"I had the most disagreeable journey I ever experienced the night after I left you, owing to the new improved patent coach, a vehicle loaded with iron trappings and the greatest complication of unmechanical contrivances jumbled together, that I have ever witnessed. The coach swings sideways, with a sickly sway without any vertical spring; the point of suspense bearing upon an arch called a spring, though it is nothing of the sort, The severity of the jolting occasioned me such disorder, that I was obliged to stop at Axminster and go to bed very ill. However, I was able next day to proceed in a post-chaise. The landlady in the London Inn, at Exeter, assured me that the passengers who arrived every night were in general so ill that they were obliged to go supperless to bed; and, unless they go back to the old-fashioned coach, hung a little lower, the mail-coaches will lose all their custom."*[7]
We may briefly refer to the several stages of improvement —if improvement it could be called—in the most frequented highways of the kingdom, and to the action of the legislature with reference to the extension of turnpikes. The trade and industry of the country had been steadily improving; but the greatest obstacle to their further progress was always felt to be the disgraceful state of the roads. As long ago as the year 1663 an Act was passed*[8] authorising the first toll-gates or turnpikes to be erected, at which collectors were stationed to levy small sums from those using the road, for the purpose of defraying the needful expenses of their maintenance. This Act, however, only applied to a portion of the Great North Road between London and York, and it authorised the new toll-bars to be erected at Wade's Mill in Hertfordshire, at Caxton in Cambridgeshire, and at Stilton in Huntingdonshire.*[9] The Act was not followed by any others for a quarter of a century, and even after that lapse of time such Acts as were passed of a similar character were very few and far between.
For nearly a century more, travellers from Edinburgh to London met with no turnpikes until within about 110 miles of the metropolis. North of that point there was only a narrow causeway fit for pack-horses, flanked with clay sloughs on either side. It is, however, stated that the Duke of Cumberland and the Earl of Albemarle, when on their way to Scotland in pursuit of the rebels in 1746, did contrive to reach Durham in a coach and six; but there the roads were found so wretched, that they were under the necessity of taking to horse, and Mr. George Bowes, the county member, made His Royal Highness a present of his nag to enable him to proceed on his journey. The roads west of Newcastle were so bad, that in the previous year the royal forces under General Wade, which left Newcastle for Carlisle to intercept the Pretender and his army, halted the first night at Ovingham, and the second at Hexham, being able to travel only twenty miles in two days.*[10]
The rebellion of 1745 gave a great impulse to the construction of roads for military as well as civil purposes. The nimble Highlanders, without baggage or waggons, had been able to cross the border and penetrate almost to the centre of England before any definite knowledge of their proceedings had reached the rest of the kingdom. In the metropolis itself little information could be obtained of the movements of the rebel army for several days after they had left Edinburgh. Light of foot, they outstripped the cavalry and artillery of the royal army, which were delayed at all points by impassable roads. No sooner, however, was the rebellion put down, than Government directed its attention to the best means of securing the permanent subordination of the Highlands, and with this object the construction of good highways was declared to be indispensable. The expediency of opening up the communication between the capital and the principal towns of Scotland was also generally admitted; and from that time, though slowly, the construction of the main high routes between north and south made steady progress.
The extension of the turnpike system, however, encountered violent opposition from the people, being regarded as a grievous tax upon their freedom of movement from place to place. Armed bodies of men assembled to destroy the turnpikes; and they burnt down the toll-houses and blew up the posts with gunpowder. The resistance was the greatest in Yorkshire, along the line of the Great North Road towards Scotland, though riots also took place in Somersetshire and Gloucestershire, and even in the immediate neighbourhood of London. One fine May morning, at Selby, in Yorkshire, the public bellman summoned the inhabitants to assemble with their hatchets and axes that night at midnight, and cut down the turnpikes erected by Act of Parliament; nor were they slow to act upon his summons. Soldiers were then sent into the district to protect the toll-bars and the toll-takers; but this was a difficult matter, for the toll-gates were numerous, and wherever a "pike" was left unprotected at night, it was found destroyed in the morning. The Yeadon and Otley mobs, near Leeds, were especially violent. On the 18th of June, 1753, they made quite a raid upon the turnpikes, burning or destroying about a dozen in one week. A score of the rioters were apprehended, and while on their way to York Castle a rescue was attempted, when the soldiers were under the necessity of firing, and many persons were killed and wounded. The prejudices entertained against the turnpikes were so strong, that in some places the country people would not even use the improved roads after they were made.*[11] For instance, the driver of the Marlborough coach obstinately refused to use the New Bath road, but stuck to the old waggon-track, called "Ramsbury." He was an old man, he said: his grandfather and father had driven the aforesaid way before him, and he would continue in the old track till death.*[12] Petitions were also presented to Parliament against the extension of turnpikes; but the opposition represented by the petitioners was of a much less honest character than that of the misguided and prejudiced country folks, who burnt down the toll-houses. It was principally got up by the agriculturists in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, who, having secured the advantages which the turnpike-roads first constructed had conferred upon them, desired to retain a monopoly of the improved means of communication. They alleged that if turnpike-roads were extended into the remoter counties, the greater cheapness of labour there would enable the distant farmers to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and that thus they would be ruined.*[13]
This opposition, however, did not prevent the progress of turnpike and highway legislation; and we find that, from l760 to l774, no fewer than four hundred and fifty-two Acts were passed for making and repairing highways. Nevertheless the roads of the kingdom long continued in a very unsatisfactory state, chiefly arising from the extremely imperfect manner in which they were made.
Road-making as a profession was as yet unknown. Deviations were made in the old roads to make them more easy and straight; but the deep ruts were merely filled up with any materials that lay nearest at hand, and stones taken from the quarry, instead of being broken and laid on carefully to a proper depth, were tumbled down and roughly spread, the country road-maker trusting to the operation of cart-wheels and waggons to crush them into a proper shape. Men of eminence as engineers—and there were very few such at the time— considered road-making beneath their consideration; and it was even thought singular that, in 1768, the distinguished Smeaton should have condescended to make a road across the valley of the Trent, between Markham and Newark.
The making of the new roads was thus left to such persons as might choose to take up the trade, special skill not being thought at all necessary on the part of a road-maker. It is only in this way that we can account for the remarkable fact, that the first extensive maker of roads who pursued it as a business, was not an engineer, nor even a mechanic, but a Blind Man, bred to no trade, and possessing no experience whatever in the arts of surveying or bridge-building, yet a man possessed of extraordinary natural gifts, and unquestionably most successful as a road-maker. We allude to John Metcalf, commonly known as "Blind Jack of Knaresborough," to whose biography, as the constructor of nearly two hundred miles of capital roads—as, indeed, the first great English road-maker—we propose to devote the next chapter.
Footnotes for Chapter V.
*[1] Lady Luxborough, in a letter to Shenstone the poet, in 1749, says,—"A Birmingham coach is newly established to our great emolument. Would it not be a good scheme (this dirty weather, when riding is no more a pleasure) for you to come some Monday in the said stage-coach from Birmingham to breakfast at Barrells, (for they always breakfast at Henley); and on the Saturday following it would convey you back to Birmingham, unless you would stay longer, which would be better still, and equally easy; for the stage goes every week the same road. It breakfasts at Henley, and lies at Chipping Horton; goes early next day to Oxford, stays there all day and night, and gets on the third day to London; which from Birmingham at this season is pretty well, considering how long they are at Oxford; and it is much more agreeable as to the country than the Warwick way was."