by inviting passengers to another
“George” Inn:--
“Let them repair to the George Inn on Holborn Bridge, and they shall
be in good Coaches with good Horses at and for reasonable rates, to
Salisbury, Blandford, Exmaster, Hunnington, Exeter, Ockinton, Plimouth,
and Cornwal.”
The extraordinarily misspelt names of some of the places mentioned in
these notices show how ill-known the country then was. For “Burput”
we must read Bridport; for “Hunnington,” Honiton; and for “Exmaster,”
Axminster; “Ockinton” is probably Okehampton.
At this time, and for very many years yet to come, the stage-coaches
were strictly fair-weather services. With every recurrent spring they
were brought out from their retirement, and so early as Michaelmas
were taken off the roads and laid up for the winter. How the pioneer
coach to Chester fared in its second season is hid from us, but the
announcement of its third year, in 1659, is instructive:--
“These are to give notice, that from the George Inn, without
Aldersgate, goes every Monday and Thursday a coach and four able
horses, to carry passengers to Chester in five days, likewise
to Coventry, Cosell (Coleshill), Cank, Litchfield, Stone, or to
Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Newport, Whitchurch, and
Holywell, at reasonable rates, by us, who have performed it two years.
“WILLIAM DUNSTAN.
“HENRY EARLE.
“WILLIAM FOWLER.”
It now took a day longer to reach Chester--assuming that the promise
to perform the journey in four days ever was kept; and it will be
observed that Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and other places, on a different
route than that through Lichfield and Stone, are named in the manner
of an alternative. The Chester stage of this year, in fact, varied its
itinerary to suit its passengers. The “by us, who have performed it
two years,” looks suspiciously like an opposition already threatened;
while the “four able horses” insisted on (but not mentioned in the
first announcement) reads like an improvement upon a former team that
was not able. Those, of course, were times before horses were generally
changed on the way, and the same long-suffering beasts that dragged the
coaches from London often brought them to their destination. According
to the first advertisement of this Chester stage, quoted above, this
particular coach was an exception to the usual practice, and actually
had fresh horses once a day.
A stage seems to have plied between London and Oxford in 1661, but new
coaches for a time were few, and it is said that there were but six
in 1662. In the following year a coach of sorts ran from Preston in
Lancashire to London; and, as may be gathered from a letter from Edward
Parker to his father, it was a very primitive contrivance:--
“I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe way pleasant,
being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. The company y^t came
up with mee were persons of greate qualitie, as knightes and ladyes.
My journey’s expense was 30^s. This travell hath soe indisposed mee, y^t
I am resolved never to ride up againe in y^e coatche. I am extremely
hott and feverish. What this may tend to I know not. I have not as yet
advised my doctor.”
Our natural curiosity on that head cannot be satisfied, for the Parker
correspondence ends abruptly there; but we fear the worst. Heading that
testimony to the quality of early coach-travelling, we may find it not
altogether without significance that from this year forward to 1667
little is heard of coaches. Perhaps those who gave the early ones a
trial were glad to get back to their saddles and ride horseback again.
However that may be, certainly coaching history, except by inference,
is in those years a blank. We may infer services to other towns from
oblique and scattered references, but direct information is lacking.
That a stage-coach--or possibly more than one--was on the road between
London and Norwich in 1665 is to be gathered from the proclamation
issued in that East Anglian city on July 20th of that terrible year
of the Great Plague, which destroyed half the population of London:
“From this daie,” ran that ordinance, “all ye passage coaches shall be
prohibited to goe from ye city to London, and come from thence hither,
and also ye common carts and wagons.” Already, before that notice was
issued, wayfarers from that doomed city had been struck down by the
deadly and mysterious disease, and at Norwich itself travellers hailing
from the centre of infection had died, swiftly and in circumstances
that struck terror into the hearts of the people. Not that plagues
were things unknown; for Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, had died
from the vexation and enforced idleness of the Cambridge edict of
1631, forbidding intercourse with London, even then ravaged with an
infectious disorder.
What were the first stage-coaches like?
If we are to credit Taylor’s description of the earliest coaches,
some of them must have resembled the present Irish jaunting-car, or
Bianconi’s mid-nineteenth century coaches, in the manner of carrying
passengers. He tells us, in his fanciful way, that a coach, “like a
perpetual cheater, wears two bootes and no spurs, sometimes having two
pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature) it makes
faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are carried back
to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in that miserable
manner, and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it makes people
imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways, as they are when they
sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kind of carriage
for the commonwealth, if it be considered.” This boot, or this pair
of boots--which did not in the least resemble, in shape or position,
the fore and hind boots of a later age--was a method of carrying the
outsides in days before the improvement of roads rendered it possible
for any one to ride on the roof without incurring the danger of being
flung off. No illustration of this type of coach has ever been found,
but it seems possible that the back-to-back boots, to carry four, were
built on to the hinder part of the coach, and really formed the first
attempt to carry outsides.
This type of coach described by Taylor must have been freakish and
ephemeral. Those in general use were very different, resembling in
their construction the private carriages and London hackney-coaches of
the time, and varying from them only in being built to hold a number
of people--usually six, but on occasion eight. In Sir Robert Howard’s
comedy, _The Committee_, printed in 1665, the Reading coach brings six
passengers to London.
The body was covered with stout leather, nailed on to the frame with
broad-headed nails, whose shining heads, gilt or silvered, picked out
the general lines of the structure, and were considered to give a
pleasing decorative effect. Windows and doors were at first unknown. In
their stead were curtains and wooden shutters, so that the interior of
an early coach on a wet or chilly day, when the curtains were drawn,
must have been a close and dismal place. It was this feature that gave
Taylor an opportunity of comparing a coach with a hypocrite: “It is a
close hypocrite, for it hath a cover for knavery and curtains to vaile
and shadow any wickedness.” The first vehicle with glass windows was
the private carriage of the Duke of York, in 1661, and we do not begin
to hear of glazed windows in stage-coaches until the beginning of the
eighteenth century, when “glass coaches” were announced. It is, indeed,
unlikely that glass could in any case have been introduced for the
purpose of country travelling at an earlier date, for it would need to
have been of extraordinary strength and thickness to survive the shocks
and crashes of travel of this period.
All these vehicles were low hung, for the heavy body, slung by massive
leather braces from the upright posts springing from the axletrees
of front and hind wheels, was too responsive to any and every rut
and irregularity of the road to be placed at the height to which the
coaches of a century later attained.
In the excessive jolting then incidental to travelling, the body of a
coach swayed laterally to such an extent that it would often swing,
in the manner of a pendulum, quite clear of the underworks. Occupants
of coaches were thus often afflicted with nausea, not unlike that of
sea-sickness, and to be “coached” was at that time an expression which
meant the getting used to a violent motion at first most emphatically
resented by the human stomach.
Although the body of a coach enjoyed a wide range of motion sideways,
it had not by any means the same freedom back and forth. A severe
strain, in the continual plunging and jolting, was therefore thrown
upon the supporting uprights, so that they not infrequently gave way
under the ordeal, and suddenly threw passengers and coachman in one
common heap of ruin. To aid him in making such roadside repairs as
these and other early defects of construction often rendered necessary,
the coachman carried with him a box of tools placed under his seat,
and it is from this circumstance that the name of “hammercloth”--the
hangings decorating the coachman’s seat on many a State carriage--was
derived.
Bad as was the situation of the passengers, that of the coachman
was infinitely worse. His was a seat of torture, for it was placed
immediately over the front pair of wheels, and, totally unprovided with
springs, transmitted to his body the full force of every shock with
which those wheels descended into holes or encountered stones.
In 1667 a London and Oxford coach is found, performing the fifty-four
miles in two days, halting for the intervening night at Beaconsfield;
and in the same year the original Bath coach appears, in this
portentous announcement:--
“FLYING MACHINE.
“All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any
other Place on their Road, let them repair to the ‘Bell
Savage’ on Ludgate Hill in London, and the ‘White Lion’
at Bath, at both which places they may be received in a
Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which
performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit),
and sets forth at five o’clock in the morning.
“Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are
allowed to carry fourteen Pounds Weight--for all above to
pay three-halfpence per Pound.”
This is the first appearance of the epithet “Flying” in the literature
of coaches. Possibly it was used in this first instance in order to
distinguish the new conveyance from a stage-waggon that must for
many years before have gone the journey, as well as to justify the
higher fare charged by the new vehicle. The waggon would have conveyed
passengers at anything from a halfpenny to a penny a mile; by “Flying
Machine” it came to threepence. The term “Flying,” for a coach that
consumed three days in performing a journey of 109 miles, raises a
smile; but it was only relative, and in contrast with the pace of the
waggons of that period, which would probably have made it a six-days’
trip.
This Bath coach would seem to have set the fashion in nomenclature,
for in April 1669 a “Flying Coach” began to fly between Oxford and
London. It was, it will be noticed, a “coach,” and not a “machine”;
the term “machine” did not come into general use until about seventy
years later. But although the Oxford coach did not call itself by so
high-sounding a title, it made a better pace than the Bath affair,
doing the fifty-four miles in one day, between the hours of six o’clock
in the morning and seven in the evening. Moreover, its fare--twelve
shillings, reduced two years later to ten--was somewhat cheaper.
Perhaps one was always charged higher rates on the fashionable Bath
Road.
How, in this thirteen years’ interval between 1657 and 1669, had the
older stages progressed? The Chester stage was going its way, promising
to do the distance in five days, but taking six--a sad falling off
from the original four; of the others, presumably continuing, we hear
nothing further, and of new ventures there is not a whisper. Yet it is
surely not to be supposed that, at a time when coaches ran to Bath,
to York, to Coventry, and to Norwich, such a place (for instance) as
Bristol would be without that convenience. For Bristol was then what
Glasgow is now--the second city. London came first, with its half a
million inhabitants; Bristol came next, with some 28,000, and Norwich
third, with 27,000. It is, then, only fair to assume that other coaches
existed of whose story nothing has survived. A strong reason for coming
to this conclusion is found in the publication in 1673 of Cresset’s
violent tirade against coaches, not, surely, called forth _apropos_
of the already old-established stages, but provoked, doubtless, by
some sudden increase, of which we, at this lapse of time, know
nothing. What brief John Cresset could have held for the innkeepers and
horse-breeders, and for the other trades supposed to be injuriously
affected by the increase of stage-coaches, we know not, nor, indeed,
anything of Cresset himself, except that he lived in the Charterhouse.
Between London, York, Chester, and Exeter he calculated that a total
number of fifty-four persons travelled weekly, making a grand total for
those roads of 1,872 such travellers in a year. A brief examination of
his arithmetic shows--as we have already pointed out--that the coaches
of that age lay up for the winter months.
His indictment of coaches is to be found in his _Grand Concern of
England Explained_, and is very vigorous indeed, and--as we see it
nowadays--extravagantly silly:--
“Will any man keep a horse for himself and another for his servant all
the year round, for to ride one or two journeys, that at pleasure,
when he hath occasion, can slip to any place where his business lies
for two or three shillings, if within twenty miles of London, and so
proportionately to any part of England? No, there is no man, unless
some noble soul that seems to abhor being confined to so ignoble, base,
and sordid a way of travelling as these coaches oblige him to, and who
prefers a public good before his own ease and advantage, that will keep
horses.”
According to this vehement counsel for the suppression of
stage-coaches, they brought the country gentlemen up to London on the
slightest pretext--sometimes to get their hair cut---with their wives
accompanying them; and when they were both come to town, they would
“get fine clothes, go to plays and treats, and by these means get such
a habit of idleness and love for pleasure that they are uneasy ever
after.
“Travelling in these coaches can neither prove advantageous to men’s
health or business, for what advantage is it to men’s health to be
called out of their beds into their coaches an hour before day in the
morning, to be hurried in them from place to place till one, two, or
three hours within night, insomuch that sitting all day in the summer
time stifled with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter time
starving or freezing with cold, or choked with filthy fogs? They are
often brought to their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit
up to get a supper, and next morning they are forced into the coach so
early that they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men’s
health or business, to ride all day with strangers oftentimes sick,
or with diseased persons, or young children crying, to whose humours
they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are
poisoned with their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of their
boxes and bundles? Is it for a man’s health to travel with tired jades,
to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in
mire, afterwards to sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to
pull the coach out?”
Cresset was also of opinion that the greater number of the many
roadside inns would lose their trade owing to the rapidity of
coach-travelling. Here, at least, he exceeded his brief, for coaches
by no means attained so speedy a rate of travel as that reached by
horsemen. Thoresby, ten years later, is a case in point. He was wont
to travel horseback between Leeds and London in four days, but when he
journeyed from York to London in the coach, no greater distance than
from Leeds, it took six days. Swift, too, in 1710, rode from Chester
to London in five days; when the degenerating Chester stage, which
had started to perform it in 1657 in four days, had already taken one
additional day, and was about to take another. Cresset, summing up
such objectionable things as “rotten coaches” and traces, and coachmen
“surly, dogged, and ill-natured,” advocated the total suppression
of such methods of travelling, or at least--counsels of moderation
prevailing--of most of them. In conclusion, he proposed that coaches
should be limited to one for every county town in England, to go
backwards and forwards once a week.
Unhappily for Cresset’s peace of mind, coaches did not decay. Nor did
they wilt and wither before the onslaught of another writer, who, under
the pen-name of “A Country Tradesman,” published a pamphlet in 1678,
called _The Ancient Trades Decayed, Repaired Again_. According to this
writer, if coaches were suppressed, more wine and beer would be drunk
at the inns, to the great increase and advantage of the Excise; and
the breed of horses would be improved, in consequence of the gentlemen
who then rode in coaches being obliged to return to horse-riding.
In 1673, in an announcement of stages to York, Chester, and Exeter,
the journey to Exeter is put at “eight days in summer, ten in winter.”
Here was at least one coach that had already begun to run throughout
the year, but its summer performance justified the remarks of those
ancients who, seeing the original “four-days” announcement of 1658, had
shaken their heads and suspected it would never last.
The year 1678 saw a coach on the road between the important seaport of
Hull and the city of York, probably in connection with the York stage
between that and London; but our only knowledge of its existence at
so early a date is--to put it in rather an Irish way--a reference to
its having been taken off. Ralph Thoresby, the Yorkshire antiquary,
is our authority. In his diary he notes that he landed at Hull in
November of that year, and that the stage-coach was already over for
the winter. This Hull and York coach we may suppose to have been in
connection with a York and London stage already existing--that original
vehicle, started in 1658 and alluded to in 1673, which was to perform
the journey in four days, the fare 40s. The first detailed account
of the “York Old Coach,” as it came to be known, is found in an old
advertisement broadside discovered some years since at the back of an
old drawer at the “Black Swan,” in York. It is dated 1706, and is
evidently an announcement of the coach resuming its season after one of
its annual hibernations:--
[Illustration: YORK Four Days
Stage-Coach.
_Begins on_ Friday _the 12th of_ April 1706.
ALL that are desirous to pass from _London_ to _York_, or from
_York_ to _London_, or any other Place on that Road, Let them
Repair to the _Black Swan_ in _Holbourn_ in _London_, and to the
_Black Swan_ in _Coney street_ in _York_.
At both which Places, they may be received in a Stage Coach every
_Monday_, _Wednesday_ and _Friday_, which performs the whole
journey in Four Days, (_if God permits_.) And sets forth at Five in
the Morning.
And returns from _York_ to _Stamford_ in two days, and from
_Stamford_, by _Huntington_ to _London_ in two days more. And the
like Stages on their return.
Allowing each Passenger 14l. weight, and all above 3d. a Pound.
{_Benjamin Kingman_,
Performed By {_Henry Harrison_,
{_Walter Baynes_,
Also this gives Notice that Newcastle Stage Coach, sets out
from York, every Monday, and Friday, and from Newcastle
every Monday, and Friday.
OLD COACHING BILL, PRESERVED AT THE “BLACK SWAN,” YORK.]
It still took four days, as it had done when first established close
upon half a century before. Clearly times and coaches alike moved
slowly.
That York even then displayed its sub-metropolitan character will be
seen from the footnote to the handbill, relating to the Newcastle
coach. Local services apparently radiated from the city to Hull, Leeds,
Wakefield, and other places.
Meanwhile, other provincial towns had not been idle, and we must needs
make a slight divergence here to give an outline of what Glasgow
was attempting in local intercommunication. Nothing thus early was
on the road between Glasgow and London, but strenuous efforts were
made to link Glasgow and Edinburgh (forty-four miles apart) together
by a public service so early as 1678, when Provost Campbell and the
magistrates of Glasgow agreed with William Hoorn, of Edinburgh, for a
coach to go on that road once a week: “a sufficient strong coach, drawn
by sax able horses, whilk coach sall contine sax persons and sall go
ance ilk week, to leave Edinburgh ilk Monday morning, and to return
again (God willing) ilk Saturday night.” To travel those forty-four
miles was, therefore, the occupation of three days. Even thus early we
see the beginnings of that spirit of municipal enterprise which has
in modern times carried Glasgow so far. Now the local tramway, water,
gas, and electric lighting authority, she, so early as the seventeenth
century, essayed a public service of coaches.
Like much else in early coaching history, this is merely a fragment;
but again, in 1743, Glasgow is found returning to the question, in an
attempt of the Town Council to set up a stage-coach or “lando,” to go
once a week in winter and twice in summer. The attempt failed, and it
was not until 1749 that the first conveyance to ply regularly between
Glasgow and Edinburgh was established. This was the “Caravan,” which
made the passage in two days each way. It was succeeded in 1759 by the
“Fly,” which brought the time down to a day and a half.
In 1697, according to an entry in the diary of Sir William Dugdale,
under date of July 16th, a London and Birmingham coach, by way of
Banbury, was then running; but such isolated references are quite
obscured by the flood of light thrown upon coaching by the work of De
Laune, _The Present State of London_, dated 1681. In his pages is to be
found a complete list of all the stage-coaches, carriers, and waggons
to and from London in that year. The carriers and waggons are very
numerous, and there are in all 119 coaches, of which number between
sixty and seventy are long-distance conveyances, the remainder serving
places up to twenty or twenty-five miles from London. In that list
we find that, although a marvellous expansion of coaching had taken
place, some of the places already catered for in 1658 are abandoned.
The Edinburgh stage does not appear, and nothing is to be found on
that road farther north than York. The reason for the omission was,
doubtless, that York, then relatively a more important place than now,
had its own well-organised coaching businesses. Travellers from London
for Edinburgh would secure a place to York, and, arriving there, book
again by a York and Edinburgh coach. The Edinburgh stage from London,
once a fortnight, is, indeed, not heard of again until 1734.
Many of the coaches mentioned by De Laune went twice and thrice a
week, and a large proportion of those to places not beyond twenty or
twenty-five miles from London made double journeys in the day. Thus
Windsor had no fewer than seven coaches, six of them in and out daily.
The age, it will be conceded, was not without enterprise. But the
omissions are striking; Okehampton, Plymouth, and Cornwall, included
in the purview of the pioneers of 1658, are not mentioned. Liverpool,
Sheffield, Newcastle, Leicester, Hereford and others were outside their
activities. No one, it seemed, wanted to go to Glasgow; Manchester
men were content to ride horseback; Leeds, now numbering some 430,000
inhabitants, and increasing by 2,000 a year, was a town of only 7,000,
and the clothiers rode to York and caught the London coach there. To
Bath and Bristol, however, there were five coaches; to Exeter, four;
to Guildford, three; to Cambridge, Braintree, Canterbury, Chelmsford,
Gloucester, Lincoln and Stamford, Norwich, Oxford, Portsmouth, Reading,
Saffron Walden, and Ware, two each.
Despite the four coaches between Exeter and London mentioned by De
Laune in 1681, the Mayor of Lyme Regis, having in October 1684 urgent
official business in London, is found, in company with one servant,
hiring post-horses from Lyme to Salisbury. It is quite clear that if
there had been a coach serving at the time, he would have caught it at
Charmouth, a mile and a half from that little seaport; but there was,
for some unexplained reason, a break in the service, and it was not
until Salisbury was reached, sixty miles along the road, that he found
a stage. The coach fare from Salisbury to London for self and servant
was 30s., and he spent, “at several stages, to gratify coachmen,” 4s.
6d.
With the existence of such a volume of trade as that disclosed by
De Laune, it is not surprising to find that the scolding voices of
opponents to coaching had by this time died down to a mere echo.
Instead of reviling coaches, the writers of the age extolled their
use and convenience. Thus Chamberlayne, in the 1684 edition of his
_Present State of Great Britain_, the _Whitaker’s Almanack_ of that
period, says: “There is of late such an admirable commodiousness for
both men and women to travel from London to the principal towns in
the country, that the like hath not been known in the world; and that
is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place,
sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endamaging of
one’s health and one’s body by hard jogging or over-violent motion,
and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five
miles, but with such velocity and speed in one hour as that the post
in some foreign countries cannot make but in one day.” Those foreign
countries have our respectful sympathy, for Chamberlayne in thus
extolling our superiority was singing the praises of four miles an hour!
From the limbo of half-forgotten things we drag occasional references
to coaches towards the close of the seventeenth century. In April
1694 a London and Warwick stage was announced to go every Monday, to
make the journey in two days, “performed (if God permit) by Nicholas
Rothwell”; and in 1696 the “Confatharrat” coach was already spoken of
as a familiar object on the London and Norwich road. All we know of
the “Confatharrat” is that it came to the “Four Swans,” in Bishopsgate
Street Within. Its curious name is probably the seventeenth-century
spelling of the word “confederate,” and the coach itself was, no doubt,
run by an association, or “confederacy,” of owners and innkeepers,
in succession to some unlucky person who singly had attempted it and
failed.
On some roads enterprise slackened. Thus, in 1700, the “Fly” coach to
Exeter slept the _fifth_ night from London at Axminster, where the next
morning a woman “shaved the coach,” and on the afternoon of the sixth
day it crawled into Exeter. Forty-three years earlier it had taken only
four days.
[Illustration: BIRMINGHAM
STAGE-COACH,
In Two _Days_ and a half; begins _May_ the 24th, 1731.
SETS out from the _Swan-Inn_ in _Birmingham_, every _Monday_ at
six a Clock in the Morning, through _Warwick_, _Banbury_ and
_Alesbury_, to the _Red Lion Inn_ in _Aldersgate street, London_,
every _Wednesday_ Morning: And returns from the said _Red Lion
Inn_ every _Thursday_ Morning at five a Clock the same Way to the
_Swan-Inn_ in _Birmingham_ every _Saturday_, at 21 Shillings each
Passenger, and 18 Shillings from _Warwick_, who has liberty to
carry 14 Pounds in Weight, and all above to _pay One Penny a Pound_.
Perform d (if God permit)
By Nicholas Rothwell.
The Weekly Waggon _sets out every Tuesday from the Nagg’s-Head
in_ Birmingham, _to the_ Red Lion Inn _aforesaid, every Saturday,
and returns from the said Inn every Monday, to the Nagg’s-Head in
Birmingham every Thursday_.
Note, _By the said_ Nicholas Rothwell _at_ Warwick, _all Persons
may be furnished with a ‘By-Coach,’ Chariot, Chaise or Hearse, with
a Mourning Coach and able Horses, to any Part of Great Britain, at
reasonable Rates: And also Saddle Horses to be had_
OLD BIRMINGHAM COACHING BILL.]
Nicholas Rothwell, of the London and Warwick stage in 1694, reappears
in an extremely interesting broadsheet advertisement of 1731,
announcing that the “Birmingham stage-coach in two days and a half
begins, May the 24th.” Although we have no earlier information
of this coach, it is probably safe to assume that this, like the
advertisement of the York coach already quoted, merely advertised
the beginning of a new season, and that winter was still largely, as
it had been seventy-six years before, a blank in the coaching world.
Rothwell was evidently established at Warwick, and seems to have been
the first notable coach-proprietor, the forerunner of the Chaplins,
Nelsons, Mountains, Shermans and Ibbersons of a later age. By his old
advertisement we see that he catered for all classes of travellers--by
stage-coach, private carriage, chaise, and waggon--and that he hired
out horses to the gentlemen who still preferred their own company and
the saddle to the coach and its miscellaneous strangers. Even the dead
were not beyond the consideration of Mr. Rothwell, whose “Hearse, with
Mourning Coach and Able Horses,” is set forth to “go to any part of
Great Britain, at reasonable Rates.” Unhappily for the historian eager
to reconstruct the road life of those times, this old advertisement
is almost all that survives to tell us of Rothwell, and fortunate we
are to have even that, for such sheets, as commonplace when issued
as the advertisements of railway excursions are at the present time,
are now of extreme rarity. It would appear, from the rude woodcut
illustrating Rothwell’s bill, that his coach was of the old type, hung
on leather straps and quite innocent of springs--the kind of coach that
Parson Adams, in Fielding’s _Joseph Andrews_, outwalked without the
slightest difficulty. It seems to be more up-to-date in the matter of
windows, and to be a “glass-coach,” if we may judge by the appearance
of the window at which the solitary and unhappy-looking passenger is
standing in an attitude suggestive of stomachic disturbance. There
are no windows in the upper quarters of the coach, which in that and
some other respects greatly resembles the vehicle pictured in 1747 by
Hogarth in his _Inn Yard_.
[Illustration: THE STAGE-COACH, 1783.
_After Rowlandson._
]
Rothwell’s coach is drawn by four horses in hand, with a postilion on
the off horse of a couple of extra leaders. The practice of using six
horses and a postilion is one to which we find allusion in Fielding’s
_Joseph Andrews_, written nine years later than the date of this
Birmingham coach. The curious will find the description in the twelfth
chapter of that novel, where Joseph, recovering from the murderous
attack of two highwaymen, attracts the attention of the postilion of a
passing stage-coach. “The postilion, hearing a man’s groans, stopped
his horses, and told the coachman he was certain there was a dead man
lying in the ditch, for he heard him groan.” (That postilion surely was
an Irishman.) “‘Go on, sirrah!’ says the coachman: ‘we are confounded
late, and have no time to look after dead men.’ A lady, who heard what
the postilion said, and likewise heard the groan, called eagerly to
the coachman to stop and see what was the matter. Upon which, he bid
the postilion alight and look into the ditch. He did so, and returned,
‘That there was a man sitting upright, as naked as ever he was born.’
‘O J--sus!’ cried the lady; ‘a naked man! Dear coachman, drive on and
leave him!’”
Rowlandson shows that in 1783 six horses were still used, and that
a postilion continued to ride one of the leaders. It was about this
same period that the generally misquoted remark about the ease of
driving a coach-and-six through an Act of Parliament grew proverbial.
It had originated so early as 1689, when Sir Stephen Rice, Chief
Baron of the Irish Exchequer and a bigoted Papist, declared for James
the Second, and was often heard to say he would drive a coach and
six horses through the Act of Settlement. Later generations, knowing
nothing of six horses to a coach, and unused to seeing more than four,
unconsciously adapted the saying to the practice of their own times.