Mondays and Wednesdays to Ockinton and Plimouth for ls.
Every Monday to Helperby and Northallerton for xlvs. To Darneton and Ferryhil for ls. To Durham for lvs. To Newcastle for iii£.
Once every fortnight to Edinburgh for iv£ a peece—Mondays.
Every Friday, to Wakefield in four days, xls.
All persons who desire to travel unto the Cities, Towns, and Roads herein hereafter mentioned and expressed, namely—to Coventry, Litchfield, Stone, Namptwich, Chester, Warrington, Wiggan, Chorley, Preston, Gastang, Lancaster and Kendal; and also to Stamford, Grantham, Newark, Tuxford, Bawtrey, Doncaster, Ferriebridge, York, Helperby, Northallerton, Darneton, Ferryhill, Durham, and Newcastle, Wakefield, Leeds, and Halifax; and also to Salisbury, Blandford, Dorchester, Burput, Exmaster, Hunnington, and Exeter, Ockinton, Plimouth, and Cornwal; let them repair to the George Inn, at Holborn Bridge, London, and thence they shall be in good Coaches with good Horses, upon every Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, at and for reasonable Rates.
Among the advertisements which prevailed most extensively in those early times, may, as has been remarked, be ranked those of runaway servants, apprentices, and black boys. England at that time swarmed with negro or mulatto boys, which the wealthy used as pages, in imitation of the Italian nobility. They were either imported from the West Indies, or brought from the Peninsula. The first advertisement of a runaway black page we meet with is dated August 11, 1659, but in this instance the article is advertised as “lost,” like a dog, which is after all but natural, the boy being a chattel:—
A Negro-boy, about nine years of age, in a gray Searge suit, his hair cut close to his head, was lost on Tuesday last, August 9, at night, in St Nicholas Lane, London. If any one can give notice of him to Mr Tho. Barker, at the Sugar Loaf, in that Lane, they shall be well rewarded for their pains.
It is amusing to see, from this advertisement, that the wool of the negro found no grace in the eye of his Puritan master, who cropped the boy’s head as close as his own. Black boys continued in fashion for more than a century after, and were frequently offered for sale, by means of advertisements, in the same manner as slaves used to be, within recent years, in the Southern States of America. Even as late as 1769 sales of human flesh went on in this country. The Gazetteer, April 18, of that year, classes together “for sale at the Bull and Gate, Holborn: a chestnut gelding, a trim-whiskey, and a well-made, good-tempered black boy;” whilst a Liverpool paper of ten years later, October 15, 1779, announces as to be sold by auction, “at George Dunbar’s offices, on Thursday next, 21st inst., at one o’clock, a black boy about fourteen years old, and a large mountain tiger-cat.” This will be news to many blind worshippers of the ideal creature known as “a man and a brother.”
Another curiosity of the advertisement literature of the seventeenth century is the number of servants and apprentices absconding with their masters’ property. Nearly all those dishonest servants must have had appearances such as in these days might lead to conviction first and trial afterwards. First of all, there is scarcely one of them but is “pock-marked,” “pock-pitted,” “pock-fretted,” “pock-holed,” “pit-marked,” or “full of pock-holes,” a fact which furnishes a significant index of the ravages this terrible sickness must have made amongst our ancestors, and offers a conclusive argument—though argument is unfortunately inadmissible among them—to those blatant and illogical people, the opponents of vaccination. Besides the myriads who annually died of small-pox, it would, perhaps, not be an exaggeration to assume that one-fourth of mankind at that time was pock-marked, and not pock-marked as we understand the term. Whole features were destroyed, and a great percentage of blindness was attributable to this cause. Indeed, so accustomed were the people of those times to pock-marked faces, that these familiar inequalities of the facial surface do not appear to have been considered an absolute drawback even upon the charms of a beauty or a beau. Louis XIV. in his younger days was considered one of the handsomest men of France, notwithstanding that he was pock-marked, and La Vallière and some other famous beauties of that period are known to have laboured under the same disadvantage. This is a hard fact which should destroy many of the ideas raised by fiction. The following is a fair specimen of the descriptions of the dangerous classes given in the early part of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and is taken from the Mercurius Politicus of May 1658:—
A Black-haired Maid, of a middle stature, thick set, with big breasts, having her face full marked with the small-pox, calling herself by the name of Nan or Agnes Hobson, did, upon Monday, the 28 of May, about six o’Clock in the morning, steal away from her Ladies house in the Pal-Mall, a mingle-coloured wrought Tabby gown of Deer colour and white; a black striped Sattin Gown with four broad bone-black silk Laces, and a plain black watered French Tabby Gown; Also one Scarlet-coloured and one other Pink-coloured Sarcenet Peticoat, and a white watered Tabby Wastcoat, plain; Several Sarcenet, Mode, and thin black Hoods and Scarfs, several fine Holland Shirts, a laced pair of Cuffs and Dressing, one pair of Pink-coloured Worsted Stockings, a Silver Spoon, a Leather bag, &c. She went away in greyish Cloth Wastcoat turned, and a Pink-coloured Paragon upper Peticoat, with a green Tammy under one. If any shall give notice of this person or things at one Hopkins, a Shoomaker’s, next door to the Vine Tavern, near the Pal-mall end, near Charing Cross, or at Mr Ostler’s, at the Bull Head in Cornhill, near the Old Exchange, they shall be rewarded for their pains.