[175] The Fly was the name of a coach that commenced running, in the year 1768, from Leeds to London, during the winter season, and performed its journey in two days and a half, at that period considered very expeditious travelling. Probably it derived its name from this extraordinary swiftness. The advertisement of this coach, inserted in the Leeds Intelligencer, of January 3, 1769, after stating the fares, the places from whence it set out, &c. &c., concludes in the usual manner, viz. "Performed (if God permit) by Messrs. Stokes, Benton and Co;" from this expression coaches, in those days, were by some irreverently styled "God-permits." As far back as 1669 a coach called the "Flying Coach" went from Oxford to London in one day. Perhaps any vehicle became entitled to the appellation that could go along at a moderate trot. In 1791 were advertised "New Flying Stage-Waggons."
[176] Sir George Cooke, of Wheatley; probably the seventh baronet, 1766-1823.
[177] The Angel Inn, at Doncaster, upon the site of which stands the Guild-Hall.
[178] Doncaster.
[179] This passage helps to furnish a clue to the period about which these lines were probably written. Miller (Hist. Doncaster, p. 184), under 1767, says that "a new gaol was built;" and again, under 1778 (p. 185), he says that "the old gaol was taken down and a new one erected."
[180] In addition to the "lordlike" luxury of a pack of hounds, in which the old corporation of Doncaster formerly indulged, that highly respectable body, after the manner of the Royal Cole, of convivial memory, when they "called for their bowl," (which they not unfrequently did,) possessed also the king-like privilege of summoning their "fiddlers three." They maintained, as a part of their regular establishment, three musicians, called waits, who were clothed in scarlet liveries, and played at feasts, balls, &c., and walked in the procession to church. In former times they used to go about the town, during the night, playing a single tune on various instruments at the doors of the principal inhabitants; an office which seems to have answered the same purpose as that of watchman, to which they afterwards gave place.
[181] In 1762 the huntsman had "a frock of blue shagg, faced with red,"—the colours of the corporation's livery.
[182] The low common was enclosed about 1671, when an allotment of 1 acre 16 poles was given, in lieu of land appropriated from time immemorial to the finding of church bell-ropes, and is let to the highest bidder.
[183] From a broadside in the Roxburgh collection. Another, on this event, is published by J. Forth of Pocklington.
[184] Sir James Lowther, bart., of Laleham, Middlesex, son-in-law to the earl of Bute, lieut. and custos rotulorum of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and alderman of Carlisle.