The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

of the rural population scattered between

them is obviously unjust; and this injustice was peculiarly

glaring in the case of the great North road, which traversed very

poor and thinly inhabited districts, and joined very rich and

populous districts. Indeed it was not in the power of the

parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a high-way worn by the

constant traffic between the West Riding of Yorkshire and London.

Soon after the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of

Parliament; and an act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was

passed imposing a small toll on travellers and goods, for the

purpose of keeping some parts of this important line of

communication in good repair.142 This innovation, however,

excited many murmurs; and the other great avenues to the capital

were long left under the old system. A change was at length

effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd

taxation to which men are accustomed is often borne far more

willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new. It was

not till many toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the

troops had in many districts been forced to act against the

people, and till much blood had been shed, that a good system was

introduced.143 By slow degrees reason triumphed over prejudice;

and our island is now crossed in every direction by near thirty

thousand miles of turnpike road.


On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles

the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage

waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of

passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on

horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight

of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting

heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham

the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve

pounds a ton.144 This was about fifteen pence a ton for every

mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpike

roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway

companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax

on many useful articles. Coal in particular was never seen except

in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to

which it could be carried by sea, and was indeed always known in

the south of England by the name of sea coal.


On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York

and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of

packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which

is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who seem to have

borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A traveller of

humble condition often found it convenient to perform a journey

mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets, under the care of

these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was

small. But the caravan moved at a foot's pace; and in winter the

cold was often insupportable.145


The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least

four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go from

London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans

that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and altered his

Plan.146 A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as

part of some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such

equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We attribute to

magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable

necessity. People, in the time of Charles the Second, travelled

with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great

danger of sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses

always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation,

described with great humour the way in which a country gentleman,

newly chosen a member of Parliament, went up to London. On that

occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been

taken from the plough, could not save the family coach from being

embedded in a quagmire.


Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the

years which immediately followed the Restoration, a diligence ran

between London and Oxford in two days. The passengers slept at

Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and

daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a vehicle,

described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole journey

between sunrise and sunset. This spirited undertaking was

solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of the

University, and appears to have excited the same sort of interest

which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway.

The Vicechancellor, by a notice affixed in all public places,

prescribed the hour and place of departure. The success of the

experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began

to move from before the ancient front of All Souls College; and

at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the

first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.147 The

emulation of the sister University was moved; and soon a

diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from

Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles

the Second flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to the

chief towns. But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon, appears

to have proceeded further north than York, or further west than

Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about

fifty miles in the summer; but in winter, when the ways were bad

and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach,

the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in

four days during the fine season, but at Christmas not till the

sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the

carriage. For accidents were so frequent that it would have been

most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about

twopence halfpenny a mile in summer, and somewhat more in

winter.148


This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present day

would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our ancestors

wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a

few months before the death of Charles the Second, the flying

coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles ever

known in the world. Their velocity is the subject of special

commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted with the sluggish

pace of the continental posts. But with boasts like these was

mingled the sound of complaint and invective. The interests of

large classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment

of the new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from

mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamour against the

innovation, simply because it was an innovation. It was

vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal to

the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that

the Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen,

would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to

Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would

be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted

travellers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted,

and would no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too

hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the passengers were

grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the

coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible to

get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible

to get breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely recommended

that no public coach should be permitted to have more than four

horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than

thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if this regulation were

adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old

mode of travelling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these

were presented to the King in council from several companies of

the City of London, from several provincial towns, and from the

justices of several counties. We Smile at these things. It is not

impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of

the opposition offered by cupidity and prejudice to the

improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in their

turn.149


In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still

usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not

encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on

horseback. If the traveller wished to move expeditiously he rode

post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at

convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The

charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a

stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it

was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly as by

any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by

steam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who

rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses.

The King, however, and the great officers of state were able to

command relays. Thus Charles commonly went in one day from

Whitehall to New-market, a distance of about fifty-five miles

through a level country; and this was thought by his subjects a

proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in

company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn by

six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again at

Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a

mode of conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury

confined to princes and ministers.150


Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, the

travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran

considerable risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted

highwayman, a marauder known to our generation only from books,

was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts which lay on

the great routes near London were especially haunted by

plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on the Great Western

Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road, were

perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge

scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in

broad daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were

often compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated

near a hundred years earlier by the greatest of poets as the

scene of the depredations of Falstaff. The public authorities

seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with the