The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles

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Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling,
to be set against the more noble method of travelling by horseback,
as of yore. "What advantage is it to men's health," says the
writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these
coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them
from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled
with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often
brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit
up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach
so early that they can get no breakfast? What addition is this to
men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes
sick, antient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose
humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and
many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the
crowd of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel with
tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up
to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams of
horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to
travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch, or
axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes
half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to
make good their stage? Is it for a man's pleasure, or advantageous
to his health and business, to travel with a mixed company that he
knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by the rudeness of
a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman; necessitated to
lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no
accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners
of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the
guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate
suppression of stagecoaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.

Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate affair.
Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches were
advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an
hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers.
The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a
small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach
and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the
road while making the journey between the two places. The long coach
"put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road." Whether the coach
was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was determined by
the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a chairman at the
beginning of the journey.

In 1700, York was a week distant from London, and Tunbridge Wells,
now reached in an hour, was two days. Salisbury and Oxford were
also each a two days journey, Dover was three days, and Exeter
five. The Fly coach from London to Exeter slept at the latter place
the fifth night from town; the coach proceeding next morning to
Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman Barber "shaved
the coach."*[13]

Between London and Edinburgh, as late as 1763, a fortnight was
consumed, the coach only starting once a month.*[14] The risk of
breaks-down in driving over the execrable roads may be inferred
from the circumstance that every coach carried with it a box of
carpenter's tools, and the hatchets were occasionally used in
lopping off the branches of trees overhanging the road and
obstructing the travellers' progress.

Some fastidious persons, disliking the slow travelling, as well as
the promiscuous company which they ran the risk of encountering in
the stage, were accustomed to advertise for partners in a postchaise,
to share the charges and lessen the dangers of the road; and,
indeed, to a sensitive person anything must have been preferable to
the misery of travelling by the Canterbury stage, as thus described
by a contemporary writer:--

"On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I blest,
Between two plump old women to be presst!
A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd,
And a fat landlord, filled the other side.
Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load
Boils roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road:
One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears,
Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears;
Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,'
The sick'ning child returns his milk and toast!"

When Samuel Johnson was taken by his mother to London in 1712, to
have him touched by Queen Anne for "the evil," he relates,--
"We went in the stage-coach and returned in the waggon, as my mother
said, because my cough was violent; but the hope of saving a few
shillings was no slight motive.... She sewed two guineas in her
petticoat lest she should be robbed.... We were troublesome to the
passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the stage-coach
was common in those days to parsons in much higher rank."

Mr. Pennant has left us the following account of his journey in
the Chester stage to London in 1789-40: "The first day," says he,
"with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty
miles; the second day to the 'Welsh Harp;' the third, to Coventry;
the fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a
wondrous effort, on the last, to London, before the commencement of
night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight,
drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.
We were constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night,
and in the depth of winter proportionally later. The single
gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jackboots and trowsers,
up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded
against the mire, defied the frequent stumble and fall, arose and
pursued their journey with alacrity; while, in these days, their
enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy
chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of
Sybaris."

No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of the travelling of the
country continued to be performed on horseback, this being by far
the pleasantest as well as most expeditious mode of journeying.
On his marriage-day, Dr. Johnson rode from Birmingham to Derby with
his Tetty, taking the opportunity of the journey to give his bride
her first lesson in marital discipline. At a later period James
Watt rode from Glasgow to London, when proceeding thither to learn
the art of mathematical instrument making.

And it was a cheap and pleasant method of travelling when the
weather was fine. The usual practice was, to buy a horse at the
beginning of such a journey, and to sell the animal at the end of
it. Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled from London to Edinburgh in
1753, being nineteen days on the road, the whole expenses of the
journey amounting to only four guineas. The mare on which he rode,
cost him eight guineas in London, and he sold her for the same
price on his arrival in Edinburgh.

Nearly all the commercial gentlemen rode their own horses, carrying
their samples and luggage in two bags at the saddle-bow; and hence
their appellation of Riders or Bagmen. For safety's sake, they
usually journeyed in company; for the dangers of travelling were
not confined merely to the ruggedness of the roads. The highways
were infested by troops of robbers and vagabonds who lived by
plunder. Turpin and Bradshaw beset the Great North Road; Duval,
Macheath, Maclean, and hundreds of notorious highwaymen infested
Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Shooter's Hill, and all the
approaches to the metropolis. A very common sight then, was a
gibbet erected by the roadside, with the skeleton of some
malefactor hanging from it in chains; and " Hangman's-lanes" were
especially numerous in the neighbourhood of London.*[15] It was
considered most unsafe to travel after dark, and when the first
"night coach" was started, the risk was thought too great, and it
was not patronised.

[Image] The Night Coach

Travellers armed themselves on setting out upon a journey as if
they were going to battle, and a blunderbuss was considered as
indispensable for a coachman as a whip. Dorsetshire and Hampshire,
like most other counties, were beset with gangs of highwaymen; and
when the Grand Duke Cosmo set out from Dorchester to travel to
London in 1669, he was "convoyed by a great many horse-soldiers
belonging to the militia of the county, to secure him from
robbers."*[16]

Thoresby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed
safely "the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the
highwayman," and he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole,
"a notorious robbing place" near Grantham. Like every other
traveller, that good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on
one occasion he was thrown into great consternation near Topcliffe,
in Yorkshire, on missing them, believing that they had been
abstracted by some designing rogues at the inn where he had last
slept.*[17] No wonder that, before setting out on a journey in
those days, men were accustomed to make their wills.

When Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, travelled from Edinburgh to
London in 1756, she relates in her Diary that she travelled in her
own postchaise, attended by John Rattray, her stout serving man, on
horseback, with pistols at his holsters, and a good broad sword by
his side. The lady had also with her in the carriage a case of
pistols, for use upon an emergency. Robberies were then of
frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Bawtry, in Yorkshire;
and one day a suspicious-looking character, whom they took to be a
highwayman, made his appearance; but "John Rattray talking about
powder and ball to the postboy, and showing his whanger, the fellow
made off" Mrs. Calderwood started from Edinburgh on the 3rd of
June, when the roads were dry and the weather was fine, and she
reached London on the evening of the 10th, which was considered a
rapid journey in those days.

The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not greatest
in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis itself.
The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the
Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had
the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty
fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised
similar advantages. Foot passengers proceeding towards Kensington
and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a sufficiently
numerous band had collected to set footpads at defiance, and then
they started in company at known intervals, of which a bell gave
due warning. Carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde
Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols presented at the
breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon to deliver up
their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of curious instances
of this sort, he himself having been robbed in broad day, with Lord
Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle, and many more.
A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in 1757, illustrates the
imperfect postal communication of the period. The boy who carried
the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde
Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the
opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the horse's crupper
and got away undiscovered!

The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as tedious
and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the conveyance of
passengers. Corn and wool were sent to market on horses'
backs,*[18] manure was carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel
was conveyed from the moss or the forest in the same way. During
the winter months, the markets were inaccessible; and while in some
localities the supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in
others the superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility
of consuming it or of transporting it to places where it was
needed. The little coal used in the southern counties was
principally sea-borne, though pack-horses occasionally carried coal
inland for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. When Wollaton
Hall was built by John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580,
the stone was all brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in
Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles distant, and they loaded back with
coal, which was taken in exchange for the stone.

[Image] The Pack-horse Convoy

The little trade which existed between one part of the kingdom and
another was carried on by means of packhorses, along roads little
better than bridle-paths. These horses travelled in lines, with
the bales or panniers strapped across their backs. The foremost
horse bore a bell or a collar of bells, and was hence called the
"bell-horse." He was selected because of his sagacity; and by the
tinkling of the bells he carried, the movements of his followers
were regulated. The bells also gave notice of the approach of the
convoy to those who might be advancing from the opposite direction.
This was a matter of some importance, as in many parts of the path
there was not room for two loaded horses to pass each other, and
quarrels and fights between the drivers of the pack-horse trains
were frequent as to which of the meeting convoys was to pass down
into the dirt and allow the other to pass along the bridleway. The
pack-horses not only carried merchandise but passengers, and at
certain times scholars proceeding to and from Oxford and Cambridge.
When Smollett went from Glasgow to London, he travelled partly on
pack-horse, partly by waggon, and partly on foot; and the
adventures which he described as having befallen Roderick Random
are supposed to have been drawn in a great measure from his own
experiences during; the journey.

A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang up between the
northern counties, since become pre-eminently the manufacturing
districts of England; and long lines of pack-horses laden with
bales of wool and cotton traversed the hill ranges which divide
Yorkshire from Lancashire. Whitaker says that as late as 1753 the
roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way little wider than
a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn in a
single line; this deep narrow road being flanked by an elevated
causeway covered with flags or boulder stones. When travellers
encountered each other on this narrow track, they often tried to
wear out each other's patience rather than descend into the dirt
alongside. The raw wool and bale goods of the district were nearly
all carried along these flagged ways on the backs of single horses;
and it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils
by which the conduct of the traffic was attended. On horseback
before daybreak and long after nightfall, these hardy sons of trade
pursued their object with the spirit and intrepidity of foxhunters;
and the boldest of their country neighbours had no reason to
despise either their horsemanship or their courage.*[19]
The Manchester trade was carried on in the same way. The chapmen
used to keep gangs of pack-horses, which accompanied them to all the
principal towns, bearing their goods in packs, which they sold to
their customers, bringing back sheep's wool and other raw materials
of manufacture.

The only records of this long-superseded mode of communication are
now to be traced on the signboards of wayside public-houses.
Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but
all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still
painted on village sign-boards -- things as retentive of odd bygone
facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.*[20]

Footnotes for Chapter II.

*[1] King Henry the Fourth (Part I.), Act II. Scene 1.

*[2] Part of the riding road along which the Queen was accustomed
to pass on horseback between her palaces at Greenwich and Eltham is
still in existence, a little to the south of Morden College,
Blackheath. It winds irregularly through the fields, broad in some
places, and narrow in others. Probably it is very little different
from what it was when used as a royal road. It is now very
appropriately termed "Muddy Lane."

*[3] 'Depeches de La Mothe Fenelon,' 8vo., 1858. Vol. i. p. 27.

*[4] Nichols's ' Progresses,' vol. ii., 309.

*[5] The title of Mace's tract (British Museum) is "The Profit,
Conveniency, and Pleasure for the whole nation: being a short
rational Discourse lately presented to his Majesty concerning the
Highways of England: their badness, the causes thereof, the reasons
of these causes, the impossibility of ever having them well mended
according to the old way of mending: but may most certainly be
done, and for ever so maintained (according to this NEW WAY)
substantially and with very much ease, &c., &c. Printed for the
public good in the year 1675."

*[6] See Archaelogia, xx., pp. 443-76.

*[7] "4th May, 1714. Morning: we dined at Grantham, had the annual
solemnity (this being the first time the coach passed the road in
May), and the coachman and horses being decked with ribbons and
flowers, the town music and young people in couples before us; we
lodged at Stamford, a scurvy, dear town. 5th May: had other
passengers, which, though females, were more chargeable with wine
and brandy than the former part of the journey, wherein we had
neither; but the next day we gave them leave to treat themselves."
--Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. ii., 207.

*[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]

CHAPTER III.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED BY THE STATE OF THE ROADS.

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.

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