This advertisement then concluded by inviting passengers to another “George” Inn:—
“Let them repair to the George Inn on Holborn Bridge, and they shall be in good Coaches with good Horses at and for reasonable rates, to Salisbury, Blandford, Exmaster, Hunnington, Exeter, Ockinton, Plimouth, and Cornwal.”
The extraordinarily misspelt names of some of the places mentioned in these notices show how ill-known the country then was. For “Burput” we must read Bridport; for “Hunnington,” Honiton; and for “Exmaster,” Axminster; “Ockinton” is probably Okehampton.
At this time, and for very many years yet to come, the stage-coaches were strictly fair-weather services. With every recurrent spring they were brought out from their retirement, and so early as Michaelmas were taken off the roads and laid up for the winter. How the pioneer coach to Chester fared in its second season is hid from us, but the announcement of its third year, in 1659, is instructive:—
“These are to give notice, that from the George Inn, without Aldersgate, goes every Monday and Thursday a coach and four able horses, to carry passengers to Chester in five days, likewise to Coventry, Cosell (Coleshill), Cank, Litchfield, Stone, or to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Newport, Whitchurch, and Holywell, at reasonable rates, by us, who have performed it two years.
“William Dunstan.
“Henry Earle.
“William Fowler.”
It now took a day longer to reach Chester—assuming that the promise to perform the journey in four days ever was kept; and it will be observed that Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and other places, on a different route than that through Lichfield and Stone, are named in the manner of an alternative. The Chester stage of this year, in fact, varied its itinerary to suit its passengers. The “by us, who have performed it two years,” looks suspiciously like an opposition already threatened; while the “four able horses” insisted on (but not mentioned in the first announcement) reads like an improvement upon a former team that was not able. Those, of course, were times before horses were generally changed on the way, and the same long-suffering beasts that dragged the coaches from London often brought them to their destination. According to the first advertisement of this Chester stage, quoted above, this particular coach was an exception to the usual practice, and actually had fresh horses once a day.
A stage seems to have plied between London and Oxford in 1661, but new coaches for a time were few, and it is said that there were but six in 1662. In the following year a coach of sorts ran from Preston in Lancashire to London; and, as may be gathered from a letter from Edward Parker to his father, it was a very primitive contrivance:—
“I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe way pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. The company yt came up with mee were persons of greate qualitie, as knightes and ladyes. My journey’s expense was 30s. This travell hath soe indisposed mee, yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatche. I am extremely hott and feverish. What this may tend to I know not. I have not as yet advised my doctor.”
Our natural curiosity on that head cannot be satisfied, for the Parker correspondence ends abruptly there; but we fear the worst. Heading that testimony to the quality of early coach-travelling, we may find it not altogether without significance that from this year forward to 1667 little is heard of coaches. Perhaps those who gave the early ones a trial were glad to get back to their saddles and ride horseback again. However that may be, certainly coaching history, except by inference, is in those years a blank. We may infer services to other towns from oblique and scattered references, but direct information is lacking. That a stage-coach—or possibly more than one—was on the road between London and Norwich in 1665 is to be gathered from the proclamation issued in that East Anglian city on July 20th of that terrible year of the Great Plague, which destroyed half the population of London: “From this daie,” ran that ordinance, “all ye passage coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London, and come from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons.” Already, before that notice was issued, wayfarers from that doomed city had been struck down by the deadly and mysterious disease, and at Norwich itself travellers hailing from the centre of infection had died, swiftly and in circumstances that struck terror into the hearts of the people. Not that plagues were things unknown; for Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, had died from the vexation and enforced idleness of the Cambridge edict of 1631, forbidding intercourse with London, even then ravaged with an infectious disorder.
What were the first stage-coaches like?