*[8] "May 22, 1708. At York. Rose between three and four, the coach being hasted by Captain Crome (whose company we had) upon the Queen's business, that we got to Leeds by noon; blessed be God for mercies to me and my poor family."—Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. ii., 7.
*[9] Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. i.,295.
*[10] Waylen's 'Marlborough.'
*[11] Reprinted in the 'Harleian Miscellany,' vol. viii., p. 547. supposed to have been written by one John Gressot, of the Charterhouse.
*[12] There were other publications of the time as absurd (viewed by the light of the present day) as Gressot's. Thus, "A Country Tradesman," addressing the public in 1678, in a pamphlet entitled 'The Ancient Trades decayed, repaired again,—wherein are declared the several abuses that have utterly impaired all the ancient trades in the Kingdom,' urges that the chief cause of the evil had been the setting up of Stage-coaches some twenty years before. Besides the reasons for suppressing; them set forth in the treatise referred to in the text, he says, "Were it not' for them (the Stage-coaches), there would be more Wine, Beer, and Ale, drunk in the Inns than is now, which would be a means to augment the King's Custom and Excise. Furthermore they hinder the breed of horses in this kingdom [the same argument was used against Railways], because many would be necessitated to keep a good horse that keeps none now. Seeing, then, that there are few that are gainers by them, and that they are against the common and general good of the Nation, and are only a conveniency to some that have occasion to go to London, who might still have the same wages as before these coaches were in use, therefore there is good reason they should be suppressed. Not but that it may be lawful to hire a coach upon occasion, but that it should be unlawful only to keep a coach that should go long journeys constantly, from one stage or place to another, upon certain days of the week as they do now"— p. 27.
*[13] Roberts's 'Social History of the Southern Counties,' p. 494. Little more than a century ago, we find the following advertisement of a Newcastle flying coach:— "May 9, 1734.—A coach will set out towards the end of next week for London, or any place on the road. To be performed in nine days,—being three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road; for which purpose eight stout horses are stationed at proper distances."
*[14] In 1710 a Manchester manufacturer taking his family up to London, hired a coach for the whole way, which, in the then state of the roads, must have made it a journey of probably eight or ten days. And, in 1742, the system of travelling had so little improved, that a lady, wanting to come with her niece from Worcester to Manchester, wrote to a friend in the latter place to send her a hired coach, because the man knew the road, having brought from thence a family some time before."—Aikin's 'Manchester.'
*[15] Lord Campbell mentions the remarkable circumstance that Popham, afterwards Lord Chief Justice in the reign of Elizabeth, took to the road in early life, and robbed travellers on Gad's Hill. Highway robbery could not, however, have been considered a very ignominious pursuit at that time, as during Popham's youth a statute was made by which, on a first conviction for robbery, a peer of the realm or lord of parliament was entitled to have benefit of clergy, "though he cannot read!" What is still more extraordinary is, that Popham is supposed to have continued in his course as 'a highwayman even after he was called to the Bar. This seems to have been quite notorious, for when he was made Serjeant the wags reported that he served up some wine destined for an Alderman of London, which he had intercepted on its way from Southampton.—Aubrey, iii., 492.—Campbell's 'Chief Justices,' i., 210.
*[16] Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany,' p. 147.
*[17] "It is as common a custom, as a cunning policie in thieves, to place chamberlains in such great inns where cloathiers and graziers do lye; and by their large bribes to infect others, who were not of their own preferring; who noting your purses when you draw them, they'l gripe your cloak-bags, and feel the weight, and so inform the master thieves of what they think, and not those alone, but the Host himself is oft as base as they, if it be left in charge with them all night; he to his roaring guests either gives item, or shews the purse itself, who spend liberally, in hope of a speedie recruit." See 'A Brief yet Notable Discovery of Housebreakers,' &c., 1659. See also 'Street Robberies Considered; a Warning for Housekeepers,' 1676; 'Hanging not Punishment Enough,' 1701; &c.
*[18] The food of London was then principally brought to town in panniers. The population being comparatively small, the feeding of London was still practicable in this way; besides, the city always possessed the great advantage of the Thames, which secured a supply of food by sea. In 'The Grand Concern of England Explained,' it is stated that the hay, straw, beans, peas, and oats, used in London, were principally raised within a circuit of twenty miles of the metropolis; but large quantities were also brought from Henley-on-thames and other western parts, as well as from below Gravesend, by water; and many ships laden with beans came from Hull, and with oats from Lynn and Boston.
*[19] 'Loides and Elmete, by T.D. Whitaker, LL.D., 1816, p. 81. Notwithstanding its dangers, Dr. Whitaker seems to have been of opinion that the old mode of travelling was even safer than that which immediately followed it; "Under the old state of roads and manners," he says, "it was impossible that more than one death could happen at once; what, by any possibility, could take place analogous to a race betwixt two stage-coaches, in which the lives of thirty or forty distressed and helpless individuals are at the mercy of two intoxicated brutes?"
*[20] In the curious collection of old coins at the Guildhall there are several halfpenny tokens issued by the proprietors of inns bearing the sign of the pack-horse, Some of these would indicate that packhorses were kept for hire. We append a couple of illustrations of these curious old coins.
[Image]
While the road communications of the country remained thus imperfect, the people of one part of England knew next to nothing of the other. When a shower of rain had the effect of rendering the highways impassable, even horsemen were cautious in venturing far from home. But only a very limited number of persons could then afford to travel on horseback. The labouring people journeyed on foot, while the middle class used the waggon or the coach. But the amount of intercourse between the people of different districts —then exceedingly limited at all times—was, in a country so wet as England, necessarily suspended for all classes during the greater part of the year.
The imperfect communication existing between districts had the effect of perpetuating numerous local dialects, local prejudices, and local customs, which survive to a certain extent to this day; though they are rapidly disappearing, to the regret of many, under the influence of improved facilities for travelling. Every village had its witches, sometimes of different sorts, and there was scarcely an old house but had its white lady or moaning old man with a long beard. There were ghosts in the fens which walked on stilts, while the sprites of the hill country rode on flashes of fire. But the village witches and local ghosts have long since disappeared, excepting perhaps in a few of the less penetrable districts, where they may still survive. It is curious to find that down even to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the inhabitants of the southern districts of the island regarded those of the north as a kind of ogres. Lancashire was supposed to be almost impenetrable— as indeed it was to a considerable extent,—and inhabited by a half-savage race. Camden vaguely described it, previous to his visit in 1607, as that part of the country " lying beyond the mountains towards the Western Ocean." He acknowledged that he approached the Lancashire people "with a kind of dread," but determined at length "to run the hazard of the attempt," trusting in the Divine assistance. Camden was exposed to still greater risks in his survey of Cumberland. When he went into that county for the purpose of exploring the remains of antiquity it contained for the purposes of his great work, he travelled along the line of the Roman Wall as far as Thirlwall castle, near Haltwhistle; but there the limits of civilization and security ended; for such was the wildness of the country and of its lawless inhabitants beyond, that he was obliged to desist from his pilgrimage, and leave the most important and interesting objects of his journey unexplored.
About a century later, in 1700, the Rev. Mr. Brome, rector of Cheriton in Kent, entered upon a series of travels in England as if it had been a newly-discovered country. He set out in spring so soon as the roads had become passable. His friends convoyed him on the first stage of his journey, and left him, commending him to the Divine protection. He was, however, careful to employ guides to conduct him from one place to another, and in the course of his three years' travels he saw many new and wonderful things. He was under the necessity of suspending his travels when the winter or wet weather set in, and to lay up, like an arctic voyager, for several months, until the spring came round again. Mr. Brome passed through Northumberland into Scotland, then down the western side of the island towards Devonshire, where he found the farmers gathering in their corn on horse-back, the roads being so narrow that it was impossible for them to use waggons. He desired to travel into Cornwall, the boundaries of which he reached, but was prevented proceeding farther by the rains, and accordingly he made the best of his way home.*[1] The vicar of Cheriton was considered a wonderful man in his day,— almost as as venturous as we should now regard a traveller in Arabia. Twenty miles of slough, or an unbridged river between two parishes, were greater impediments to intercourse than the Atlantic Ocean now is between England and America. Considerable towns situated in the same county, were then more widely separated, for practical purposes, than London and Glasgow are at the present day. There were many districts which travellers never visited, and where the appearance of a stranger produced as great an excitement as the arrival of a white man in an African village.*[2]
The author of 'Adam Bede' has given us a poet's picture of the leisure of last century, which has "gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. "Old Leisure" lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree walls, and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling." But this picture has also its obverse side. Whole generations then lived a monotonous, ignorant, prejudiced, and humdrum life. They had no enterprize, no energy, little industry, and were content to die where they were born. The seclusion in which they were compelled to live, produced a picturesqueness of manners which is pleasant to look back upon, now that it is a thing of the past; but it was also accompanied with a degree of grossness and brutality much less pleasant to regard, and of which the occasional popular amusements of bull-running, cock-fighting, cock-throwing, the saturnalia of Plough-Monday, and such like, were the fitting exponents.
People then knew little except of their own narrow district. The world beyond was as good as closed against them. Almost the only intelligence of general affairs which reached them was communicated by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail to their customers the news of the day with their wares; or, at most, a newsletter from London, after it had been read nearly to pieces at the great house of the district, would find its way to the village, and its driblets of information would thus become diffused among the little community. Matters of public interest were long in becoming known in the remoter districts of the country. Macaulay relates that the death of Queen Elizabeth was not heard of in some parts of Devon until the courtiers of her successor had ceased to wear mourning for her. The news of Cromwell's being made Protector only reached Bridgewater nineteen days after the event, when the bells were set a-ringing; and the churches in the Orkneys continued to put up the usual prayers for James II. three months after he had taken up his abode at St. Germains. There were then no shops in the smaller towns or villages, and comparatively few in the larger; and these were badly furnished with articles for general use. The country people were irregularly supplied by hawkers, who sometimes bore their whole stook upon their back, or occasionally on that of their pack-horses. Pots, pans, and household utensils were sold from door to door. Until a comparatively recent period, the whole of the pottery-ware manufactured in Staffordshire was hawked about and disposed of in this way. The pedlars carried frames resembling camp-stools, on which they were accustomed to display their wares when the opportunity occurred for showing them to advantage. The articles which they sold were chiefly of a fanciful kind—ribbons, laces, and female finery; the housewives' great reliance for the supply of general clothing in those days being on domestic industry.
Every autumn, the mistress of the household was accustomed to lay in a store of articles sufficient to serve for the entire winter. It was like laying in a stock of provisions and clothing for a siege during the time that the roads were closed. The greater part of the meat required for winter's use was killed and salted down at Martinmas, while stockfish and baconed herrings were provided for Lent. Scatcherd says that in his district the clothiers united in groups of three or four, and at the Leeds winter fair they would purchase an ox, which, having divided, they salted and hung the pieces for their winter's food.*[3] There was also the winter's stock of firewood to be provided, and the rushes with which to strew the floors—carpets being a comparatively modern invention; besides, there was the store of wheat and barley for bread, the malt for ale, the honey for sweetening (then used for sugar), the salt, the spiceries, and the savoury herbs so much employed in the ancient cookery. When the stores were laid in, the housewife was in a position to bid defiance to bad roads for six months to come. This was the case of the well-to-do; but the poorer classes, who could not lay in a store for winter, were often very badly off both for food and firing, and in many hard seasons they literally starved. But charity was active in those days, and many a poor man's store was eked out by his wealthier neighbour.
When the household supply was thus laid in, the mistress, with her daughters and servants, sat down to their distaffs and spinning-wheels; for the manufacture of the family clothing was usually the work of the winter months. The fabrics then worn were almost entirely of wool, silk and cotton being scarcely known. The wool, when not grown on the farm, was purchased in a raw state, and was carded, spun, dyed, and in many cases woven at home: so also with the linen clothing, which, until quite a recent date, was entirely the produce of female fingers and household spinning-wheels. This kind of work occupied the winter months, occasionally alternated with knitting, embroidery, and tapestry work. Many of our country houses continue to bear witness to the steady industry of the ladies of even the highest ranks in those times, in the fine tapestry hangings with which the walls of many of the older rooms in such mansions are covered.
Among the humbler classes, the same winter's work went on. The women sat round log fires knitting, plaiting, and spinning by fire-light, even in the daytime. Glass had not yet come into general use, and the openings in the wall which in summer-time served for windows, had necessarily to be shut close with boards to keep out the cold, though at the same time they shut out the light. The chimney, usually of lath and plaster, ending overhead in a cone and funnel for the smoke, was so roomy in old cottages as to accommodate almost the whole family sitting around the fire of logs piled in the reredosse in the middle, and there they carried on their winter's work.
Such was the domestic occupation of women in the rural districts in olden times; and it may perhaps be questioned whether the revolution in our social system, which has taken out of their hands so many branches of household manufacture and useful domestic employment, be an altogether unmixed blessing.
Winter at an end, and the roads once more available for travelling, the Fair of the locality was looked forward to with interest. Fairs were among the most important institutions of past times, and were rendered necessary by the imperfect road communications. The right of holding them was regarded as a valuable privilege, conceded by the sovereign to the lords of the manors, who adopted all manner of devices to draw crowds to their markets. They were usually held at the entrances to valleys closed against locomotion during winter, or in the middle of rich grazing districts, or, more frequently, in the neighbourhood of famous cathedrals or churches frequented by flocks of pilgrims. The devotion of the people being turned to account, many of the fairs were held on Sundays in the churchyards; and almost in every parish a market was instituted on the day on which the parishioners were called together to do honour to their patron saint.
The local fair, which was usually held at the beginning or end of winter, often at both times, became the great festival as well as market of the district; and the business as well as the gaiety of the neighbourhood usually centred on such occasions. High courts were held by the Bishop or Lord of the Manor, to accommodate which special buildings were erected, used only at fair time. Among the fairs of the first class in England were Winchester, St. Botolph's Town (Boston), and St. Ives. We find the great London merchants travelling thither in caravans, bearing with them all manner of goods, and bringing back the wool purchased by them in exchange.
Winchester Great Fair attracted merchants from all parts of Europe. It was held on the hill of St. Giles, and was divided into streets of booths, named after the merchants of the different countries who exposed their wares in them. "The passes through the great woody districts, which English merchants coming from London and the West would be compelled to traverse, were on this occasion carefully guarded by mounted 'serjeants-at-arms,' since the wealth which was being conveyed to St. Giles's-hill attracted bands of outlaws from all parts of the country."*[4] Weyhill Fair, near Andover, was another of the great fairs in the same district, which was to the West country agriculturists and clothiers what Winchester St. Giles's Fair was to the general merchants.
The principal fair in the northern districts was that of St. Botolph's Town (Boston), which was resorted to by people from great distances to buy and sell commodities of various kinds. Thus we find, from the 'Compotus' of Bolton Priory,*[5] that the monks of that house sent their wool to St. Botolph's Fair to be sold, though it was a good hundred miles distant; buying in return their winter supply of groceries, spiceries, and other necessary articles. That fair, too, was often beset by robbers, and on one occasion a strong party of them, under the disguise of monks, attacked and robbed certain booths, setting fire to the rest; and such was the amount of destroyed wealth, that it is said the veins of molten gold and silver ran along the streets.
The concourse of persons attending these fairs was immense. The nobility and gentry, the heads of the religions houses, the yeomanry and the commons, resorted to them to buy and sell all manner of agricultural produce. The farmers there sold their wool and cattle, and hired their servants; while their wives disposed of the surplus produce of their winter's industry, and bought their cutlery, bijouterie, and more tasteful articles of apparel. There were caterers there for all customers; and stuffs and wares were offered for sale from all countries. And in the wake of this business part of the fair there invariably followed a crowd of ministers to the popular tastes— quack doctors and merry andrews, jugglers and minstrels, singlestick players, grinners through horse-collars, and sportmakers of every kind.
Smaller fairs were held in most districts for similar purposes of exchange. At these the staples of the locality were sold and servants usually hired. Many were for special purposes—cattle fairs, leather fairs, cloth fairs, bonnet fairs, fruit fairs. Scatcherd says that less than a century ago a large fair was held between Huddersfield and Leeds, in a field still called Fairstead, near Birstal, which used to be a great mart for fruit, onions, and such like; and that the clothiers resorted thither from all the country round to purchase the articles, which were stowed away in barns, and sold at booths by lamplight in the morning.*[6] Even Dartmoor had its fair, on the site of an ancient British village or temple near Merivale Bridge, testifying to its great antiquity; for it is surprising how an ancient fair lingers about the place on which it has been accustomed to be held, long after the necessity for it has ceased. The site of this old fair at Merivale Bridge is the more curious, as in its immediate neighbourhood, on the road between Two Bridges and Tavistock, is found the singular-looking granite rock, bearing so remarkable a resemblance to the Egyptian sphynx, in a mutilated state. It is of similarly colossal proportions, and stands in a district almost as lonely as that in which the Egyptian sphynx looks forth over the sands of the Memphean Desert.*[7]
[Image] Site of an ancient British village and fair on Dartmoor.
The last occasion on which the fair was held in this secluded spot was in the year 1625, when the plague raged at Tavistock; and there is a part of the ground, situated amidst a line of pillars marking a stone avenue—a characteristic feature of the ancient aboriginal worship—which is to this day pointed out and called by the name of the "Potatoe market."
But the glory of the great fairs has long since departed. They declined with the extension of turnpikes, and railroads gave them their death-blow. Shops now exist in every little town and village, drawing their supplies regularly by road and canal from the most distant parts. St. Bartholomew, the great fair of London,*[8] and Donnybrook, the great fair of Dublin, have been suppressed as nuisances; and nearly all that remains of the dead but long potent institution of the Fair, is the occasional exhibition at periodic times in country places, of pig-faced ladies, dwarfs, giants, double-bodied calves, and such-like wonders, amidst a blatant clangour of drums, gongs, and cymbals. Like the sign of the Pack-Horse over the village inn door, the modern village fair, of which the principal article of merchandise is gingerbread-nuts, is but the vestige of a state of things that has long since passed away.
There were, however, remote and almost impenetrable districts which long resisted modern inroads. Of such was Dartmoor, which we have already more than once referred to. The difficulties of road-engineering in that quarter, as well as the sterility of a large proportion of the moor, had the effect of preventing its becoming opened up to modern traffic; and it is accordingly curious to find how much of its old manners, customs, traditions, and language has been preserved. It looks like a piece of England of the Middle Ages, left behind on the march. Witches still hold their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less than three distinct kinds— white, black, and grey,*[9]—and there are still professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, in most of the villages.
As might be expected, the pack-horses held their ground in Dartmoor the longest, and in some parts of North Devon they are not yet extinct. When our artist was in the neighbourhood, sketching the ancient bridge on the moor and the site of the old fair, a farmer said to him, "I well remember the train of pack-horses and the effect of their jingling bells on the silence of Dartmoor. My grandfather, a respectable farmer in the north of Devon, was the first to use a 'butt' (a square box without wheels, dragged by a horse) to carry manure to field; he was also the first man in the district to use an umbrella, which on Sundays he hung in the church-porch, an object of curiosity to the villagers." We are also informed by a gentleman who resided for some time at South Brent', on the borders of the Moor, that the introduction of the first cart in that district is remembered by many now living, the bridges having been shortly afterwards widened to accommodate the wheeled vehicles.
The primitive features of this secluded district are perhaps best represented by the interesting little town of Chagford, situated in the valley of the North Teign, an ancient stannary and market town backed by a wide stretch of moor. The houses of the place are built of moor stone—grey, venerable-looking, and substantial—some with projecting porch and parvise room over, and granite-mullioned windows; the ancient church, built of granite, with a stout old steeple of the same material, its embattled porch and granite-groined vault springing from low columns with Norman-looking capitals, forming the sturdy centre of this ancient town clump.
A post-chaise is still a phenomenon in Chagford, the roads and lanes leading to it being so steep and rugged as to be ill adapted for springed vehicles of any sort. The upland road or track to Tavistock scales an almost precipitous hill, and though well enough adapted for the pack-horse of the last century, it is quite unfitted for the cart and waggon traffic of this. Hence the horse with panniers maintains its ground in the Chagford district; and the double-horse, furnished with a pillion for the lady riding behind, is still to be met with in the country roads.
Among the patriarchs of the hills, the straight-breasted blue coat may yet be seen, with the shoe fastened with buckle and strap as in the days when George III. was king; and old women are still found retaining the cloak and hood of their youth. Old agricultural implements continue in use. The slide or sledge is seen in the fields; the flail, with its monotonous strokes, resounds from the barn-floors; the corn is sifted by the windstow—the wind merely blowing away the chaff from the grain when shaken out of sieves by the motion of the hand on some elevated spot; the old wooden plough is still at work, and the goad is still used to urge the yoke of oxen in dragging it along.
[Image] The Devonshire Crooks
"In such a place as Chagford," says Mr. Rowe, "the cooper or rough carpenter will still find a demand for the pack-saddle, with its accompanying furniture of crooks, crubs, or dung-pots. Before the general introduction of carts, these rough and ready contrivances were found of great utility in the various operations of husbandry, and still prove exceedingly convenient in situations almost, or altogether, inaccessible to wheel-carriages. The long crooks are used for the carriage of corn in sheaf from the harvest-field to the mowstead or barn, for the removal of furze, browse, faggot-wood, and other light materials. The writer of one of the happiest effusions of the local muse,*[10] with fidelity to nature equal to Cowper or Crabbe, has introduced the figure of a Devonshire pack-horse bending under the 'swagging load' of the high-piled crooks as an emblem of care toiling along the narrow and rugged path of life. The force and point of the imagery must be lost to those who have never seen (and, as in an instance which came under my own knowledge, never heard of) this unique specimen of provincial agricultural machinery. The crooks are formed of two poles,*[11] about ten feet long, bent, when green, into the required curve, and when dried in that shape are connected by horizontal bars. A pair of crooks, thus completed, is slung over the pack-saddle—one 'swinging on each side to make the balance true.' The short crooks, or crubs, are slung in a similar manner. These are of stouter fabric, and angular shape, and are used for carrying logs of wood and other heavy materials. The dung-pots, as the name implies, were also much in use in past times, for the removal of dung and other manure from the farmyard to the fallow or plough lands. The slide, or sledge, may also still occasionally be seen in the hay or corn fields, sometimes without, and in other cases mounted on low wheels, rudely but substantially formed of thick plank, such as might have brought the ancient Roman's harvest load to the barn some twenty centuries ago."
Mrs. Bray says the crooks are called by the country people "Devil's tooth-picks." A correspondent informs us that the queer old crook-packs represented in our illustration are still in use in North Devon. He adds: "The pack-horses were so accustomed to their position when travelling in line (going in double file) and so jealous of their respective places, that if one got wrong and took another's place, the animal interfered with would strike at the offender with his crooks."
Footnotes for Chapter III.
*[1] 'Three Years' Travels in England, Scotland, and Wales.' By James Brome, M.A., Rector of Cheriton, Kent. London, 1726.
*[2] The treatment the stranger received was often very rude. When William Hutton, of Birmingham, accompanied by another gentleman, went to view the field of Bosworth, in 1770, "the inhabitants," he says, "set their dogs at us in the street, merely because we were strangers. Human figures not their own are seldom seen in these inhospitable regions. Surrounded with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanise the mind. nor commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors of Nature." In certain villages in Lancashire and Yorkshire, not very remote from large towns, the appearance of a stranger, down to a comparatively recent period, excited a similar commotion amongst the villagers, and the word would pass from door to door, "Dost knaw'im?" "Naya." "Is 'e straunger?" "Ey, for sewer." "Then paus' 'im— 'Eave a duck [stone] at 'im— Fettle 'im!" And the "straunger" would straightway find the "ducks" flying about his head, and be glad to make his escape from the village with his life.
*[3] Scatcherd, 'History of Morley.'
*[4] Murray's ' Handbook of Surrey, Hants, and Isle of Wight,' 168.
*[5] Whitaker's 'History of Craven.'
*[6] Scatcherd's 'History of Morley,' 226.
*[7] Vixen Tor is the name of this singular-looking rock. But it is proper to add, that its appearance is probably accidental, the head of the Sphynx being produced by the three angular blocks of rock seen in profile. Mr. Borlase, however, in his ' Antiquities of Cornwall,' expresses the opinion that the rock-basins on the summit of the rock were used by the Druids for purposes connected with their religious ceremonies.
*[8] The provisioning of London, now grown so populous, would be almost impossible but for the perfect system of roads now converging on it from all parts. In early times, London, like country places, had to lay in its stock of salt-provisions against winter, drawing its supplies of vegetables from the country within easy reach of the capital. Hence the London market-gardeners petitioned against the extension of tumpike-roads about a century ago, as they afterwards petitioned against the extension of railways, fearing lest their trade should be destroyed by the competition of country-grown cabbages. But the extension of the roads had become a matter of absolute necessity, in order to feed the huge and ever-increasing mouth of the Great Metropolis, the population of which has grown in about two centuries from four hundred thousand to three millions. This enormous population has, perhaps, never at any time more than a fortnight's supply of food in stock, and most families not more than a few days; yet no one ever entertains the slightest apprehension of a failure in the supply, or even of a variation in the price from day to day in consequence of any possible shortcoming. That this should be so, would be one of the most surprising things in the history of modern London, but that it is sufficiently accounted for by the magnificent system of roads, canals, and railways, which connect it with the remotest corners of the kingdom. Modern London is mainly fed by steam. The Express Meat-Train, which runs nightly from Aberdeen to London, drawn by two engines and makes the journey in twenty-four hours, is but a single illustration of the rapid and certain method by which modem London is fed. The north Highlands of Scotland have thus, by means of railways, become grazing-grounds for the metropolis. Express fish trains from Dunbar and Eyemouth (Smeaton's harbours), augmented by fish-trucks from Cullercoats and Tynemouth on the Northumberland coast, and from Redcar, Whitby, and Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast, also arrive in London every morning. And what with steam-vessels bearing cattle, and meat and fish arriving by sea, and canal-boats laden with potatoes from inland, and railway-vans laden with butter and milk drawn from a wide circuit of country, and road-vans piled high with vegetables within easy drive of Covent Garden, the Great Mouth is thus from day to day regularly, satisfactorily, and expeditiously filled.
*[9] The white witches are kindly disposed, the black cast the "evil eye," and the grey are consulted for the discovery of theft, &c.
*[10] See 'The Devonshire Lane', above quoted
*[11] Willow saplings, crooked and dried in the required form.
The internal communications of Scotland, which Telford did so much in the course of his life to improve, were, if possible, even worse than those of England about the middle of last century. The land was more sterile, and the people were much poorer. Indeed, nothing could be more dreary than the aspect which Scotland then presented. Her fields lay untilled, her mines unexplored, and her fisheries uncultivated. The Scotch towns were for the most part collections of thatched mud cottages, giving scant shelter to a miserable population. The whole country was desponding, gaunt, and haggard, like Ireland in its worst times. The common people were badly fed and wretchedly clothed, those in the country for the most part living in huts with their cattle. Lord Kaimes said of the Scotch tenantry of the early part of last century, that they were so benumbed by oppression and poverty that the most able instructors in husbandry could have made nothing of them. A writer in the 'Farmer's Magazine' sums up his account of Scotland at that time in these words:—"Except in a few instances, it was little better than a barren waste."*[1]
The modern traveller through the Lothians—which now exhibit perhaps the finest agriculture in the world—will scarcely believe that less than a century ago these counties were mostly in the state in which Nature had left them. In the interior there was little to be seen but bleak moors and quaking bogs. The chief part of each farm consisted of "out-field," or unenclosed land, no better than moorland, from which the hardy black cattle could scarcely gather herbage enough in winter to keep them from starving. The "in-field" was an enclosed patch of illcultivated ground, on which oats and "bear," or barley, were grown; but the principal crop was weeds.
Of the small quantity of corn raised in the country, nine-tenths were grown within five miles of the coast; and of wheat very little was raised—not a blade north of the Lothians. When the first crop of that grain was tried on a field near Edinburgh, about the middle of last century, people flocked to it as a wonder. Clover, turnips, and potatoes had not yet been introduced, and no cattle were fattened: it was with difficulty they could be kept alive.
All loads were as yet carried on horseback; but when the farm was too small, or the crofter too poor to keep a horse, his own or his wife's back bore the load. The horse brought peats from the bog, carried the oats or barley to market, and bore the manure a-field. But the uses of manure were as yet so little understood that, if a stream were near, it was usually thrown in and floated away, and in summer it was burnt.
What will scarcely be credited, now that the industry of Scotland has become educated by a century's discipline of work, was the inconceivable listlessness and idleness of the people. They left the bog unreclaimed, and the swamp undrained. They would not be at the trouble to enclose lands easily capable of cultivation. There was, perhaps, but little inducement on the part of the agricultural class to be industrious; for they were too liable to be robbed by those who preferred to be idle. Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun—commonly known as "The Patriot," because he was so strongly opposed to the union of Scotland with England*[2]— published a pamphlet, in 1698, strikingly illustrative of the lawless and uncivilized state of the country at that time. After giving a dreadful picture of the then state of Scotland: two hundred thousand vagabonds begging from door to door and robbing and plundering the poor people,— "in years of plenty many thousands of them meeting together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together,"—he proceeded to urge that every man of a certain estate should be obliged to take a proportionate number of these vagabonds and compel them to work for him; and further, that such serfs, with their wives and children, should be incapable of alienating their service from their master or owner until he had been reimbursed for the money he had expended on them: in other words, their owner was to have the power of selling them. "The Patriot" was, however, aware that "great address, diligence, and severity" were required to carry out his scheme; "for," said he, "that sort of people are so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call Slavery, that unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children, than appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such service."*[3]
Although the recommendations of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun were embodied in no Act of Parliament, the magistrates of some of the larger towns did not hesitate to kidnap and sell into slavery lads and men found lurking in the streets, which they continued to do down to a comparatively recent period. This, however, was not so surprising as that at the time of which we are speaking, and, indeed, until the end of last century, there was a veritable slave class in Scotland—the class of colliers and salters—who were bought and sold with the estates to which they belonged, as forming part of the stook. When they ran away, they were advertised for as negroes were in the American States until within the last few years. It is curious, in turning over an old volume of the 'Scots Magazine,' to find a General Assembly's petition to Parliament for the abolition of slavery in America almost alongside the report of a trial of some colliers who had absconded from a mine near Stirling to which they belonged. But the degraded condition of the home slaves then excited comparatively little interest. Indeed, it was not until the very last year of the last century that praedial slavery was abolished in Scotland—only three short reigns ago, almost within the memory of men still living.*[4] The greatest resistance was offered to the introduction of improvements in agriculture, though it was only at rare intervals that these were attempted. There was no class possessed of enterprise or wealth. An idea of the general poverty of the country may be inferred from the fact that about the middle of last century the whole circulating medium of the two Edinburgh banks—the only institutions of the kind then in Scotland—amounted to only 200,000L., which was sufficient for the purposes of trade, commerce, and industry. Money was then so scarce that Adam Smith says it was not uncommon for workmen, in certain parts of Scotland, to carry nails instead of pence to the baker's or the alehouse. A middle class could scarcely as yet be said to exist, or any condition between the starving cottiers and the impoverished proprietors, whose available means were principally expended in hard drinking.*[5]
The latter were, for the most part, too proud and too ignorant to interest themselves in the improvement of their estates; and the few who did so had very little encouragement to persevere. Miss Craig, in describing the efforts made by her father, William Craig, laird of Arbigland, in Kirkcudbright, says, "The indolent obstinacy of the lower class of the people was found to be almost unconquerable. Amongst other instances of their laziness, I have heard him say that, upon the introduction of the mode of dressing the grain at night which had been thrashed during the day, all the servants in the neighbourhood refused to adopt the measure, and even threatened to destroy the houses of their employers by fire if they continued to insist upon the business. My father speedily perceived that a forcible remedy was required for the evil. He gave his servants the choice of removing the thrashed grain in the evening, or becoming inhabitants of Kirkcudbright gaol: they preferred the former alternative, and open murmurings were no longer heard."*[6]
The wages paid to the labouring classes were then very low. Even in East Lothian, which was probably in advance of the other Scotch counties, the ordinary day's wage of a labouring man was only five pence in winter and six pence in summer. Their food was wholly vegetable, and was insufficient in quantity as well as bad in quality. The little butcher's meat consumed by the better class was salted beef and mutton, stored up in Ladner time (between Michaelmas and Martinmas) for the year's consumption. Mr. Buchan Hepburn says the Sheriff of East Lothian informed him that he remembered when not a bullock was slaughtered in Haddington market for a whole year, except at that time; and, when Sir David Kinloch, of Gilmerton sold ten wedders to an Edinburgh butcher, he stipulated for three several terms to take them away, to prevent the Edinburgh market from being overstocked with fresh butcher's meat!*[7]
The rest of Scotland was in no better state: in some parts it was even worse. The rich and fertile county of Ayr, which now glories in the name of "the garden of Scotland," was for the most part a wild and dreary waste, with here and there a poor, miserable, comfortless hut, where the farmer and his family lodged. There were no enclosures of land, except one or two about a proprietor's residence; and black cattle roamed at large over the face of the country. When an attempt was made to enclose the lands for the purposes of agriculture, the fences were levelled by the dispossessed squatters. Famines were frequent among the poorer classes; the western counties not producing food enough for the sustenance of the inhabitants, few though they were in number. This was also the case in Dumfries, where the chief part of the grain required for the population was brought in "tumbling-cars" from the sandbeds of Esk; "and when the waters were high by reason of spates [or floods], and there being no bridges, so that the cars could not come with the meal, the tradesmen's wives might be seen in the streets of Dumfries, crying; because there was no food to be had."*[8]
The misery of the country was enormously aggravated by the wretched state of the roads. There were, indeed, scarcely any made roads throughout the country. Hence the communication between one town and another was always difficult, especially in winter. There were only rough tracks across moors, and when one track became too deep, another alongside of it was chosen, and was in its turn abandoned, until the whole became equally impassable. In wet weather these tracks became "mere sloughs, in which the carts or carriages had to slumper through in a half-swimming state, whilst, in times of drought it was a continual jolting out of one hole into another."*[9]
Such being the state of the highways, it will be obvious that very little communication could exist between one part of the country and another. Single-horse traffickers, called cadgers, plied between the country towns and the villages, supplying the inhabitants with salt, fish, earthenware, and articles of clothing, which they carried in sacks or creels hung across their horses' backs. Even the trade between Edinburgh and Glasgow was carried on in the same primitive way, the principal route being along the high grounds west of Boroughstoness, near which the remains of the old pack-horse road are still to be seen.
It was long before vehicles of any sort could be used on the Scotch roads. Rude sledges and tumbling-cars were employed near towns, and afterwards carts, the wheels of which were first made of boards. It was long before travelling by coach could be introduced in Scotland. When Smollett travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh on his way to London, in 1739, there was neither coach, cart, nor waggon on the road. He accordingly accompanied the pack-horse carriers as far as Newcastle, "sitting upon a pack-saddle between two baskets, one of which," he says, "contained my goods in a knapsack."
In 1743 an attempt was made by the Town Council of Glasgow to set up a stage-coach or "lando." It was to be drawn by six horses, carry six passengers, and run between Glasgow and Edinburgh, a distance of forty-four miles, once a week in winter, and twice a week in summer. The project, however, seems to have been thought too bold for the time, for the "lando" was never started. It was not until the year 1749 that the first public conveyance, called "The Glasgow and Edinburgh Caravan," was started between the two cities, and it made the journey between the one place and the other in two days. Ten years later another vehicle was started, named "The Fly" because of its unusual speed, and it contrived to make the journey in rather less than a day and a half.
About the same time, a coach with four horses was started between Haddington and Edinburgh, and it took a full winter's day to perform the journey of sixteen miles: the effort being to reach Musselburgh in time for dinner, and go into town in the evening. As late as 1763 there was as only one stage-coach in all Scotland in communication with London, and that set out from Edinburgh only once a month. The journey to London occupied from ten to fifteen days, according to the state of the weather; and those who undertook so dangerous a journey usually took the precaution of making their wills before starting.
When carriers' carts were established, the time occupied by them on the road will now appear almost incredible. Thus the common carrier between Selkirk and Edinburgh, a distance of only thirty-eight miles, took about a fortnight to perform the double journey. Part of the road lay along Gala Water, and in summer time, when the river-bed was dry, the carrier used it as a road. The townsmen of this adventurous individual, on the morning of his way-going, were accustomed to turn out and take leave of him, wishing him a safe return from his perilous journey. In winter the route was simply impracticable, and the communication was suspended until the return of dry weather.
While such was the state of the communications in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis of Scotland, matters were, if possible, still worse in the remoter parts of the country. Down to the middle of last century, there were no made roads of any kind in the south-western counties. The only inland trade was in black cattle; the tracks were impracticable for vehicles, of which there were only a few—carts and tumbling-cars—employed in the immediate neighbourhood of the towns. When the Marquis of Downshire attempted to make a journey through Galloway in his coach, about the year 1760, a party of labourers with tools attended him, to lift the vehicle out of the ruts and put on the wheels when it got dismounted. Even with this assistance, however, his Lordship occasionally stuck fast, and when within about three miles of the village of Creetown, near Wigton, he was obliged to send away the attendants, and pass the night in his coach on the Corse of Slakes with his family.
Matters were, of course, still worse in the Highlands, where the rugged character of the country offered formidable difficulties to the formation of practicable roads, and where none existed save those made through the rebel districts by General Wade shortly after the rebellion of 1715. The people were also more lawless and, if possible, more idle, than those of the Lowland districts about the same period. The latter regarded their northern neighbours as the settlers in America did the Red Indians round their borders—like so many savages always ready to burst in upon them, fire their buildings, and carry off their cattle.*[10]
Very little corn was grown in the neighbourhood of the Highlands, on account of its being liable to be reaped and carried off by the caterans, and that before it was ripe. The only method by which security of a certain sort could be obtained was by the payment of blackmail to some of the principal chiefs, though this was not sufficient to protect them against the lesser marauders. Regular contracts were drawn up between proprietors in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton, and the Macgregors, in which it was stipulated that if less than seven cattle were stolen—which peccadillo was known as picking—no redress should be required; but if the number stolen exceeded seven—such amount of theft being raised to the dignity of lifting—then the Macgregors were bound to recover. This blackmail was regularly levied as far south as Campsie—then within six miles of Glasgow, but now almost forming part of it—down to within a few months of the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1745.*[11]
Under such circumstances, agricultural improvement was altogether impossible. The most fertile tracts were allowed to lie waste, for men would not plough or sow where they had not the certain prospect of gathering in the crop. Another serious evil was, that the lawless habits of their neighbours tended to make the Lowland borderers almost as ferocious as the Higlanders themselves. Feuds were of constant occurrence between neighbouring baronies, and even contiguous parishes; and the country fairs, which were tacitly recognised as the occasions for settling quarrels, were the scenes of as bloody faction fights as were ever known in Ireland even in its worst days. When such was the state of Scotland only a century ago, what may we not hope for from Ireland when the civilizing influences of roads, schools, and industry have made more general progress amongst her people?
Yet Scotland had not always been in this miserable condition. There is good reason to believe that as early as the thirteenth century, agriculture was in a much more advanced state than we find it to have been the eighteenth. It would appear from the extant chartularies of monastic establishments, which then existed all over the Lowlands, that a considerable portion of their revenue was derived from wheat, which also formed no inconsiderable part of their living. The remarkable fact is mentioned by Walter de Hemingford, the English historian, that when the castle of Dirleton, in East Lothian, was besieged by the army of Edward I., in the beginning of July, 1298, the men, being reduced to great extremities for provisions, were fain to subsist on the pease and beans which they gathered in the fields.*[12] This statement is all the more remarkable on two accounts: first, that pease and beans should then have been so plentiful as to afford anything like sustenance for an army; and second, that they should have been fit for use so early in the season, even allowing for the difference between the old and new styles in the reckoning of time. The magnificent old abbeys and churches of Scotland in early times also indicate that at some remote period a degree of civilization and prosperity prevailed, from which the country had gradually fallen. The ruins of the ancient edifices of Melrose, Kilwinning, Aberborthwick, Elgin, and other religious establishments, show that architecture must then have made great progress in the North, and lead us to the conclusion that the other arts had reached a like stage of advancement. This is borne out by the fact of the number of well-designed and well-built bridges of olden times which still exist in different parts of Scotland. "And when we consider," says Professor Innes, "the long and united efforts required in the early state of the arts for throwing a bridge over any considerable river, the early occurrence of bridges may well be admitted as one of the best tests of civilization and national prosperity."*[13] As in England, so in Scotland, the reclamation of lands, the improvement of agriculture, and the building of bridges were mainly due to the skill and industry of the old churchmen. When their ecclesiastical organization was destroyed, the country speedily relapsed into the state from which they had raised it; and Scotland continued to lie in ruins almost till our own day, when it has again been rescued from barrenness, more effectually even than before, by the combined influences of roads, education, and industry.
Footnotes for Chapter IV.
*[1] 'Farmer's Magazine,' 1803. No. xiii. p. 101.
*[2] Bad although the condition of Scotland was at the beginning of last century, there were many who believed that it would be made worse by the carrying of the Act of Union. The Earl of Wigton was one of these. Possessing large estates in the county of Stirling, and desirous of taking every precaution against what he supposed to be impending ruin, he made over to his tenants, on condition that they continued to pay him their then low rents, his extensive estates in the parishes of Denny, Kirkintulloch, and Cumbernauld, retaining only a few fields round the family mansion ['Farmer's Magazine,' 1808, No. xxxiv. p. 193]. Fletcher of Saltoun also feared the ruinous results of the Union, though he was less precipitate in his conduct than the Earl of Wigton. We need scarcely say how entirely such apprehensions were falsified by the actual results.
*[3] 'Fletcher's Political Works,' London, 1737, p. 149. As the population of Scotland was then only about 1,200,000, the beggars of the country, according to the above account, must have constituted about one-sixth of the whole community.
*[4] Act 39th George III. c. 56. See 'Lord Cockburn's Memorials,' pp. 76-9. As not many persons may be aware how recent has been the abolition of slavery in Britain, the author of this book may mention the fact that he personally knew a man who had been "born a slave in Scotland," to use his own words, and lived to tell it. He had resisted being transferred to another owner on the sale of the estate to which he was "bound," and refused to "go below," on which he was imprisoned in Edinburgh gaol, where he lay for a considerable time. The case excited much interest, and probably had some effect in leading to the alteration in the law relating to colliers and salters which shortly after followed.
*[5] See 'Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle,' passim.
*[6] 'Farmer's Magazine.' June. 1811. No. xlvi. p. 155.
*[7] See Buchan Hepburn's 'General View of the Agriculture and Economy of East Lothian,' 1794, p. 55.
*[8]Letter of John Maxwell, in Appendix to Macdiarmid's 'Picture of Dumfries,' 1823
*[9] Robertson's 'Rural Recollections,' p. 38.
*[10] Very little was known of the geography of the Highlands down to the beginning of the seventeenth century The principal information on the subject being derived from Danish materials. It appears, however, that in 1608, one Timothy Pont, a young man without fortune or patronage, formed the singular resolution of travelling over the whole of Scotland, with the sole view of informing himself as to the geography of the country, and he persevered to the end of his task through every kind of difficulty; exploring 'all the islands with the zeal of a missionary, though often pillaged and stript of everything; by the then barbarous inhabitant's. The enterprising youth received no recognition nor reward for his exertions, and he died in obscurity, leaving his maps and papers to his heirs. Fortunately, James I. heard of the existence of Pont's papers, and purchased them for public use. They lay, however, unused for a long time in the offices of the Scotch Court of Chancery, until they were at length brought to light by Mr. Robert Gordon, of Straloch, who made them the basis of the first map of Scotland having any pretensions to accuracy that was ever published.
*[11] Mr. Grant, of Corrymorry, used to relate that his father, when speaking of the Rebellion of 1745, always insisted that a rising in the Highlands was absolutely necessary to give employment to the numerous bands of lawless and idle young men who infested every property.—Anderson's 'Highlands and Islands of Scotland,' p. 432.
*[12] 'Lord Hailes Annals,' i., 379.
*[13] Professor Innes's 'Sketches of Early Scottish History.' The principal ancient bridges in Scotland were those over the Tay at Perth (erected in the thirteenth century) over the Esk at Brechin and Marykirk; over the Bee at Kincardine, O'Neil, and Aberdeen; over the Don, near the same city; over the Spey at Orkhill; over the Clyde at Glasgow; over the Forth at Stirling; and over the Tyne at Haddington.
The progress made in the improvement of the roads throughout England was exceedingly slow. Though some of the main throughfares were mended so as to admit of stage-coach travelling at the rate of from four to six miles an hour, the less frequented roads continued to be all but impassable. Travelling was still difficult, tedious, and dangerous. Only those who could not well avoid it ever thought of undertaking a journey, and travelling for pleasure was out of the question. A writer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 1752 says that a Londoner at that time would no more think of travelling into the west of England for pleasure than of going to Nubia.
But signs of progress were not awanting. In 1749 Birmingham started a stage-coach, which made the journey to London in three days.*[1] In 1754 some enterprising Manchester men advertised a "flying coach" for the conveyance of passengers between that town and the metropolis; and, lest they should be classed with projectors of the Munchausen kind, they heralded their enterprise with this statement: "However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester!"
Fast coaches were also established on several of the northern roads, though not with very extraordinary results as to speed. When John Scott, afterwards Lord Chancellor Eldon, travelled from Newcastle to Oxford in 1766, he mentions that he journeyed in what was denominated "a fly," because of its rapid travelling; yet he was three or four days and nights on the road. There was no such velocity, however, as to endanger overturning or other mischief. On the panels of the coach were painted the appropriate motto of Sat cito si sat bene—quick enough if well enough—a motto which the future Lord Chancellor made his own.*[2]
The journey by coach between London and Edinburgh still occupied six days or more, according to the state of the weather. Between Bath or Birmingham and London occupied between two and three days as late as 1763. The road across Hounslow Heath was so bad, that it was stated before a Parliamentary Committee that it was frequently known to be two feet deep in mud. The rate of travelling was about six and a half miles an hour; but the work was so heavy that it "tore the horses' hearts out," as the common saying went, so that they only lasted two or three years.
When the Bath road became improved, Burke was enabled, in the summer of 1774, to travel from London to Bristol, to meet the electors there, in little more than four and twenty hours; but his biographer takes care to relate that he "travelled with incredible speed." Glasgow was still ten days' distance from the metropolis, and the arrival of the mail there was so important an event that a gun was fired to announce its coming in. Sheffield set up a "flying machine on steel springs" to London in 1760: it "slept" the first night at the Black Man's Head Inn, Nottingham; the second at the Angel, Northampton; and arrived at the Swan with Two Necks, Lad-lane, on the evening of the third day. The fare was 1L. l7s., and 14 lbs. of luggage was allowed. But the principal part of the expense of travelling was for living and lodging on the road, not to mention the fees to guards and drivers.
Though the Dover road was still one of the best in the kingdom, the Dover flying-machine, carrying only four passengers, took a long summer's day to perform the journey. It set out from Dover at four o'clock in the morning, breakfasted at the Red Lion, Canterbury, and the passengers ate their way up to town at various inns on the road, arriving in London in time for supper. Smollett complained of the innkeepers along that route as the greatest set of extortioners in England. The deliberate style in which journeys were performed may be inferred from the circumstance that on one occasion, when a quarrel took place between the guard and a passenger, the coach stopped to see them fight it out on the road.
Foreigners who visited England were peculiarly observant of the defective modes of conveyance then in use. Thus, one Don Manoel Gonzales, a Portuguese merchant, who travelled through Great Britain, in 1740, speaking of Yarmouth, says, "They have a comical way of carrying people all over the town and from the seaside, for six pence. They call it their coach, but it is only a wheel-barrow, drawn by one horse, without any covering." Another foreigner, Herr Alberti, a Hanoverian professor of theology, when on a visit to Oxford in 1750, desiring to proceed to Cambridge, found there was no means of doing so without returning to London and there taking coach for Cambridge. There was not even the convenience of a carrier's waggon between the two universities. But the most amusing account of an actual journey by stage-coach that we know of, is that given by a Prussian clergyman, Charles H. Moritz, who thus describes his adventures on the road between Leicester and London in 1782:—
"Being obliged," he says, "to bestir myself to get back to London, as the time drew near when the Hamburgh captain with whom I intended to return had fixed his departure, I determined to take a place as far as Northampton on the outside. But this ride from Leicester to Northampton I shall remember as long as I live.
"The coach drove from the yard through a part of the house. The inside passengers got in from the yard, but we on the outside were obliged to clamber up in the street, because we should have had no room for our heads to pass under the gateway. My companions on the top of the coach were a farmer, a young man very decently dressed, and a black-a-moor. The getting up alone was at the risk of one's life, and when I was up I was obliged to sit just at the corner of the coach, with nothing to hold by but a sort of little handle fastened on the side. I sat nearest the wheel, and the moment that we set off I fancied that I saw certain death before me. All I could do was to take still tighter hold of the handle, and to be strictly careful to preserve my balance. The machine rolled along with prodigious rapidity over the stones through the town, and every moment we seemed to fly into the air, so much so that it appeared to me a complete miracle that we stuck to the coach at all. But we were completely on the wing as often as we passed through a village or went down a hill.
"This continual fear of death at last became insupportable to me, and, therefore, no sooner were we crawling up a rather steep hill, and consequently proceeding slower than usual, then I carefully crept from the top of the coach, and was lucky enough to get myself snugly ensconced in the basket behind. "'O,Sir, you will be shaken to death!' said the black-a-moor; but I heeded him not, trusting that he was exaggerating the unpleasantness of my new situation. And truly, as long as we went on slowly up the hill it was easy and pleasant enough; and I was just on the point of falling asleep among the surrounding trunks and packages, having had no rest the night before, when on a sudden the coach proceeded at a rapid rate down the hill. Then all the boxes, iron-nailed and copper-fastened, began, as it were, to dance around me; everything in the basket appeared to be alive, and every moment I received such violent blows that I thought my last hour had come. The black-a-moor had been right, I now saw clearly; but repentance was useless, and I was obliged to suffer horrible torture for nearly an hour, which seemed to me an eternity. At last we came to another hill, when, quite shaken to pieces, bleeding, and sore, I ruefully crept back to the top of the coach to my former seat. 'Ah, did I not tell you that you would be shaken to death?' inquired the black man, when I was creeping along on my stomach. But I gave him no reply. Indeed, I was ashamed; and I now write this as a warning to all strangers who are inclined to ride in English stage-coaches, and take an outside at, or, worse still, horror of horrors, a seat in the basket.
"From Harborough to Northampton I had a most dreadful journey. It rained incessantly, and as before we had been covered with dust, so now we were soaked with rain. My neighbour, the young man who sat next me in the middle, every now and then fell asleep; and when in this state he perpetually bolted and rolled against me, with the whole weight of his body, more than once nearly pushing me from my seat, to which I clung with the last strength of despair. My forces were nearly giving way, when at last, happily, we reached Northampton, on the evening of the 14th July, 1782, an ever-memorable day to me.
"On the next morning, I took an inside place for London. We started early in the morning. The journey from Northampton to the metropolis, however, I can scarcely call a ride, for it was a perpetual motion, or endless jolt from one place to another, in a close wooden box, over what appeared to be a heap of unhewn stones and trunks of trees scattered by a hurricane. To make my happiness complete, I had three travelling companions, all farmers, who slept so soundly that even the hearty knocks with which they hammered their heads against each other and against mine did not awake them. Their faces, bloated and discoloured by ale and brandy and the knocks aforesaid, looked, as they lay before me, like so many lumps of dead flesh.
"I looked, and certainly felt, like a crazy fool when we arrived at London in the afternoon."*[3]
[Image] The Basket Coach, 1780.
Arthur Young, in his books, inveighs strongly against the execrable state of the roads in all parts of England towards the end of last century. In Essex he found the ruts "of an incredible depth," and he almost swore at one near Tilbury. "Of all the cursed roads, "he says, "that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near twelve miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. To add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a traveller, I must not forget the eternally meeting with chalk waggons, themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each to draw them out one by one!"*[4] Yet will it be believed, the proposal to form a turnpike-road from Chelmsford to Tilbury was resisted "by the Bruins of the country, whose horses were worried to death with bringing chalk through those vile roads!"
Arthur Young did not find the turnpike any better between Bury and Sudbury, in Suffolk: "I was forced to move as slow in it," he says, "as in any unmended lane in Wales. For, ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." Between Tetsworth and Oxford he found the so-called turnpike abounding in loose stones as large as one's head, full of holes, deep ruts, and withal so narrow that with great difficulty he got his chaise out of the way of the Witney waggons. "Barbarous" and "execrable" are the words which he constantly employs in speaking of the roads; parish and turnpike, all seemed to be alike bad. From Gloucester to Newnham, a distance of twelve miles, he found a "cursed road," "infamously stony," with "ruts all the way." From Newnham to Chepstow he noted another bad feature in the roads, and that was the perpetual hills; "for," he says, "you will form a clear idea of them if you suppose the country to represent the roofs of houses joined, and the road to run across them." It was at one time even matter of grave dispute whether it would not cost as little money to make that between Leominster and Kington navigable as to make it hard. Passing still further west, the unfortunate traveller, who seems scarcely able to find words to express his sufferings, continues:—
"But, my dear Sir, what am I to say of the roads in this country! the turnpikes! as they have the assurance to call them and the hardiness to make one pay for? From Chepstow to the half-way house between Newport and Cardiff they continue mere rocky lanes, full of hugeous stones as big as one's horse, and abominable holes. The first six miles from Newport they were so detestable, and without either direction-posts or milestones, that I could not well persuade myself I was on the turnpike, but had mistook the road, and therefore asked every one I met, who answered me, to my astonishment, 'Ya-as!' Whatever business carries you into this country, avoid it, at least till they have good roads: if they were good, travelling would be very pleasant."*[5]
At a subsequent period Arthur Young visited the northern counties; but his account of the roads in that quarter is not more satisfactory. Between Richmond and Darlington he found them like to "dislocate his bones," being broken in many places into deep holes, and almost impassable; "yet," says he, "the people will drink tea!" —a decoction against the use of which the traveller is found constantly declaiming. The roads in Lancashire made him almost frantic, and he gasped for words to express his rage. Of the road between Proud Preston and Wigan he says: "I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down.
They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer. What, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it receives is tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose than jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in those eighteen miles of execrable memory."*[6]
It would even appear that the bad state of the roads in the Midland counties, about the same time, had nearly caused the death of the heir to the throne. On the 2nd of September, 1789, the Prince of Wales left Wentworth Hall, where he had been on a visit to Earl Fitzwilliam, and took the road for London in his carriage. When about two miles from Newark the Prince's coach was overturned by a cart in a narrow part of the road; it rolled down a slope, turning over three times, and landed at the bottom, shivered to pieces. Fortunately the Prince escaped with only a few bruises and a sprain; but the incident had no effect in stirring up the local authorities to make any improvement in the road, which remained in the same wretched state until a comparatively recent period.