The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles

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The roads of Sussex long preserved an infamous notoriety.
Chancellor Cowper, when a barrister on circuit, wrote to his wife
in 1690, that "the Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond
imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will
in habit such a heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The country is
a sink of about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water
that falls from two long ranges of hills on both sides of it,
and not being furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist
and soft by the water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only
able to make it tolerable to ride for a short time."

It was almost as difficult for old persons to get to church in
Sussex during winter as it was in the Lincoln Fens, where they were
rowed thither in boats. Fuller saw an old lady being drawn to
church in her own coach by the aid of six oxen. The Sussex roads
were indeed so bad as to pass into a by-word. A contemporary
writer says, that in travelling a slough of extraordinary miryness,
it used to be called "the Sussex bit of the road;" and he
satirically alleged that the reason why the Sussex girls were so
long-limbed was because of the tenacity of the mud in that county;
the practice of pulling the foot out of it "by the strength of the
ancle" tending to stretch the muscle and lengthen the bone!*[4]
But the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of London long
continued almost as bad as those in Sussex. Thus, when the poet
Cowley retired to Chertsey, in 1665, he wrote to his friend Sprat
to visit him, and, by way of encouragement, told him that he
might sleep the first night at Hampton town; thus occupying; two
days in the performance of a journey of twenty-two miles in the
immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis. As late as 1736 we
find Lord Hervey, writing from Kensington, complaining that
"the road between this place and London is grown so infamously bad
that we live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast on
a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners tell us
that there is between them and us an impassable gulf of mud."

Nor was the mud any respecter of persons; for we are informed that
the carriage of Queen Caroline could not, in bad weather,
be dragged from St. James's Palace to Kensington in less than two
hours, and occasionally the royal coach stuck fast in a rut,
or was even capsized in the mud. About the same time, the streets
of London themselves were little better, the kennel being still
permitted to flow in the middle of the road, which was paved with
round stones,--flag-stones for the convenience of pedestrians
being as yet unknown. In short, the streets in the towns and the
roads in the country were alike rude and wretched,--indicating a
degree of social stagnation and discomfort which it is now
difficult to estimate, and almost impossible to describe.

Footnotes for chapter I

*[1] Brunetto Latini, the tutor of Dante, describes a journey made
by him from London to Oxford about the end of the thirteenth
century, resting by the way at Shirburn Castle. He says,
"Our journey from London to Oxford was, with some difficulty and
danger, made in two days; for the roads are bad, and we had to
climb hills of hazardous ascent, and which to descend are equally
perilous. We passed through many woods, considered here as
dangerous places, as they are infested with robbers, which indeed
is the case with most of the roads in England. This is a
circumstance connived at by the neighbouring barons, on
consideration of sharing in the booty, and of these robbers serving
as their protectors on all occasions, personally, and with the
whole strength of their band. However, as our company was
numerous, we had less to fear. Accordingly, we arrived the first
night at Shirburn Castle, in the neighbourhood of Watlington, under
the chain of hills over which we passed at Stokenchurch." This
passage is given in Mr. Edward's work on 'Libraries' (p. 328),
as supplied to him by Lady Macclesfield.

*[2] See Ogilby's 'Britannia Depicta,' the traveller's ordinary
guidebook between 1675 and 1717, as Bradshaw's Railway Time-book is
now. The Grand Duke Cosmo, in his 'Travels in England in 1669,'
speaks of the country between Northampton and Oxford as for the
most part unenclosed and uncultivated, abounding in weeds. From
Ogilby's fourth edition, published in 1749, it appears that the
roads in the midland and northern districts of England were still,
for the most part, entirely unenclosed.

*[3] This ballad is so descriptive of the old roads of the
south-west of England that we are tempted to quote it at length.
It was written by the Rev. John Marriott, sometime vicar of
Broadclist, Devon; and Mr. Rowe, vicar of Crediton, says, in his
'Perambulation of Dartmoor,' that he can readily imagine the
identical lane near Broadclist, leading towards Poltemore, which
might have sat for the portrait.

In a Devonshire lane, as I trotted along
T'other day, much in want of a subject for song,
Thinks I to myself, half-inspired by the rain,
Sure marriage is much like a Devonshire lane.

In the first place 'tis long, and when once you are in it,
It holds you as fast as a cage does a linnet;
For howe'er rough and dirty the road may be found,
Drive forward you must, there is no turning round.

But tho' 'tis so long, it is not very wide,
For two are the most that together can ride;
And e'en then, 'tis a chance but they get in a pother,
And jostle and cross and run foul of each other.

Oft poverty meets them with mendicant looks,
And care pushes by them with dirt-laden crooks;
And strife's grazing wheels try between them to pass,
And stubbornness blocks up the way on her ass,

Then the banks are so high, to the left hand and right,
That they shut up the beauties around them from sight;
And hence, you'll allow, 'tis an inference plain,
That marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.

But thinks I, too, these banks, within which we are pent,
With bud, blossom, and berry, are richly besprent;
And the conjugal fence, which forbids us to roam,
Looks lovely, when deck'd with the comforts of home.

In the rock's gloomy crevice the bright holly grows;
The ivy waves fresh o'er the withering rose,
And the ever-green love of a virtuous wife
Soothes the roughness of care, cheers the winter of life.

Then long be the journey, and narrow the way,
I'll rejoice that I've seldom a turnpike to pay;
And whate'er others say, be the last to complain,
Though marriage is just like a Devonshire lane.

*[4] Iter Sussexiense.' By Dr. John Burton.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY MODES OF CONVEYANCE.

Such being the ancient state of the roads, the only practicable
modes of travelling were on foot and on horseback. The poor walked
and the rich rode. Kings rode and Queens rode. Judges rode circuit
in jack-boots. Gentlemen rode and robbers rode. The Bar sometimes
walked and sometimes rode. Chaucer's ride to Canterbury will be
remembered as long as the English language lasts. Hooker rode to
London on a hard-paced nag, that he might be in time to preach his
first sermon at St. Paul's. Ladies rode on pillions, holding on by
the gentleman or the serving-man mounted before.

Shakespeare incidentally describes the ancient style of travelling
among the humbler classes in his 'Henry IV.'*[1]

The Party, afterwards set upon by Falstaff and his companions,
bound from Rochester to London, were up by two in the morning,
expecting to perform the journey of thirty miles by close of day,
and to get to town "in time to go to bed with a candle." Two are
carriers, one of whom has "a gammon of bacon and two razes of
ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross;" the other has his
panniers full of turkeys. There is also a franklin of Kent,
and another, "a kind of auditor," probably a tax-collector,
with several more, forming in all a company of eight or ten, who
travel together for mutual protection. Their robbery on Gad's Hill,
as painted by Shakespeare, is but a picture, by no means exaggerated,
of the adventures and dangers of the road at the time of which he
wrote.

Distinguished personages sometimes rode in horse-litters; but
riding on horseback was generally preferred. Queen Elizabeth made
most of her journeys in this way,*[2] and when she went into the
City she rode on a pillion behind her Lord Chancellor. The Queen,
however, was at length provided with a coach, which must have been
a very remarkable machine. This royal vehicle is said to have been
one of the first coaches used in England, and it was introduced by
the Queen's own coachman, one Boomen, a Dutchman. It was little
better than a cart without springs, the body resting solid upon the
axles. Taking the bad roads and ill-paved streets into account,
it must have been an excessively painful means of conveyance.
At one of the first audiences which the Queen gave to the French
ambassador in 1568, she feelingly described to him "the aching
pains she was suffering in consequence of having been knocked about
in a coach which had been driven a little too fast, only a few days
before."*[3]

Such coaches were at first only used on state occasions.
The roads, even in the immediate neighbourhood of London, were so
bad and so narrow that the vehicles could not be taken into the
country. But, as the roads became improved, the fashion of using
them spread. When the aristocracy removed from the City to the
western parts of the metropolis, they could be better accommodated,
and in course of time they became gradually adopted. They were
still, however, neither more nor less than waggons, and, indeed,
were called by that name; but wherever they went they excited great
wonder. It is related of "that valyant knyght Sir Harry Sidney,"
that on a certain day in the year 1583 he entered Shrewsbury in his
waggon, "with his Trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and
see."*[4]

From this time the use of coaches gradually spread, more
particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters
which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and
others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback.
The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable
roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the
ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.
That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of
Taylor, the water-poet--who deplored the introduction of carriages
as a national calamity--that in the paved streets of London men and
women were "tossed, tumbled, rumbled, and jumbled about in them."
Although the road from London to Dover, along the old Roman
Watling-street, was then one of the best in England, the French
household of Queen Henrietta, when they were sent forth from
the palace of Charles I., occupied four tedious days before they
reached Dover.

But it was only a few of the main roads leading from the metropolis
that were practicable for coaches; and on the occasion of a royal
progress, or the visit of a lord-lieutenant, there was a general
turn out of labourers and masons to mend the ways and render the
bridges at least temporarily secure. Of one of Queen Elizabeth's
journeys it is said:-- "It was marvellous for ease and expedition,
for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that Her
Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a
base sort lifted it on with their poles."

Sussex long continued impracticable for coach travelling at certain
seasons. As late as 1708, Prince George of Denmark had the
greatest difficulty in making his way to Petworth to meet Charles VI.
of Spain. "The last nine miles of the way," says the reporter,
"cost us six hours to conquer them." One of the couriers in
attendance complained that during fourteen hours he never once
alighted, except when the coach overturned, or stuck in the mud.

When the judges, usually old men and bad riders, took to going the
circuit in their coaches, juries were often kept waiting until
their lordships could be dug out of a bog or hauled out of a slough
by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth century, scarcely
a Quarter Session passed without presentments from the grand jury
against certain districts on account of the bad state of the roads,
and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon them as a
set-off against their bruises and other damages while on circuit.

For a long time the roads continued barely practicable for wheeled
vehicles of the rudest sort, though Fynes Morison (writing in the
time of James I.) gives an account of "carryers, who have long
covered waggons, in which they carry passengers from place to
place; but this kind of journeying," he says, "is so tedious, by
reason they must take waggon very early and come very late to their
innes, that none but women and people of inferior condition travel
in this sort."

[Image] The Old Stage Waggon.

The waggons of which Morison wrote, made only from ten to fifteen
miles in a long summer's day; that is, supposing them not to have
broken down by pitching over the boulders laid along the road, or
stuck fast in a quagmire, when they had to wait for the arrival of
the next team of horses to help to drag them out. The waggon,
however, continued to be adopted as a popular mode of travelling
until late in the eighteenth century; and Hogarth's picture
illustrating the practice will be remembered, of the cassocked
parson on his lean horse, attending his daughter newly alighted
from the York waggon.

A curious description of the state of the Great North Road, in the
time of Charles II., is to be found in a tract published in 1675 by
Thomas Mace, one of the clerks of Trinity College, Cambridge. The
writer there addressed himself to the King, partly in prose and
partly in verse; complaining greatly of the "wayes, which are so
grossly foul and bad;" and suggesting various remedies. He pointed
out that much ground "is now spoiled and trampled down in all wide
roads, where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and chuse for
their best advantages; besides, such sprawling and straggling of
coaches and carts utterly confound the road in all wide places, so
that it is not only unpleasurable, but extreme perplexin and
cumbersome both to themselves and all horse travellers." It would
thus appear that the country on either side of the road was as yet
entirely unenclosed.

But Mace's principal complaint was of the "innumerable
controversies, quarrellings, and disturbances" caused by the
packhorse-men, in their struggles as to which convoy should pass
along the cleaner parts of the road. From what he states, it would
seem that these "disturbances, daily committed by uncivil,
refractory, and rude Russian-like rake-shames, in contesting for
the way, too often proved mortal, and certainly were of very bad
consequences to many." He recommended a quick and prompt punishment
in all such cases. "No man," said he, "should be pestered by
giving the way (sometimes) to hundreds of pack-horses, panniers,
whifflers (i.e. paltry fellows), coaches, waggons, wains, carts,
or whatsoever others, which continually are very grievous to weary
and loaden travellers; but more especially near the city and upon a
market day, when, a man having travelled a long and tedious
journey, his horse well nigh spent, shall sometimes be compelled to
cross out of his way twenty times in one mile's riding, by the
irregularity and peevish crossness of such-like whifflers and
market women; yea, although their panniers be clearly empty, they
will stoutly contend for the way with weary travellers, be they
never so many, or almost of what quality soever." "Nay," said he
further, "I have often known many travellers, and myself very
often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a
standing cart or waggon, on most beastly and unsufferable deep wet
wayes, to the great endangering of our horses, and neglect of
important business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most
imminent danger of those deep rutts, and unreasonable ridges) till
it has pleased Mister Garter to jog on, which we have taken very
kindly."

Mr. Mace's plan of road reform was not extravagant. He mainly
urged that only two good tracks should be maintained, and the road
be not allowed to spread out into as many as half-a-dozen very bad
ones, presenting high ridges and deep ruts, full of big stones,
and many quagmires. Breaking out into verse, he said --

"First let the wayes be regularly brought
To artificial form, and truly wrought;
So that we can suppose them firmly mended,
And in all parts the work well ended,
That not a stone's amiss; but all compleat,
All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat."

After a good deal more in the same strain, he concluded--

"There's only one thing yet worth thinking on
which is, to put this work in execution."*[5]

But we shall find that more than a hundred years passed before the
roads throughout England were placed in a more satisfactory state
than they were in the time of Mr. Mace.

The introduction of stage-coaches about the middle of the
seventeenth century formed a new era in the history of travelling
by road. At first they were only a better sort of waggon, and
confined to the more practicable highways near London. Their pace
did not exceed four miles an hour, and the jolting of the
unfortunate passengers conveyed in them must have been very hard to
bear. It used to be said of their drivers that they were "seldom
sober, never Civil, and always late."

The first mention of coaches for public accommodation is made by
Sir William Dugdale in his Diary, from which it appears that a
Coventry coach was on the road in 1659. But probably the first
coaches, or rather waggons, were run between London and Dover, as
one of the most practicable routes for the purpose. M. Sobriere,
a French man of letters, who landed at Dover on his way to London
in the time of Charles II., alludes to the existence of a
stagecoach, but it seems to have had no charms for him, as the
following passage will show: "That I might not," he says,
"take post or be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover
to London in a waggon. I was drawn by six horses, one before another,
and driven by a waggoner, who walked by the side of it. He was
clothed in black, and appointed in all things like another St. George.
He had a brave montrero on his head and was a merry fellow, fancied
he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself."

Shortly after, coaches seem to have been running as far north as
Preston in Lancashire, as appears by a letter from one Edward
Parker to his father, dated November, 1663, in which he says,
"I got to London on Saturday last; but 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."*[6]
These vehicles must, however, have considerably increased, as we
find a popular agitation was got up against them. The Londoners
nicknamed them "hell-carts;" pamphlets were written recommending
their abolition; and attempts were even made to have them
suppressed by Act of Parliament.

Thoresby occasionally alludes to stage-coaches in his Diary,
speaking of one that ran between Hull and York in 1679, from which
latter place he had to proceed by Leeds in the usual way on
horseback. This Hull vehicle did not run in winter, because of the
state of the roads; stagecoaches being usually laid up in that
season like ships during Arctic frosts.*[7]

Afterwards, when a coach was put on between York and Leeds, it
performed the journey of twenty-four miles in eight hours;*[8]
but the road was so bad and dangerous that the travellers were
accustomed to get out and walk the greater part of the way.

Thoresby often waxes eloquent upon the subject of his manifold
deliverances from the dangers of travelling by coach. He was
especially thankful when he had passed the ferry over the Trent in
journeying between Leeds and London, having on several occasions
narrowly escaped drowning there. Once, on his journey to London,
some showers fell, which "raised the washes upon the road near Ware
to that height that passengers from London that were upon that road
swam, and a poor higgler was drowned, which prevented me travelling
for many hours; yet towards evening we adventured with some country
people, who conducted us over the meadows, whereby we missed the
deepest of the Wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the
saddle-skirts for a considerable way, but got safe to Waltham
Cross, where we lodged."*[9] On another occasion Thoresby was
detained four days at Stamford by the state of the roads, and was
only extricated from his position by a company of fourteen members
of the House of Commons travelling towards London, who took him
into their convoy, and set out on their way southward attended by
competent guides. When the "waters were out," as the saying went,
the country became closed, the roads being simply impassable.
During the Civil Wars eight hundred horse were taken prisoners
while sticking in the mud.*[10] When rain fell, pedestrians,
horsemen, and coaches alike came to a standstill until the roads
dried again and enabled the wayfarers to proceed. Thus we read of
two travellers stopped by the rains within a few miles of Oxford,
who found it impossible to accomplish their journey in consequence
of the waters that covered the country thereabout.

A curious account has been preserved of the journey of an Irish
Viceroy across North Wales towards Dublin in 1685. The roads were
so horrible that instead of the Viceroy being borne along in his
coach, the coach itself had to be borne after him the greater part
of the way. He was five hours in travelling between St. Asaph and
Conway, a distance of only fourteen miles. Between Conway and
Beaumaris he was forced to walk, while his wife was borne along in
a litter. The carriages were usually taken to pieces at Conway and
carried on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to be embarked at
the Straits of Menai.

The introduction of stage-coaches, like every other public
improvement, was at first regarded with prejudice, and had
considerable obloquy to encounter. In a curious book published in
1673, entitled 'The Grand Concern of England Explained in several
Proposals to Parliament,'*[11] stagecoaches and caravans were
denounced as among the greatest evils that had happened to the
kingdom, Being alike mischievous to the public, destructive to
trade, and prejudicial to the landed interest. It was alleged that
travelling by coach was calculated to destroy the breed of horses,
and make men careless of good horsemanship,--that it hindered the
training of watermen and seamen, and interfered with the public
resources. The reasons given are curious. It was said that those
who were accustomed to travel in coaches became weary and listless
when they rode a few miles, and were unwilling to get on horseback
--"not being able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in
the fields;" that to save their clothes and keep themselves clean
and dry, people rode in coaches, and thus contracted an idle habit
of body; that this was ruinous to trade, for that "most gentlemen,
before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts,
pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these
coaches, they have little or no occasion for: for, when they rode
on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear
when they camp to their journey's end, or lay by the way; but in
coaches a silk suit and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk
stockings, and beaver-hats, men ride in, and carry no other with
them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they
cannot avoid; whereas, in two or three journeys on horseback, these
clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were
forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption
of the manufactures and the employment of the manufacturers; which
travelling in coaches doth in no way do."*[12] The writer of the
same protest against coaches gives some idea of the extent of
travelling by them in those days; for to show the gigantic nature
of the evil he was contending against, he averred that between
London and the three principal towns of York, Chester, and Exeter,
not fewer than eighteen persons, making the journey in five days,
travelled by them weekly the coaches running thrice in the week),
and a like number back; "which come, in the whole, to eighteen
hundred and seventy-two in the year." Another great nuisance,
the writer alleged, which flowed from the establishment of the
stage-coaches, was, that not only did the gentlemen from the
country come to London in them oftener than they need, but their
ladies either came with them or quickly followed them. "And when
they are there they must be in the mode, have all the new fashions,
buy all their clothes there, and go to plays, balls, and treats,
where they get such a habit of jollity and a love to gaiety and
pleasure, that nothing afterwards in the country will serve them ,
if ever they should fix their minds to live there again; but they
must have all from London, whatever it costs."

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