1678. Mar. 7.
Three enterprising persons at Haddington, including William Lamb, one of the bailies, and Mr James Lauder, sheriff-clerk, formed a project for a twice-a-week stage-coach ‘to pass through the whole year betwixt Edinburgh and Haddington, which will be of great conveniency for travellers of all sorts who may have occasion to repair to Edinburgh from the eastward.’[260] It was their resolution ‘to employ a considerable stock of money for erecting the said stage-coaches, buying of horses, and all other furniture requisite, in expectation of some small profit by progress of time.’ Wherefore they petitioned for the exclusive right to have stage-coaches upon that road. The right was granted for seven years.—P. C. R.
July 29.
1678.
A very few months after this date, William Hume, merchant in Edinburgh, appears to have set up a stage-coach between his own city and Glasgow, encouraged thereto by the liberality of the two municipalities. The city of Glasgow undertook to pay four hundred merks annually for two years.—M. of G. Hume proposed that his conveyance should carry only six passengers, at £4, 16s. Scots each in summer, and £5, 8s. in winter (respectively 8s. and 9s. sterling), being at the rate of 2s. 8d. a mile in summer, and 3s. in winter. The Privy Council, on his petition, gave him an exclusive privilege for seven years, and assured him against his horses being pressed for any kind of public service.—P. C. R.
These are the first conveniences of the kind we hear of as established between one place and another in Scotland, except the coach between Edinburgh and Leith, first in December 1610, and secondly in September 1660 (which see). It is, however, probable that none of all these enterprises proved successful, or was carried on for any considerable length of time. A traveller in Scotland in 1688 tells us: ‘Stage-coaches they have none.... The truth is, the roads will hardly allow them those conveniences, which is the reason that their gentry, men and women, choose rather to use their horses. However, their great men often travel with coach and six, but with so much caution, that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.’ It is added: ‘This carriage of persons from place to place might be better spared, were there opportunities and means for the speedier conveyance of business by letters. They have no horse-posts besides those which ply betwixt Berwick and Edinburgh, and from thence to Port-Patrick for the sake of the Irish packets.... From Edinburgh to Perth, and so to other places, they use foot-posts and carriers, which, though a slow way of communicating our concerns to one another, yet is such as they acquiesce in till they have a better.’[261]
What makes it the more improbable that William Hume’s enterprise was successful, notwithstanding the well-meant patronage of the Glasgow magistrates, is that, in October 1743, the Town Council of the western city was found considering a similar project of one John Walker, merchant in Edinburgh, who proposed to ‘erect’ a stage-coach betwixt the two cities, with six horses, and holding six passengers, to go twice a week from the one to the other in summer, and once in winter. The corporation was called upon to guarantee that as many as two hundred tickets should be sold each year. The proposal does not appear to have been entertained.
1678.
In 1749, a caravan—a kind of covered spring-cart—passed twice a week from the one city to the other, taking a day and a half to the journey!—Strang.