The introduction of stage-coaches about the middle of the seventeenth century formed a new era in the history of travelling by road. At first they were only a better sort of waggon, and confined to the more practicable highways near London. Their pace did not exceed four miles an hour, and the jolting of the unfortunate passengers conveyed in them must have been very hard to bear. It used to be said of their drivers that they were "seldom sober, never Civil, and always late."
The first mention of coaches for public accommodation is made by Sir William Dugdale in his Diary, from which it appears that a Coventry coach was on the road in 1659. But probably the first coaches, or rather waggons, were run between London and Dover, as one of the most practicable routes for the purpose. M. Sobriere, a French man of letters, who landed at Dover on his way to London in the time of Charles II., alludes to the existence of a stagecoach, but it seems to have had no charms for him, as the following passage will show: "That I might not," he says, "take post or be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover to London in a waggon. I was drawn by six horses, one before another, and driven by a waggoner, who walked by the side of it. He was clothed in black, and appointed in all things like another St. George. He had a brave montrero on his head and was a merry fellow, fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself."
Shortly after, coaches seem to have been running as far north as Preston in Lancashire, as appears by a letter from one Edward Parker to his father, dated November, 1663, in which he says, "I got to London on Saturday last; but my journey was noe ways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. Ye company yt came up with mee were persons of greate quality, as knights and ladyes. My journey's expense was 30s. This traval hath soe indisposed mee, yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatch."*[6] These vehicles must, however, have considerably increased, as we find a popular agitation was got up against them. The Londoners nicknamed them "hell-carts;" pamphlets were written recommending their abolition; and attempts were even made to have them suppressed by Act of Parliament.
Thoresby occasionally alludes to stage-coaches in his Diary, speaking of one that ran between Hull and York in 1679, from which latter place he had to proceed by Leeds in the usual way on horseback. This Hull vehicle did not run in winter, because of the state of the roads; stagecoaches being usually laid up in that season like ships during Arctic frosts.*[7]
Afterwards, when a coach was put on between York and Leeds, it performed the journey of twenty-four miles in eight hours;*[8] but the road was so bad and dangerous that the travellers were accustomed to get out and walk the greater part of the way.
Thoresby often waxes eloquent upon the subject of his manifold deliverances from the dangers of travelling by coach. He was especially thankful when he had passed the ferry over the Trent in journeying between Leeds and London, having on several occasions narrowly escaped drowning there. Once, on his journey to London, some showers fell, which "raised the washes upon the road near Ware to that height that passengers from London that were upon that road swam, and a poor higgler was drowned, which prevented me travelling for many hours; yet towards evening we adventured with some country people, who conducted us over the meadows, whereby we missed the deepest of the Wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the saddle-skirts for a considerable way, but got safe to Waltham Cross, where we lodged."*[9] On another occasion Thoresby was detained four days at Stamford by the state of the roads, and was only extricated from his position by a company of fourteen members of the House of Commons travelling towards London, who took him into their convoy, and set out on their way southward attended by competent guides. When the "waters were out," as the saying went, the country became closed, the roads being simply impassable. During the Civil Wars eight hundred horse were taken prisoners while sticking in the mud.*[10] When rain fell, pedestrians, horsemen, and coaches alike came to a standstill until the roads dried again and enabled the wayfarers to proceed. Thus we read of two travellers stopped by the rains within a few miles of Oxford, who found it impossible to accomplish their journey in consequence of the waters that covered the country thereabout.
A curious account has been preserved of the journey of an Irish Viceroy across North Wales towards Dublin in 1685. The roads were so horrible that instead of the Viceroy being borne along in his coach, the coach itself had to be borne after him the greater part of the way. He was five hours in travelling between St. Asaph and Conway, a distance of only fourteen miles. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk, while his wife was borne along in a litter. The carriages were usually taken to pieces at Conway and carried on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to be embarked at the Straits of Menai.
The introduction of stage-coaches, like every other public improvement, was at first regarded with prejudice, and had considerable obloquy to encounter. In a curious book published in 1673, entitled 'The Grand Concern of England Explained in several Proposals to Parliament,'*[11] stagecoaches and caravans were denounced as among the greatest evils that had happened to the kingdom, Being alike mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to the landed interest. It was alleged that travelling by coach was calculated to destroy the breed of horses, and make men careless of good horsemanship,—that it hindered the training of watermen and seamen, and interfered with the public resources. The reasons given are curious. It was said that those who were accustomed to travel in coaches became weary and listless when they rode a few miles, and were unwilling to get on horseback —"not being able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields;" that to save their clothes and keep themselves clean and dry, people rode in coaches, and thus contracted an idle habit of body; that this was ruinous to trade, for that "most gentlemen, before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these coaches, they have little or no occasion for: for, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear when they camp to their journey's end, or lay by the way; but in coaches a silk suit and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver-hats, men ride in, and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas, in two or three journeys on horseback, these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption of the manufactures and the employment of the manufacturers; which travelling in coaches doth in no way do."*[12] The writer of the same protest against coaches gives some idea of the extent of travelling by them in those days; for to show the gigantic nature of the evil he was contending against, he averred that between London and the three principal towns of York, Chester, and Exeter, not fewer than eighteen persons, making the journey in five days, travelled by them weekly the coaches running thrice in the week), and a like number back; "which come, in the whole, to eighteen hundred and seventy-two in the year." Another great nuisance, the writer alleged, which flowed from the establishment of the stage-coaches, was, that not only did the gentlemen from the country come to London in them oftener than they need, but their ladies either came with them or quickly followed them. "And when they are there they must be in the mode, have all the new fashions, buy all their clothes there, and go to plays, balls, and treats, where they get such a habit of jollity and a love to gaiety and pleasure, that nothing afterwards in the country will serve them , if ever they should fix their minds to live there again; but they must have all from London, whatever it costs."
Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling, to be set against the more noble method of travelling by horseback, as of yore. "What advantage is it to men's health," says the writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night; insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast? What addition is this to men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, antient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the crowd of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to make good their stage? Is it for a man's pleasure, or advantageous to his health and business, to travel with a mixed company that he knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by the rudeness of a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman; necessitated to lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate suppression of stagecoaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.
Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate affair. Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches were advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers. The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the road while making the journey between the two places. The long coach "put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road." Whether the coach was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was determined by the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a chairman at the beginning of the journey.