Chapter 6

“The coach is a close hypocrite, for it hath a cover for any knavery and curtains to veil or shadow any wickedness; besides, like a perpetual cheater, it wears two boots and no spurs, sometimes having two pairs of legs in one boot, and often-times (against nature) most preposterously it makes fair ladies wear the boot; and if you note, they are carried back to back like people surprised by pirates, to be tied in that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea.”

These two fanciful descriptions explain very clearly what the “boot” was and how occupied. The “monstrous width” referred to inCoach and Sedanconfirms the statement by Taylor that sometimes “two pairs of legs” occupied it, the proprietors of the legs sitting back to back. “No trace of glass windows or perfect doors seems to have existed up to 1650” (Thrupp), so we can well understand that the passengers who were obliged to occupy the boot of a stage coach (for these as well as hackney coaches were so built) on a prolonged journey would have an exceedingly uncomfortable seat in cold or wet weather.

It was no doubt an open boot which was occupied by the writer of the curious letter quoted by Markland. Mr. Edward Parkeris addressing his father, who resided at Browsholme, near Preston, in Lancashire; the letter is dated November 3, 1663:—

“I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe ways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. Ye company yt came up with mee were persons of greate quality as knights and ladyes. My journey’s expense was 30s. This traval hath soe indisposed mee yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatch. I am extreamely hott and feverish; what this may tend to I know not, I have not as yet advised with any doctor.”

Sir W. Petty’s assertion that the splendour of coaches increased greatly during the Stuart period recalls a passage in Kennett’sHistory of England. George Villiers, the great favourite of JamesI. who created him Duke of Buckingham, had six horses to draw his coach (“which was wondered at then as a novelty and imputed to him as a mast’ring pride”). The “stout old Earl of Northumberland,” not to be outdone by the upstart favourite, “thought if Buckingham had six, he might very well have eight in his coach, with which he rode through the city of London to the Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.” The first coaches were drawn by two horses only; love of display led to the use of more for town use, but the deplorable condition of the country roadsjustified the use of as many as quagmires might compel.

How much a coach weighed in these early days we do not know: Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, writing in 1817, says, “now travelling carriages frequently weigh above a ton;” and as carriages had undergone vast improvements by that date, we are justified in concluding that those of a hundred or a hundred and fifty years earlier weighed a great deal more.

CARRIAGES IN HYDE PARK.

During the Commonwealth (1649-1659), it was the fashion to drive in “the Ring” in Hyde Park. The Ring is described by a French writer,[7]as two or three hundred paces in diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade consisting of poles placed on stakes three feet from the ground; round this the people used to drive, in Cromwell’s time, at great speed, as appears from a letter dated May 2, 1654, from a gentleman in London to a country friend, quoted by Mr. Jacob Larwood in hisStory of the London Parks, (1872):—

[7]M. Misson.Memoirs and Observations of a Journey in England, 1697.

“When my Lord Protector’s coach came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby and my Lord’s three daughters, the coaches and horses flocked about them like some miracle. But they galloped (after the mode court-pace now, and which they all use wherever they go) round and round the Park, and all that great multitude hunted them and caught them still at the turn like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste for them and so after them again,[8]and I never saw the like in my life.”

[8]The following sentence from Misson explains this reference. He says of the way people drive in the Ring: “When they have turned for some time round one way they face about and turn the other.”

There is an interesting letter from the Dutch Ambassadors to the States General, dated October 16, 1654, which is worth quoting here. The Ambassadors give particulars of the accident to explain why no business has been done lately:—

“His Highness [Oliver Cromwell], only accompanied with Secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the air in Hyde Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be brought, where he had his dinner; and afterwards had a mind to drive the coach himself. Having put only the Secretary into it, being those six grey horses which the Count of Oldenburgh[9]had presented unto His Highness who drove pretty handsomely for some time. But at last, provoking these horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly and ran so fast that the postilion could not hold them in, wherebyHis Highness was flung out of the coach box upon the pole.... The Secretary’s ankle was hurt leaping out and he keeps his chamber.”

[9]This suggests that the North German province of Oldenbourg was famed then, as now, for its breed of coach horses.

From this it is evident that when six horses were used a postillion rode one of the leaders and controlled them; while the driver managed the wheelers and middle pair. When four horses were driven it was the custom to have two outriders, one to ride at the leaders’ heads and one at the wheelers’; in town this would be merely display, but on a journey the outrider’s horses might replace those of the team in case of accident, or more frequently, be added to the team to help drag the coach over a stretch of bad road.

COACH AND CART RACING.

John Evelyn in his Diary refers to a coach race which took place in the Park on May 20, 1658, but gives no particulars. Mr. Jacob Larwood observes that at this period and for a century later coach-racing was a national sport; some considerable research through the literature of these times, however, has thrown no light upon this sport, and while we need not doubt that coaches when they chanced to meet on suitable ground did make trials of speed, it is opento question whether the practice was ever developed into a sport. It may be that Mr. Larwood had in mind the curious cart-team races described by Marshall in hisRural Economy of Norfolk, published in 1795.

This writer tells us that before Queen Anne’s reign the farmers of Norfolk used an active breed of horses which could not only trot but gallop. He describes as an eyewitness the races which survived to his day; the teams consisted of five horses, which were harnessed to an empty waggon:—

“A team following another broke into a gallop, and unmindful of the ruts, hollow cavities and rugged ways, contended strenuously for the lead, while the foremost team strove as eagerly to keep it. Both were going at full gallop, as fast indeed as horses in harness could go for a considerable distance, the drivers standing upright in their respective waggons.”

REGULATIONS FOR HACKNEY CARRIAGES.

The Act of 1662 has already been referred to in connection with the number of hackney coaches in London; we may glance at it again, as it gives a few interesting particulars. No license was to be granted to any person following another trade or occupation, and nobody might take out more than two licenses. Preference was to be given to“ancient coachmen” (by which expression we shall doubtless be right in understanding, not aged men but men who had followed the calling in previous years), and to such men as had suffered for their service to CharlesI. or CharlesII.

Horses used in hackney coaches were to be not less than fourteen hands high. The fares were duly prescribed by time and distance; for a day of twelve hours the coachman was to be paid not over 10s.; or 1s. 6d. for the first and 1s. for every subsequent hour. “No gentleman or other person” was to pay over 1s. for hire of a hackney coach “from any of the Inns of Court or thereabouts to any part ofSt.James’ or the city of Westminster (except beyond Tuttle Street)”; and going eastwards the shilling fare would carry the hirer from the Inns of Court to the Royal Exchange; eighteenpence was the fare to the Tower, to Bishopsgate Street or Aldgate. This Act forbade any hackney coach to ply for hire on Sunday; thus the hackney carriage was placed in the same category as the Thames wherries and barges. The restrictions concerning the persons to whom licenses might be granted obviously afforded the Commissioners opportunity for the malpractices we have already mentioned.

PEPYS ON CARRIAGES.

For further information concerning this period we naturally turn to Mr. Pepys, who patronised the hackney coach so frequently that when he was considering the propriety of setting up his own private carriage, he justified his decision to do so by the fact that “expense in hackney coaches is now so great.” Economy was not the only motive; on the contrary, this entry in his Diary appears to have been merely the salve to a conscience that reproached his vanity. In 1667 he confides more than once to the Diary that he is “almost ashamed to be seen in a hackney,” so much had his importance increased: and on July 10, 1668, he went “with my people in a glass hackney coach to the park, but was ashamed to be seen.” The private carriage he set up in December of that year will be referred to presently.

The public conveyance available for hire in Pepys’ time was evidently a cumbrous but roomy conveyance; as when a great barrel of oysters “as big as sixteen others” was given him on March 16, 1664, he took it in the coach with him to Mr. Turner’s: a circumstance that suggests the vehicle was built with boots.

No doubt many of these hackney carriages had formerly been the private property of gentlemen, which when old and shabby were sold cheaply to ply for hire in the streets.

Coaches with boots were being replaced by the improved “glass coach” a few years later, and of course the relative merits of the old and new styles of vehicle were weighed by all who were in the habit of using hackney coaches. It was one of the old kind to which Pepys refers in the following passage:—

August 23, 1667. “Then abroad to Whitehall in a hackney coach with Sir W. Pen, and in our way in the narrow street near Paul’s going the back way by Tower Street, and the coach being forced to put back, he was turning himself into a cellar [parts of London were still in ruins after the Great Fire], which made people cry out to us, and so we were forced to leap out—he out of one and I out of the other boote.Query, whether a glass coach would have permitted us to have made the escape?”

Other objections to glass coaches appear in the following entry:—

September 23, 1667. “Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashley speaking of the bad qualities of glass coaches, among others the flying open of the doors upon any great shake; but another was that my Lady Peterborough being in her glass coach with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass and cut all her forehead.”

The usage of the time appears to have been for the driver of a hackney carriage to fill up his vehicle as he drove along the streets somewhat after the manner of a modern ‘bus conductor, if we correctly understand the following entry in the Diary:—

February 6, 1663. “So home: and being called by a coachman who had a fare in him he carried me beyond the Old Exchange, and there set down his fare, who would not pay him what was his due because he carried a stranger [Pepys] with him, and so after wrangling he was fain to be content with sixpence, and being vexed the coachman would not carry me home a great while, but set me down there for the other sixpence, but with fair words he was willing to it.”

Whence it also appears that some members of the public objected to this practice. The cabman of that time was evidently an insolent character, for Pepys refers contemptuously to a “precept” which was drawn up in March, 1663, by the Lord Mayor, Sir John Robinson, against coachmen who “affronted the gentry.”

GLASS WINDOWS IN CARRIAGES.

Glass was used in carriages at this time, as the entries quoted from Pepys’ Diary on pages 43 and 44 tell us. Mr. Thrupp states that “no trace of glass windows or perfect doors seem to have existed up to1650.” Glass was in common use for house windows before that date, and Mr. Thrupp refers to the statement that the wife of the Emperor FerdinandIII. rode in a glass carriage so small that it contained only two persons as early as 1631. The manufacture of glass was established in England in 1557[10](Stow), but plate glass, and none other could have withstood the rough usage which coaches suffered from the wretched roads, was not made in England until 1670; previous to that date it was imported from France. A patent (No. 244) was granted in 1685 to John Bellingham “for making square window glasses for chaises and coaches.”

[10]JamesI., by Proclamation, in 1615, forbade the manufacture of glass if wood were used as fuel, on the ground that the country was thereby denuded of timber. In 1635 Sir Robert Maunsell perfected a method of manufacturing “all sorts of glass with sea coale or pitt coale,” and CharlesI. forbade the importation of foreign glass in order to encourage and assist this new industry.

Pepys writes in his Diary, December 30, 1668: “A little vexed to be forced to pay 40s. for a glass of my coach, which was broke the other day, nobody knows how, within the door while it was down: but I do doubt that I did break it myself with myknees.” Forty shillings for a single pane seems to indicate that it was plate glass. This passage also shows us that the lower part of the coach door must have received the glass between the outer woodwork and a covering of upholstery of some kind. Had there been wooden casing inside Pepys would not have broken it with his knees, and had it been uncovered the accident could not have escaped discovery at the moment.

IMPROVEMENTS IN CARRIAGES.

With reference to the introduction of springs: the patent granted to Edward Knapp in 1625 protected an invention for “hanging the bodies of carriages on springs of steel”: the method is not described. Unfortunately, the Letters Patent of those days scrupulously refrain from giving any information that would show ushowthe inventor proposed to achieve his object. Knapp’s springs could not have been efficacious, for forty years later ingenious men were working at this problem. On May 1, 1665, Pepys went to dine with Colonel Blunt at Micklesmarsh, near Greenwich, and after dinner was present at the

“... trial of some experiments about making of coaches easy. And several we tried: but one didprove mighty easy (not here for me to describe, but the whole body of the coach lies upon one long spring), and we all, one after another, rid in it; and it is very fine and likely to take.”

These experiments were made before a committee appointed by the Royal Society, from whose records it appears that on a previous date Colonel Blunt had “produced another model of a chariot with four springs, esteemed by him very easy both to the rider and horse, and at the same time cheap.”

This arrangement of springs evidently did not give such satisfactory results as the one mentioned above by Pepys. On May 3, 1665, we learn from Birch’sHistory of the Royal Society:—

“Mr. Hook produced the model of a chariot with two wheels and short double springs, to be drawn with one horse; the chair [seat] of it being so fixed upon two springs that the person sitting just over or rather a little behind the axle-tree was, when the experiment was made at Colonel Blount’s house, carried with as much ease as one could be in the French chariot without at all burthening the horse.”

Mr. Hook showed:—

“Two drafts of this model having this circumstantial difference, one of these was contrived so that the boy sitting on a seat made for him behind the chair and guiding the reins over the top of it, drives the horse. The other by placing the chair clear behind the wheels, the place of entry being also behind and the saddle on the horse’s back being to be borne upby the shafts, that the boy riding on it and driving the horse should be little or no burden to the horse.”

It seems to have been this latter variety of Colonel Blount’s invention, or a modification of it, which Pepys saw on January 22, 1666, and describes as “a pretty odd thing.”

On September 5, 1665, Pepys writes:—

“After dinner comes Colonel Blunt in his new chariot made with springs. And he hath rode, he says now, this journey many miles in it with one horse and outdrives any coach and outgoes any horses, and so easy, he says. So for curiosity I went into it to try it and up the hill to the heath and over the cart ruts, and found it pretty well, but not so easy as he pretends.”

Colonel Blunt, or Blount, seems to have devoted much time and ingenuity to the improvement of the coach, for on January 22, 1666, the committee again assembled at his house

“—to consider again of the business of chariots and try their new invention which I saw my Lord Brouncker ride in; where the coachman sits astride upon a pole over the horse but do not touch the horse, which is a pretty odd thing: but it seems it is most easy for the horse, and as they say for the man also.”

On February 16, 1667, a chariot invented by Dr. Croune was produced for inspectionby the members of the Royal Society and “generally approved.” No particulars of the vehicle are given: we are only told that “some fence was proposed to be made for the coachman against the kicking of the horse.”

PEPYS’ PRIVATE CARRIAGE.

On October, 20, 1668, Pepys went to look for the carriage he had so long promised himself “and saw many; and did light on one [in Cow Lane] for which I bid £50, which do please me mightily, and I believe I shall have it.” Four days later the coach-maker calls upon him and they agree on £53 as the price. But on the 30th of the same month Mr. Povy comes “to even accounts with me:” and after some gossip about the court,

“—— he and I do talk of my coach and I got him to go and see it, where he finds most infinite fault with it, both as to being out of fashion and heavy, with so good reason that I am mightily glad of his having corrected me in it: and so I do resolve to have one of his build, and with his advice, both in coach and horses, he being the fittest man in the world for it.”

Mr. Povy had been Treasurer and Receiver-General of Rents and Revenues to James, Duke of York: Evelyn describes him as“a nice contriver of all elegancies.” The opinion of such a personage on a point of fashion would have been final with a man of Pepys’ temperament, and we hear no more about the coach with which Mr. Povy “found” most infinite fault.

On 2 November, 1668, Pepys goes “by Mr. Povy’s direction to a coach-maker near him for a coach just like his, but it was sold this very morning.” Mr. Povy lived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and Lord Braybrooke remarks, “Pepys no doubt went to Long Acre, then, as now, celebrated for its coach-makers.” On November 5,

“With Mr. Povy spent all the afternoon going up and down among the coach-makers in Cow Lane and did see several, and at last did pitch upon a little chariot whose body was framed but not covered at the widow’s that made Mr. Lowther’s fine coach; and we are mightily pleased with it, it being light, and will be very genteel and sober: to be covered with leather and yet will hold four.”

The carriage gave great satisfaction when it came home, but the horses were not good enough for it: and on December 12 Pepys records that“this day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses, the first I ever was master of. They cost me £50 and are a fine pair.”

CARRIAGE PAINTING IN PEPYS’ DAY.

Pepys’ position as an official at the Navy Office was not considered by his detractors to give him the social status that entitled him to keep his own coach, and soon after he became the owner of it a scurrilous pamphlet appeared which, incidentally, gives us a description of the arms or device with which it was decorated. After denouncing Pepys for his presumption in owning a carriage at all the writer proceeds:—

“First you had upon the fore part of your chariot tempestuous waves and wrecks of ships; on your left hand forts and great guns and ships a-fighting; on your right hand was a fair harbour and galleys riding with their flags and pennants spread, kindly saluting each other. Behind it were high curled waves and ships a-sinking, and here and there an appearance of some bits of land.”

If this is a true description, it would seem as though Pepys’ idea of the “very genteel and sober” cannot be measured by modern standards of sober gentility: however that may be, the Diarist takes no notice of the pamphlet and continues to enjoy possession “with mighty pride” in a vehicle which he remarks (March 18, 1669), after a drive in Hyde Park, he“thought as pretty as any there, and observed so to be by others.”

In the following April, however, we find him resolving to have “the standards of my coach gilt with this new sort of varnish, which will come to but forty shillings; and contrary to my expectation, the doing of the biggest coach all over comes not to above £6, which is not very much.” One morning, a few days later: “I to my coach, which is silvered over, but no varnish yet laid on, so I put it in a way of doing.” Again, in the afternoon:—

“I to my coach-maker’s and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my coach at three in the afternoon, but I set it in doing and stood by it till eight at night and saw the painter varnish it, which is pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more yellow, and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost, and most coaches are nowadays done so, and it is very pretty when laid on well and not too pale as some are, even to show the silver. Here I did make the workmen drink, and saw my coach cleaned and oiled.”

There is a passage in the Diary (April 30, 1669), which suggests that it was not unusual for people of station and leisure to superintend the painting of their carriages; as Pepys found at the coach-maker’s“a great many ladies sitting in the body of a coach that must be ended [finished] by to-morrow; they were my Lady Marquess of Winchester, Lady Bellassis and other great ladies, eating of bread and butter and drinking ale.”

On the day after that he spent at the coach-maker’s, Pepys, on his return from office, takes his wife for a drive: “We went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons and the standards there gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours, all the day.”

Samuel Pepys’ child-like pride in his carriage was no doubt a source of amusement to his contemporaries, but it has had the result of giving us more minute details concerning the carriages of CharlesII.’s time than we can obtain from the pages of any other writer.

THE FIRST STAGE COACHES.

We must now turn to the stage coach which had come into vogue about the year 1640.[11]Chamberlayne,[12]writing in 1649, says:—

[11]History of the Art of Coach Building.By George A. Thrupp, 1876.

[12]The Present State of Great Britain.By Chamberlayne, 1649.

“There is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns of 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 one’s health and one’s body by hard jogging or over violent motion on horseback, 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 the foreign post can make but in one day.”

There were two classes of coach in the seventeenth century. Mons. Misson[13]says, “There are coaches that go to all the great towns by moderate journeys; and others which they call flying coaches that will travel twenty leagues a day and more. But these do not go to all places.” He also refers to the waggons which “lumber along but heavily,” and which he says are used only by a few poor old women. Four or four miles and a half in the hour was the speed of the ordinary coach.

[13]Memoirs and Observations of a Journey in England, 1697.

The coaches that travelled between London and distant towns were similar in construction to the hackney coach, which plied for hire in the streets, but were built on a larger scale. They carried eightpassengers inside, and behind, over the axle, was a great basket for baggage and outside passengers, who made themselves as comfortable as they might in the straw supplied. The “insides” were protected from rain and cold by leather curtains; neither passengers nor baggage were carried on the roof; and the coachman sat on a bar fixed between the two standard posts from which the body was hung in front, his feet being supported by a footboard on the perch.

Mr. Thrupp states that in 1662 there were only six stage coaches in existence; which assertion does not agree with that of Chamberlayne, quoted on a previous page; the seventeenth century writer tells us that in his time—1649—stage coaches ran “from London to the principle towns in the country.” It seems, however, certain that the year 1662 saw a great increase in the number of “short stages”—that is to say, coaches running between London and towns twenty, thirty, forty miles distant.

OBJECTIONS RAISED TO STAGE COACHES.

This is proved by the somewhat violent pamphlet written by John Cressel, to which reference was made on page 33. This publication, which was entitledThe GrandConcern of England Explained, appeared in 1673. It informs us that the stage coaches, to which John Cressel strongly objects:—

“Are kept by innkeepers ... or else ... by such persons as before the late Act for reducing the number of hackney coaches in London [seepage 33] to 400, were owners of coaches and drove hackney. But when the number of 400 was full and they not licensed, then to avoid the penalties of the Act they removed out of the city dispersing themselves into every little town within twenty miles of London where they set up for stagers and drive every day to London and in the night-time drive about the city.”

“THE MACHINE.” A.D. 1640-1750.

These intruders,[14]whose number John Cressel says is “at least 2,000,” paid no £5, and took bread from the mouths of the four hundred licensed hackney coachmen.

[14]Owing to the profitable nature of the business these unlicensed hackney coaches increased until on November 30, 1687, a Royal Proclamation was issued appointing new Commissioners with authority to make an end of them.

John Cressel’s purpose in writing his pamphlet was to call the attention of Parliament to the necessity which, in his opinion, existed for the suppressing all or most of the stage coaches and caravans which were then plying on the roads; and incidentally he gives some interesting particulars concerning the stage coach service of his time. Takingthe York, Chester and Exeter coaches as examples, he says that each of these with forty horses apiece carry eighteen passengers per week from London.[15]In the summer the fare to either of these places was forty shillings and in winter forty-five shillings; the coachman was changed four times on the way, and the usual practice was for each passenger to give each coachman one shilling.

[15]The stage coach carried six passengers, and a coach left London for each of the towns named three times a week.

The journey—200 miles—occupied four days. These early “flying coaches” travelled faster than their successors of a later date. The seventeenth century London-Exeter coach did the journey, one hundred and seventy-five miles, in ten days, whereas in 1755, according to “Nimrod,” proprietors promised “a safe and expeditious journey in a fortnight.”

The “short stages,”i.e., those which ran between London and places only twenty or thirty miles distant, were the hackney coaches which had not been fortunate enough to obtain licenses under CharlesII.’s Act. These were drawn by four horses andcarried six passengers, making the journey to or from London in one day. There were, John Cressel states, stage coaches running to almost every town situated within twenty or twenty-five miles of the capital; and it is worth observing that at this date letters were sent by coach. Coaches ran on both sides of the Thames from Windsor and Maidenhead, and “carry all the letters, little bundles and passengers which were carried by watermen.”

This writer’s arguments against coaches are worthless as such, but they throw side lights on the discomforts of travel at the time. He considered it detrimental to health to rise in the small hours of the morning to take coach and to retire late to bed. With more reason he enquired,

“Is it for a man’s health to be laid fast in foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; and afterwards sit in the cold till fresh teams of horses can be procured to drag the coach out of the foul ways? Is it for his health to travel in rotten coaches and have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait half the day before making good their stage?”

John Cressel was prone to exaggeration, but there is plenty of reliable contemporary evidence to show that his picture of the coach roads was not overdrawn. Yet whenthis advocate for the suppression of coaches seeks to rouse public sentiment, he reproaches those men who use them for effeminacy and indulgence in luxury! One of his quaintest arguments in favour of the saddle horse is that the rider’s clothes “are wont to be spoyled in two or three journies”; which is, he urges, an excellent thing for trade as represented by the tailors.

John Cressel, it will be gathered from this, viewed the innovation from a lofty stand-point. He describes the introduction of stage coaches as one of the greatest mischiefs that have happened of late years to the King. They wrought harm, he said:

(1) By destroying the breed of good horses, the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman.(2) By hindering the breed of watermen who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwarks of the kingdom.(3) By lessening His Majesty’s revenues; for there is not the fourth part of saddle horses either bred or kept now in England that there was before these coaches set up, and would be again if suppressed.

(1) By destroying the breed of good horses, the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman.

(2) By hindering the breed of watermen who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwarks of the kingdom.

(3) By lessening His Majesty’s revenues; for there is not the fourth part of saddle horses either bred or kept now in England that there was before these coaches set up, and would be again if suppressed.

Travelling on horseback was cheaper than by coach. The “chapman” or trader could hire a horse from the hackneyman at from 6s. to 12s. per week. John Cressel estimates that a man could come from “York,Exeter or Chester to London, and stay twelve days for business (which is the most that country chapmen usually do stay), for £1 16s., horse hire and horse meat 1s. 2d. per day.” From Northampton it cost 16s. to come to London on horseback, from Bristol 25s., Bath 20s., Salisbury 20s. or 25s., and from Reading 7s.

If men would not ride, John Cressel urged them to travel in the long waggons which moved “easily without jolting men’s bodies or hurrying them along as the running coaches do.” The long waggon was drawn by four or five horses and carried from twenty to twenty-five passengers. He proposed that there should be one stage per week from London to each shire town in England; that these should use the same team of horses for the whole journey, that their speed should not exceed thirty miles a day in summer and 25 in winter, and that they should halt at different inns on each journey to support the innkeeping business. If these proposals were carried out, the writer thought stage coaches would “do little or no harm.”

John Cressel’s pamphlet was answered by another from the pen of a barrister, who showed up the futility of his arguments anddeductions, but did not find great fault with his facts and figures.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HIGH ROADS.

It is commonly believed that the introduction of stage coaches produced the first legislative endeavour to improve the country roads; this is not the case: nor had the sufferings of travellers by “long waggon” any influence upon legislators if comparison of dates be a reliable test; for it was not until 1622 that any attempt was made to save the roads. In that year JamesI. issued a Proclamation in which it was stated that inasmuch as the highways were ploughed up by “unreasonable carriages,” and the bridges shaken, the use of four-wheeled carts for carrying goods and agricultural produce was forbidden, carts with two wheels only being allowed.

In 1629 CharlesI. issued a Proclamation confirming that of his father, and furthermore forbidding common carriers and others to convey more than twenty hundredweight in the two-wheeled vehicles which were lawful, and also forbidding the use of more than five horses at once; the avowed object being to prevent destruction of the road.

We may fairly reason from the terms ofthis Proclamation that it was recognised that on occasion five horses might be required to draw one ton along the roads; and from this we can form our own idea of the condition to which traffic and rains might reduce the highways.

In 1661 the restrictions on cart traffic were modified by CharlesII.’s Proclamation, which permitted carts and waggons with four wheels, and drawn by ten or more horses, to carry sixty or seventy hundredweight, and forbade more than five horses to be harnessed to any four-wheeled cart unless the team went in pairs. The orders issued thus by Proclamation were made law by two Acts of CharlesII. in 1670; the second of which forbade the use of more than eight horses or oxen unless harnessed two abreast.

In 1663 the first turnpike gate was erected; this novelty was put on the Great North Road to collect tolls for repair of the highway in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon, where in places it had become “ruinous and almost impassable.” The turnpike was so unpopular that for nearly a century no gate was erected between Glasgow and Grantham.

Nothing more clearly proves the badnessof the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than the number of patents granted to inventors for devices calculated to prevent carriages from over-turning. The first invention towards this end was patented in 1684, and between that date and 1792 nine more patents were granted for devices to prevent upsetting, or to cause the body of the vehicle to remain erect though the wheels turned over.

Few thought it worth trying to discover a method of improving the roads which caused accidents. In 1619, one John Shotbolt took out a patent for “strong engines for making and repairing of roads”; another was issued in 1699 to Nathaniel Bard, who also protected “an engine for levelling and preserving roads and highways”; and in the same year Edward Heming was granted a patent for a method of repairing highways “so as to throw all the rising ridges into the ruts.” History omits to tell us what measure of success rewarded these inventions: if the Patent Specification files form any guide to an opinion, inventors gave up in despair trying to devise means of keeping the roads in order, for not until 1763 does another ingenious person appear with a remedy thought worthy of letters patent.

Repairs to the highways were effected by forced labour when their condition made improvement absolutely necessary. Thus, in 1695, surveyors were appointed by Act of Parliament to require persons to work on the road between London and Harwich, which in places had become almost impassable. Labourers were to be paid at local rates of hire, were not to be called upon to travel more than four miles from home, nor to work more than two days in the week: nor were they liable to be summoned for road-mending during seed, hay and harvest-time. This Act also revised the system of tolls on vehicles: any stage, hackney, or other coach and any calash or chariot was to pay 6d. toll; a cart 8d. and a waggon 1s.

The Company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was founded in 1677 by CharlesII. The foundation of the company shows that the trade of coach-building was by this time large and important, while the interest taken by the King must have given an impetus to the business. We have evidence that coaches of English build were appreciated on the Continent in an old “List of the Names of all the Commodities of English Product and Manufacture that was Exported to France from Englandduring what may be called the Interval of Peace from Christmas, 1698, to Christmas, 1702.” The list includes both coaches and harness for coaches.

In this connection it is to be observed that by the terms of its charter the Coachmakers’ Company was empowered to seek out and destroy bad work wherever they might find such. Under these conditions it is not surprising that English workmanship became famous.

Hyde Park, as Pepys and other writers show us, was the best place in London to see the coaches of the gentry. In an undated petition, submitted by “a great number of licensed hackney coachmen,” there is reference to the “four hundred licensed coachmen in Hyde Park,” from which it might be inferred that these formed a body of license-holders distinct from the four hundred licensed by CharlesII. in 1663.

HACKNEY CABS AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE.

In 1694, when the Parliament was hard pressed for money to carry on the French war, the London cabs or hackney coaches were more heavily taxed under a new system of licenses; the number licensedto ply for hire was raised from 400 to 700, and for each license, which held good for twenty-one years, the sum of £50 was to be paid down, while £4 per annum was to be paid as “rent.” All stage coaches in England and Wales were to pay a tax of £8 a year. This Act confirmed the old tariff of fares for hackney coaches in London (seep. 42), and the prohibition against plying on Sundays, which had been in force since 1662, was partially withdrawn. The new Act allowed 175 cabs to ply for hire on Sundays; the Commissioners were enjoined to arrange matters so that the 700 licensed cabmen should be employed in turn on Sunday.

This Act caused great discontent among the original 400 licensed coachmen, as it made them equally liable with the additional 300 licensees to the £50 impost; their grievances found vent in a petition, wherein they prayed that they, the Original Four Hundred, might be “incorporated” (presumably as a guild or company), and that all stage coaches running between London and places thirty miles therefrom might be suppressed.

The Act of 1693 compelled the hackney coachman to carry a fare ten miles out ofLondon if required, and doubtless the uncertainty of finding a “fare” to bring back was partly owing to the short stages, which ran on every road.

The five Commissioners who were appointed to carry out the provisions of this law discharged their duties with no greater integrity than their predecessors. Yet another Petition from the 700 hackney coachmen refers incidentally to the circumstance that in 1694 three of the five were dismissed for accepting bribes from tradesmen who wanted licenses; the petition also prays for better regulations to control the “many hundred coaches and horses let for hire without license, likewise shaises, hackney chairs and short stages.”

The “shaise” or chaise was evidently a vehicle of a different type from the hackney coach. The post-chaise for hire was introduced into England about this time from France by John, a son of Mr. Jethro Tull, the famous agriculturist who in 1733 published a work, entitled “Horse Hoeing Husbandry,” which attracted great attention and laid the foundation of the use of implements in farming and improvements in methods of cultivation. In 1740 John Tull was granted a patent for a sedan chair fixed on a wheel carriage for horse draught.

MANNERS OF THE CABMAN.

The licensed coachmen had good grounds for complaint, as we learn from an edict issued in 1692 by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the law was systematically evaded; in that year only 160 hackney coachmen applied for licenses and the number plying in the streets was about one thousand. The men were a turbulent set; several, we read, were indicted for “standing of their coaches [in the streets] as a common nuisance, for assaulting constables and tradesmen who attempt to remove them from before their shops.” There were no side walks for foot-passengers in those days, and thus the standing coach might be so placed as to block the entrance to a shop.

Mons. Misson has the following passage concerning the hackney coachman; it is interesting as an illustration of contemporary manners:—

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