Travellers armed themselves on setting out upon a journey as if they were going to battle, and a blunderbuss was considered as indispensable for a coachman as a whip. Dorsetshire and Hampshire, like most other counties, were beset with gangs of highwaymen; and when the Grand Duke Cosmo set out from Dorchester to travel to London in 1669, he was "convoyed by a great many horse-soldiers belonging to the militia of the county, to secure him from robbers."*[16]
Thoresby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed safely "the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the highwayman," and he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole, "a notorious robbing place" near Grantham. Like every other traveller, that good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on one occasion he was thrown into great consternation near Topcliffe, in Yorkshire, on missing them, believing that they had been abstracted by some designing rogues at the inn where he had last slept.*[17] No wonder that, before setting out on a journey in those days, men were accustomed to make their wills.
When Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, travelled from Edinburgh to London in 1756, she relates in her Diary that she travelled in her own postchaise, attended by John Rattray, her stout serving man, on horseback, with pistols at his holsters, and a good broad sword by his side. The lady had also with her in the carriage a case of pistols, for use upon an emergency. Robberies were then of frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Bawtry, in Yorkshire; and one day a suspicious-looking character, whom they took to be a highwayman, made his appearance; but "John Rattray talking about powder and ball to the postboy, and showing his whanger, the fellow made off" Mrs. Calderwood started from Edinburgh on the 3rd of June, when the roads were dry and the weather was fine, and she reached London on the evening of the 10th, which was considered a rapid journey in those days.
The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not greatest in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis itself. The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised similar advantages. Foot passengers proceeding towards Kensington and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a sufficiently numerous band had collected to set footpads at defiance, and then they started in company at known intervals, of which a bell gave due warning. Carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols presented at the breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon to deliver up their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of curious instances of this sort, he himself having been robbed in broad day, with Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle, and many more. A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in 1757, illustrates the imperfect postal communication of the period. The boy who carried the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the horse's crupper and got away undiscovered!
The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as tedious and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the conveyance of passengers. Corn and wool were sent to market on horses' backs,*[18] manure was carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel was conveyed from the moss or the forest in the same way. During the winter months, the markets were inaccessible; and while in some localities the supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in others the superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility of consuming it or of transporting it to places where it was needed. The little coal used in the southern counties was principally sea-borne, though pack-horses occasionally carried coal inland for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. When Wollaton Hall was built by John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580, the stone was all brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles distant, and they loaded back with coal, which was taken in exchange for the stone.
[Image] The Pack-horse Convoy
The little trade which existed between one part of the kingdom and another was carried on by means of packhorses, along roads little better than bridle-paths. These horses travelled in lines, with the bales or panniers strapped across their backs. The foremost horse bore a bell or a collar of bells, and was hence called the "bell-horse." He was selected because of his sagacity; and by the tinkling of the bells he carried, the movements of his followers were regulated. The bells also gave notice of the approach of the convoy to those who might be advancing from the opposite direction. This was a matter of some importance, as in many parts of the path there was not room for two loaded horses to pass each other, and quarrels and fights between the drivers of the pack-horse trains were frequent as to which of the meeting convoys was to pass down into the dirt and allow the other to pass along the bridleway. The pack-horses not only carried merchandise but passengers, and at certain times scholars proceeding to and from Oxford and Cambridge. When Smollett went from Glasgow to London, he travelled partly on pack-horse, partly by waggon, and partly on foot; and the adventures which he described as having befallen Roderick Random are supposed to have been drawn in a great measure from his own experiences during; the journey.
A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang up between the northern counties, since become pre-eminently the manufacturing districts of England; and long lines of pack-horses laden with bales of wool and cotton traversed the hill ranges which divide Yorkshire from Lancashire. Whitaker says that as late as 1753 the roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way little wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn in a single line; this deep narrow road being flanked by an elevated causeway covered with flags or boulder stones. When travellers encountered each other on this narrow track, they often tried to wear out each other's patience rather than descend into the dirt alongside. The raw wool and bale goods of the district were nearly all carried along these flagged ways on the backs of single horses; and it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils by which the conduct of the traffic was attended. On horseback before daybreak and long after nightfall, these hardy sons of trade pursued their object with the spirit and intrepidity of foxhunters; and the boldest of their country neighbours had no reason to despise either their horsemanship or their courage.*[19] The Manchester trade was carried on in the same way. The chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses, which accompanied them to all the principal towns, bearing their goods in packs, which they sold to their customers, bringing back sheep's wool and other raw materials of manufacture.
The only records of this long-superseded mode of communication are now to be traced on the signboards of wayside public-houses. Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still painted on village sign-boards — things as retentive of odd bygone facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.*[20]
Footnotes for Chapter II.