Every one is familiar with the appearance of the old post-chaise, which, according to the painters and the print-sellers, appears to have been used principally for the purpose of spiriting love-lorn couples with the speed of the wind away from all restrictions of home and the Court of Chancery. A post-chaise was (so it seems nowadays) a rather cumbrous affair, four-wheeled, high, and insecurely hung, with a glass front and a seat to hold three, facing the horses. The original designers evidently had no prophetic visions as to this especial popularity of post-chaises with errant lovers, nor did they ponder the proverb, “Two’s company, three’s none,” else they would have restricted their accommodation to two, or have enlarged it to four.
It was an expensive as well as a pleasant method of travelling, costing as it did at least a shilling a mile, and, in times when forage was dear, one shilling and threepence. The usual rates were chaise, nine-pence a mile, pair of post-horses, sixpence; four horses and chaise, supposing you desired to travel speedily—say at twelve miles an hour—one-and-ninepence. But these costs and charges did not frank the traveller through. The post-boy’s tip was as inevitable as night and morning. Likewise there were the “gates” to pay every now and again. One shudders to contemplate the total cost of posting from London to Edinburgh, even with only the ordinary equipment of two horses. There were thirty post-stages between the two capitals, according to the books published for the use of travellers a hundred years ago. Those books were very necessary to any one who did not desire to be charged for perhaps a mile more on each stage than it really measured, which was one of those artful postmasters’ little ways. Here is a list of these stages with the measurements, to which travellers drew the attention of those postmasters who commonly endeavoured to overcharge:—
| Miles | Furlongs | Miles | Furlongs | ||
| Barnet | 11 | 0 | York | 9 | 3 |
| Hatfield | 8 | 4 | Easingwold | 13 | 3 |
| Stevenage | 11 | 7 | Thirsk | 10 | 3 |
| Biggleswade | 13 | 5 | Northallerton | 9 | 0 |
| Buckden | 15 | 7 | Darlington | 16 | 0 |
| Stilton | 13 | 7 | Durham | 18 | 2 |
| Stamford | 14 | 2 | Newcastle | 14 | 4 |
| Witham Common | 11 | 2 | Morpeth | 14 | 6 |
| Grantham | 9 | 5 | Alnwick | 18 | 6 |
| Newark | 14 | 3 | Belford | 14 | 5 |
| Tuxford | 13 | 2 | Berwick | 15 | 3 |
| Barnby Moor | 10 | 4 | Press Inn | 11 | 5 |
| Doncaster | 12 | 0 | Dunbar | 14 | 3 |
| Ferrybridge | 15 | 2 | Haddington | 11 | 0 |
| Tadcaster | 12 | 7 | Edinburgh | 16 | 0 |
Nearly four hundred miles by these measurements. This, at a shilling a mile for the posting, gives £20; but, including the postboys’ tips, “gates,” and expenses at the inns on the road, the journey could not have been done in this way under £30, at the most modest calculation. This list of post-stages was one drawn up for distances chiefly between the towns, but nothing is more remarkable along the Great North Road than the number of old posting-houses which still exist (although of course their business is gone) in wild and lonely spots, far removed from either town or village.
Another “branch” of posting was the horsing alone, by which a private carriage could be taken to or from town by hiring posters at every stage. This was a favourite practice with the gentry of the shires, who thus had all the éclat of travelling in private state, without the expense and trouble of providing their own horses. It is probably of this method that De Quincey speaks in the following passage:—
“In my childhood,” says he, “standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the front window of my mother’s carriage, I remember one unvarying set of images before us. The postillion (for so were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering, i.e. in crossing from side to side, according to the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain-water; and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called lirae, to maintain the footing upon which lirae, so as not to swerve (or as the Romans would say, delirare), was a trial of some skill, both for the horses and their postillion. It was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust of separation, not to grow delirious in the Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety which haunted me when a child was much fed by this image so often before my eyes, and the sympathy with which I followed the motion of the docile creatures’ legs. Go to sleep at the beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw—wake up, and the first thing you saw—was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the cautious postillion gently applying his spur whilst manoeuvring across the system of grooves with some sort of science that looked like a gipsy’s palmistry—so equally unintelligible to me were his motions in what he sought and in what he avoided.”
XVII
Before we leave Stevenage, we must pay a visit to the “Old Castle” inn, in whose stable the body of the eccentric Henry Trigg is deposited, in a coffin amid the rafters, plain for all to see; somewhat dilapidated and battered in the lapse of two centuries, and with a patch of tin over the hole cut in it by some riotous blades long ago, but doubtless still containing his bones. His Will sufficiently explains the circumstances.
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.
I, Henry Trigg, of Stevenage, in the County of Hertford, Grocer, being very infirm and weak in body, but of perfect sound mind and memory, God be praised for it, calling into mind the mortality of my body, do now make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, in writing, hereafter following: that is to say:—Principally I recommend my soul into the merciful hands of Almighty God that first gave me it, assuredly believing and only expecting free pardon and forgiveness of all my sins, and eternal life in and through the only merits, death, and passion of Jesus Christ my Saviour; and as to my body I commit it to the West end of my Hovel, to be decently laid there upon a floor erected by my Executor, upon the purlin, for the same purpose; nothing doubting but at the general Resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mighty power of God; and as for and concerning such worldly substance as it hath pleased God to bless me with in this world, I do devise and dispose of the same in manner and form here following.
Imprimis. I give and devise unto my loving brother Thomas Trigg, of Letchworth, in the County of Hertford, Clerk, and to his Heirs and Assigns for ever, all those my Freehold Lands lying dispersedly in the several common fields in the parish of Stevenage aforesaid, and also all my Copyhold Lands, upon condition that he shall lay my body upon the place before mentioned; and also all that Messuage, Cottage, or Tenement at Redcoats Green in the Parish of Much Wymondly, together with those Nine Acres of Land (more or less) purchased of William Hale and Thomas Hale, Jun.; and also my Cottage, Orchard, and barn, with four acres of Land (more or less) belonging, lying, and being in the Parish of Little Wymondly, and now in the possession of Samuel Kitchener, labourer; and all my Cottages, Messuages, or Tenements situate and being in Stevenage, aforesaid: or, upon condition that he shall pay my brother, George Trigg, the sum of Ten Pounds per annum for life: but if my brother shall neglect or refuse to lay my body where I desire it should be laid, then, upon that condition, I will and bequeath all that which I have already bequeathed to my brother Thomas Trigg, unto my brother George Trigg, and to his heirs for ever; and if my brother George Trigg should refuse to lay my body under my Hovel, then what I have bequeathed unto him, as all my Lands and Tenements, I lastly bequeath them unto my nephew William Trigg and his heirs for ever, upon his seeing that my body is decently laid up there as aforesaid.
Item. I give and bequeath unto my nephew William Trigg, the sum of Five Pounds, at the age of Thirty years; to his sister Sarah the sum of Twenty Pounds; to his sister Rose the sum of Twenty Pounds; and lastly to his sister Ann the sum of Twenty Pounds; all at the age of Thirty Years: to John Spencer, of London, Butcher, the sum of One Guinea; and to Solomon Spencer, of Stevenage, the sum of One Guinea, Three Years next after my decease; to my cousin Henry Kimpton, One Guinea, One Year next after my decease, and another Guinea Two Years after my decease; to William Waby, Five Shillings; and to Joseph Priest, Two Shillings and Sixpence, Two Years after my decease; to my tenant Robert Wright the sum of Five Shillings, Two years next after my decease; and to Ralph Lowd and John Reeves, One Shilling each, Two Years next after my decease.
Item. All the rest of my Goods and Chattels, and personal Estate, and Ready Money, I do hereby give and devise unto my brother Thomas Trigg, paying my debts and laying my body where I would have it laid; whom I likewise make and ordain my full and sole Executor of this my last Will and Testament, or else to them before mentioned; ratifying and confirming this and no other to be my last Will and Testament, in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this Twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Twenty-four
Henry Trigg.
Read, signed, sealed, and declared by the said Henry Trigg, the Testator, to be his last Will and Testament, in the presence of us who have subscribed our names as witnesses hereto, in the presence of the said Testator.
John Hawkins, Sen.
John Hawkins, Jun.
× The mark of William Sexton.Proved in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, the 15th day of October, 1724, by the Executor Thomas Trigg.
The inn-signs of Stevenage afford some exercise for the contemplative mind. As the town is approached from London, the sign of “Our Mutual Friend” appears, nearly opposite a domestic Gothic building of red and white brick, originally a home for decayed authors, founded by Charles Dickens and the first Lord Lytton. The decayed authors did not take kindly to the scheme. Perhaps they did not like being patronised by authors of better fortunes than their own. The institution was a failure, and the building is now put to other uses. No doubt the sign of “Our Mutual Friend” derives from those times when Dickens and Lytton foregathered here and at Knebworth. At quite the other end of the town appears the obviously new sign of the “Lord Kitchener,” almost opposite that of another military hero, the “Marquis of Granby.”