writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these
coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them

from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled

with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often

brought into 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, antient, 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 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 sit in the cold till teams of

horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to
travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch, or

axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes
half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to

make good their stage? Is it for a man's pleasure, or advantageous
to his health and business, to travel with a mixed company that he

knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by the rudeness of
a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman; necessitated to

lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no
accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners

of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the
guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate

suppression of stagecoaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.
Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate affair.

Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches were
advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an

hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers.
The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a

small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach
and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the

road while making the journey between the two places. The long coach
"put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road." Whether the coach

was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was determined by
the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a chairman at the

beginning of the journey.
In 1700, York was a week distant from London, and Tunbridge Wells,

now reached in an hour, was two days. Salisbury and Oxford were
also each a two days journey, Dover was three days, and Exeter

five. The Fly coach from London to Exeter slept at the latter place
the fifth night from town; the coach proceeding next morning to

Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman Barber "shaved
the coach."*[13]

Between London and Edinburgh, as late as 1763, a fortnight was
consumed, the coach only starting once a month.*[14] The risk of

breaks-down in driving over the execrable roads may be inferred
from the circumstance that every coach carried with it a box of

carpenter's tools, and the hatchets were occasionally used in
lopping off the branches of trees overhanging the road and

obstructing the travellers' progress.
Some fastidious persons, disliking the slow travelling, as well as

the promiscuous company which they ran the risk of encountering in
the stage, were accustomed to advertise for partners in a postchaise,

to share the charges and lessen the dangers of the road; and,
indeed, to a sensitive person anything must have been preferable to

the misery of travelling by the Canterbury stage, as thus described
by a contemporarywriter:--

"On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I blest,
Between two plump old women to be presst!

A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd,
And a fat landlord, filled the other side.

Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load
Boils roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road:

One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears,
Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears;

Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,'
The sick'ning child returns his milk and toast!"

When Samuel Johnson was taken by his mother to London in 1712, to
have him touched by Queen Anne for "the evil," he relates,--

"We went in the stage-coach and returned in the waggon, as my mother
said, because my cough was violent; but the hope of saving a few

shillings was no slight motive.... She sewed two guineas in her
petticoat lest she should be robbed.... We were troublesome to the

passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the stage-coach
was common in those days to parsons in much higher rank."

Mr. Pennant has left us the following account of his journey in
the Chester stage to London in 1789-40: "The first day," says he,

"with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty
miles; the second day to the 'Welsh Harp;' the third, to Coventry;

the fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a
wondrous effort, on the last, to London, before the commencement of

night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight,
drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.

We were constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night,
and in the depth of winter proportionally later. The single

gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jackboots and trowsers,
up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded

against the mire, defied the frequentstumble and fall, arose and
pursued their journey with alacrity; while, in these days, their

enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy
chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of

Sybaris."
No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of the travelling of the

country continued to be performed on horseback, this being by far
the pleasantest as well as most expeditious mode of journeying.

On his marriage-day, Dr. Johnson rode from Birmingham to Derby with
his Tetty, taking the opportunity of the journey to give his bride

her first lesson in marital discipline. At a later period James
Watt rode from Glasgow to London, when proceedingthither to learn

the art of mathematicalinstrument making.
And it was a cheap and pleasant method of travelling when the

weather was fine. The usual practice was, to buy a horse at the
beginning of such a journey, and to sell the animal at the end of

it. Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled from London to Edinburgh in
1753, being nineteen days on the road, the whole expenses of the

journey amounting to only four guineas. The mare on which he rode,
cost him eight guineas in London, and he sold her for the same

price on his arrival in Edinburgh.
Nearly all the commercial gentlemen rode their own horses, carrying

their samples and luggage in two bags at the saddle-bow; and hence
their appellation of Riders or Bagmen. For safety's sake, they

usually journeyed in company; for the dangers of travelling were
not confined merely to the ruggedness of the roads. The highways

were infested by troops of robbers and vagabonds who lived by
plunder. Turpin and Bradshaw beset the Great North Road; Duval,

Macheath, Maclean, and hundreds of notorious highwaymen infested
Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Shooter's Hill, and all the

approaches to the metropolis. A very common sight then, was a
gibbet erected by the roadside, with the skeleton of some

malefactor hanging from it in chains; and " Hangman's-lanes" were
especially numerous in the neighbourhood of London.*[15] It was

considered most unsafe to travel after dark, and when the first
"night coach" was started, the risk was thought too great, and it

was not patronised.
[Image] The Night Coach