ARMS OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF COACH AND HARNESS MAKERS.
Pepys always delighted in being in the fashion. He would not be in advance of it, and not, if he could help it, behind. The fact, then, of his setting up a carriage of his own is sufficient to show how largely the moneyed classes had begun to go about on wheels. But better evidence still is found in the establishment, May 1677, of the Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers, whose arms still bear representations of the carriages in use at that period. The armorial bearings of the Coach-makers are, when duly tricked out in their proper colours, somewhat striking. Stated in plain terms, done into English out of heraldic jargon, they consist of a blue shield of arms with three coaches and a chevron in gold, supported on either side by a golden horse, harnessed and saddled in black studded with gold; with blue housings garnished with red, and fringed and purfled in gold. The horses are further adorned with plumes of four feathers in gold, silver, red, and blue. A crest above displays Phœbus driving his chariot, and the motto beneath declares that “After clouds rises the sun.”
The hackney-carriages of London in 1669, the year following Pepys’ establishment of his own private turn-out, numbered, according to the memoirs of Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who travelled England at that time, eight hundred. The age of public vehicles was come.
CHAPTER II
THE HORSEMEN
“The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity.”—Pennant, 1739.
Long before wheeled conveyances of any kind were to be hired in this country, travellers were accustomed to ride post. To do so argued no connection with that great department we now call the Post Office, although that letter-carrying agency and the custom of riding post obtain their name from a common origin. The earliest provision for travelling post seems to have been in the reign of Henry VIII., when the office of “Master of the Postes” was established. Sir Brian Tuke then held that appointment, and to him were entrusted the arrangements for securing relays of horses on the four great post roads then recognised: the road from London to Dover, on which the carriers came from and went to foreign parts; the road to Plymouth, where the King’s dockyard was situated; and the great roads to Scotland and Chester, and on to Conway and Holyhead. These relays of horses were established exclusively for use of the despatch-riders who went on affairs of State; but by the time of Elizabeth these messengers were, as a favour, already accustomed to carry any letters that might be given into their charge and could be delivered without going out of their way; while travellers constantly called at the country post-houses, and on pretence of going on the Queen’s business, obtained the use of horses, which they rode to exhaustion, or overloaded, or even rode away with altogether.
These abuses were promptly suppressed when James I. came to the English throne. In 1603, the year of his accession, a proclamation was issued under which no person claiming to be on Government business was to be supplied with horses by the postmasters unless his application was supported by a document signed by one of the officers of State. The hire of horses for public business was fixed at twopence-halfpenny a mile, and in addition there was a small charge for the guide. A very arbitrary order was made that if the post-houses had not sufficient horses, the constables and the magistrates were to seize those of private owners and impress them into the service. Post-masters, who were salaried officials, were paid at the very meagre rate of from sixpence to three shillings a day. They were generally innkeepers on the main roads; otherwise it is difficult to see how they could have existed on these rates of pay. Evidently these were considered merely as retaining fees, and so, in order to give them a chance of earning a more living wage, they were permitted to let out horses to “others riding poste with horse and guide about their private business.” Those private and unofficial travellers could not demand to be supplied with horses at the official rate: what they were to pay was to be a matter between the post-masters and themselves. In practice, however, the tariff for Government riders ruled that for all horsemen, as made clear in Fynes Morison’s Itinerary, 1617, where he says that in the south and west of England and on the Great North Road as far as Berwick, post-horses were established at every ten miles or so at a charge of twopence-halfpenny a mile. It was necessary to have a guide to each stage, and it was customary to charge for baiting both the guide’s and the traveller’s horses, and to give the guide himself a few pence—usually a four-penny-piece, called “the guide’s groat”—on parting. It was cheaper and safer for several travellers to go together, for one guide would serve the whole company on each stage, and it was not prudent to travel alone. Morison says that, although hiring came expensive in one way, yet the speed it was possible to maintain saved time and consequent charges at the inns. The chief requisite, however, was strength of body and ability to endure the fatigue.
As to that, the horsemen of the period were, equally with those of over a hundred years later, mentioned by Pennant, “a hardy race.” In March, 1603, for example, Robert Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, eager to be first in acclaiming James VI. of Scotland as James I. of England, left London so soon as the last breath had left the body of Queen Elizabeth, and rode the 401 miles to Edinburgh in three days. He reached Doncaster, 158 miles, the first night, Widdrington, 137 miles, the second, and gained Edinburgh, 106 miles, the third day, in spite of a severe fall by the way. About the same time a person named Coles rode from London to Shrewsbury in fourteen hours.
When Thomas Witherings was appointed Master of the Post, in 1635, the Post Office, as an institution for carrying the correspondence of the public, may be said to have started business, although as early as 1603 private persons were forbidden to make the carrying of letters a business. Like all such ordinances, this seemed made only to be broken every day. It was particularly unreasonable because, before Witherings came upon the scene in 1635 and reorganised the posts, there existed no means by which letters could be sent generally into the country. Only the post-riders on business of State on the four great roads were in the habit of taking letters, and their doing so was a matter of private arrangement.