The Life of Thomas Telford Part 2

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 circ.u.mstance 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 c.u.mbrous 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 pa.s.sengers; 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]

Th.o.r.esby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.al places of amus.e.m.e.nt, had the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "l.u.s.ty fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised similar advantages. Foot pa.s.sengers 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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, ill.u.s.trates 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 pa.s.sengers. 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s down into the dirt and allow the other to pa.s.s along the bridleway. The pack-horses not only carried merchandise but pa.s.sengers, 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 pa.s.sage 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sengers, 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."

--Th.o.r.esby'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 G.o.d for mercies to me and my poor family."--Th.o.r.esby's 'Diary,' vol. ii., 7.

*[9] Th.o.r.esby'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 ent.i.tled '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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 circ.u.mstance 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 ent.i.tled 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 princ.i.p.ally raised within a circuit of twenty miles of the metropolis; but large quant.i.ties 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 a.n.a.logous 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 ill.u.s.trations of these curious old coins.

[Image]