Chapter II: Part 2

The usage of the time appears to have been for the driver of a hackney carriage to fill up his vehicle as he drove along the streets somewhat after the manner of a modern ‘bus conductor, if we correctly understand the following entry in the Diary:—

February 6, 1663. “So home: and being called by a coachman who had a fare in him he carried me beyond the Old Exchange, and there set down his fare, who would not pay him what was his due because he carried a stranger [Pepys] with him, and so after wrangling he was fain to be content with sixpence, and being vexed the coachman would not carry me home a great while, but set me down there for the other sixpence, but with fair words he was willing to it.”

Whence it also appears that some members of the public objected to this practice. The cabman of that time was evidently an insolent character, for Pepys refers contemptuously to a “precept” which was drawn up in March, 1663, by the Lord Mayor, Sir John Robinson, against coachmen who “affronted the gentry.”

GLASS WINDOWS IN CARRIAGES.

Glass was used in carriages at this time, as the entries quoted from Pepys’ Diary on pages 43 and 44 tell us. Mr. Thrupp states that “no trace of glass windows or perfect doors seem to have existed up to 1650.” Glass was in common use for house windows before that date, and Mr. Thrupp refers to the statement that the wife of the Emperor Ferdinand III. rode in a glass carriage so small that it contained only two persons as early as 1631. The manufacture of glass was established in England in 1557[10] (Stow), but plate glass, and none other could have withstood the rough usage which coaches suffered from the wretched roads, was not made in England until 1670; previous to that date it was imported from France. A patent (No. 244) was granted in 1685 to John Bellingham “for making square window glasses for chaises and coaches.”

[10] James I., by Proclamation, in 1615, forbade the manufacture of glass if wood were used as fuel, on the ground that the country was thereby denuded of timber. In 1635 Sir Robert Maunsell perfected a method of manufacturing “all sorts of glass with sea coale or pitt coale,” and Charles I. forbade the importation of foreign glass in order to encourage and assist this new industry.

Pepys writes in his Diary, December 30, 1668: “A little vexed to be forced to pay 40s. for a glass of my coach, which was broke the other day, nobody knows how, within the door while it was down: but I do doubt that I did break it myself with my knees.” Forty shillings for a single pane seems to indicate that it was plate glass. This passage also shows us that the lower part of the coach door must have received the glass between the outer woodwork and a covering of upholstery of some kind. Had there been wooden casing inside Pepys would not have broken it with his knees, and had it been uncovered the accident could not have escaped discovery at the moment.

IMPROVEMENTS IN CARRIAGES.

With reference to the introduction of springs: the patent granted to Edward Knapp in 1625 protected an invention for “hanging the bodies of carriages on springs of steel”: the method is not described. Unfortunately, the Letters Patent of those days scrupulously refrain from giving any information that would show us _how_ the inventor proposed to achieve his object. Knapp’s springs could not have been efficacious, for forty years later ingenious men were working at this problem. On May 1, 1665, Pepys went to dine with Colonel Blunt at Micklesmarsh, near Greenwich, and after dinner was present at the

“... trial of some experiments about making of coaches easy. And several we tried: but one did prove mighty easy (not here for me to describe, but the whole body of the coach lies upon one long spring), and we all, one after another, rid in it; and it is very fine and likely to take.”

These experiments were made before a committee appointed by the Royal Society, from whose records it appears that on a previous date Colonel Blunt had “produced another model of a chariot with four springs, esteemed by him very easy both to the rider and horse, and at the same time cheap.”

This arrangement of springs evidently did not give such satisfactory results as the one mentioned above by Pepys. On May 3, 1665, we learn from Birch’s _History of the Royal Society_:—

“Mr. Hook produced the model of a chariot with two wheels and short double springs, to be drawn with one horse; the chair [seat] of it being so fixed upon two springs that the person sitting just over or rather a little behind the axle-tree was, when the experiment was made at Colonel Blount’s house, carried with as much ease as one could be in the French chariot without at all burthening the horse.”

Mr. Hook showed:—

“Two drafts of this model having this circumstantial difference, one of these was contrived so that the boy sitting on a seat made for him behind the chair and guiding the reins over the top of it, drives the horse. The other by placing the chair clear behind the wheels, the place of entry being also behind and the saddle on the horse’s back being to be borne up by the shafts, that the boy riding on it and driving the horse should be little or no burden to the horse.”

It seems to have been this latter variety of Colonel Blount’s invention, or a modification of it, which Pepys saw on January 22, 1666, and describes as “a pretty odd thing.”

On September 5, 1665, Pepys writes:—

“After dinner comes Colonel Blunt in his new chariot made with springs. And he hath rode, he says now, this journey many miles in it with one horse and outdrives any coach and outgoes any horses, and so easy, he says. So for curiosity I went into it to try it and up the hill to the heath and over the cart ruts, and found it pretty well, but not so easy as he pretends.”

Colonel Blunt, or Blount, seems to have devoted much time and ingenuity to the improvement of the coach, for on January 22, 1666, the committee again assembled at his house

“—to consider again of the business of chariots and try their new invention which I saw my Lord Brouncker ride in; where the coachman sits astride upon a pole over the horse but do not touch the horse, which is a pretty odd thing: but it seems it is most easy for the horse, and as they say for the man also.”

On February 16, 1667, a chariot invented by Dr. Croune was produced for inspection by the members of the Royal Society and “generally approved.” No particulars of the vehicle are given: we are only told that “some fence was proposed to be made for the coachman against the kicking of the horse.”

PEPYS’ PRIVATE CARRIAGE.

On October, 20, 1668, Pepys went to look for the carriage he had so long promised himself “and saw many; and did light on one [in Cow Lane] for which I bid £50, which do please me mightily, and I believe I shall have it.” Four days later the coach-maker calls upon him and they agree on £53 as the price. But on the 30th of the same month Mr. Povy comes “to even accounts with me:” and after some gossip about the court,

“—— he and I do talk of my coach and I got him to go and see it, where he finds most infinite fault with it, both as to being out of fashion and heavy, with so good reason that I am mightily glad of his having corrected me in it: and so I do resolve to have one of his build, and with his advice, both in coach and horses, he being the fittest man in the world for it.”

Mr. Povy had been Treasurer and Receiver-General of Rents and Revenues to James, Duke of York: Evelyn describes him as “a nice contriver of all elegancies.” The opinion of such a personage on a point of fashion would have been final with a man of Pepys’ temperament, and we hear no more about the coach with which Mr. Povy “found” most infinite fault.

On 2 November, 1668, Pepys goes “by Mr. Povy’s direction to a coach-maker near him for a coach just like his, but it was sold this very morning.” Mr. Povy lived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and Lord Braybrooke remarks, “Pepys no doubt went to Long Acre, then, as now, celebrated for its coach-makers.” On November 5,

“With Mr. Povy spent all the afternoon going up and down among the coach-makers in Cow Lane and did see several, and at last did pitch upon a little chariot whose body was framed but not covered at the widow’s that made Mr. Lowther’s fine coach; and we are mightily pleased with it, it being light, and will be very genteel and sober: to be covered with leather and yet will hold four.”

The carriage gave great satisfaction when it came home, but the horses were not good enough for it: and on December 12 Pepys records that “this day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses, the first I ever was master of. They cost me £50 and are a fine pair.”

CARRIAGE PAINTING IN PEPYS’ DAY.

Pepys’ position as an official at the Navy Office was not considered by his detractors to give him the social status that entitled him to keep his own coach, and soon after he became the owner of it a scurrilous pamphlet appeared which, incidentally, gives us a description of the arms or device with which it was decorated. After denouncing Pepys for his presumption in owning a carriage at all the writer proceeds:—

“First you had upon the fore part of your chariot tempestuous waves and wrecks of ships; on your left hand forts and great guns and ships a-fighting; on your right hand was a fair harbour and galleys riding with their flags and pennants spread, kindly saluting each other. Behind it were high curled waves and ships a-sinking, and here and there an appearance of some bits of land.”

If this is a true description, it would seem as though Pepys’ idea of the “very genteel and sober” cannot be measured by modern standards of sober gentility: however that may be, the Diarist takes no notice of the pamphlet and continues to enjoy possession “with mighty pride” in a vehicle which he remarks (March 18, 1669), after a drive in Hyde Park, he “thought as pretty as any there, and observed so to be by others.”

In the following April, however, we find him resolving to have “the standards of my coach gilt with this new sort of varnish, which will come to but forty shillings; and contrary to my expectation, the doing of the biggest coach all over comes not to above £6, which is not very much.” One morning, a few days later: “I to my coach, which is silvered over, but no varnish yet laid on, so I put it in a way of doing.” Again, in the afternoon:—

“I to my coach-maker’s and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my coach at three in the afternoon, but I set it in doing and stood by it till eight at night and saw the painter varnish it, which is pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more yellow, and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost, and most coaches are nowadays done so, and it is very pretty when laid on well and not too pale as some are, even to show the silver. Here I did make the workmen drink, and saw my coach cleaned and oiled.”

There is a passage in the Diary (April 30, 1669), which suggests that it was not unusual for people of station and leisure to superintend the painting of their carriages; as Pepys found at the coach-maker’s “a great many ladies sitting in the body of a coach that must be ended [finished] by to-morrow; they were my Lady Marquess of Winchester, Lady Bellassis and other great ladies, eating of bread and butter and drinking ale.”

On the day after that he spent at the coach-maker’s, Pepys, on his return from office, takes his wife for a drive: “We went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons and the standards there gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours, all the day.”

Samuel Pepys’ child-like pride in his carriage was no doubt a source of amusement to his contemporaries, but it has had the result of giving us more minute details concerning the carriages of Charles II.’s time than we can obtain from the pages of any other writer.

THE FIRST STAGE COACHES.

We must now turn to the stage coach which had come into vogue about the year 1640.[11] Chamberlayne,[12] writing in 1649, says:—

[11] _History of the Art of Coach Building._ By George A. Thrupp, 1876.

[12] _The Present State of Great Britain._ By Chamberlayne, 1649.

“There is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns of the country that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endamaging one’s health and one’s body by hard jogging or over violent motion on horseback, and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five miles, but with such velocity and speed in one hour as the foreign post can make but in one day.”

There were two classes of coach in the seventeenth century. Mons. Misson[13] says, “There are coaches that go to all the great towns by moderate journeys; and others which they call flying coaches that will travel twenty leagues a day and more. But these do not go to all places.” He also refers to the waggons which “lumber along but heavily,” and which he says are used only by a few poor old women. Four or four miles and a half in the hour was the speed of the ordinary coach.

[13] _Memoirs and Observations of a Journey in England_, 1697.

The coaches that travelled between London and distant towns were similar in construction to the hackney coach, which plied for hire in the streets, but were built on a larger scale. They carried eight passengers inside, and behind, over the axle, was a great basket for baggage and outside passengers, who made themselves as comfortable as they might in the straw supplied. The “insides” were protected from rain and cold by leather curtains; neither passengers nor baggage were carried on the roof; and the coachman sat on a bar fixed between the two standard posts from which the body was hung in front, his feet being supported by a footboard on the perch.

Mr. Thrupp states that in 1662 there were only six stage coaches in existence; which assertion does not agree with that of Chamberlayne, quoted on a previous page; the seventeenth century writer tells us that in his time—1649—stage coaches ran “from London to the principle towns in the country.” It seems, however, certain that the year 1662 saw a great increase in the number of “short stages”—that is to say, coaches running between London and towns twenty, thirty, forty miles distant.

OBJECTIONS RAISED TO STAGE COACHES.

This is proved by the somewhat violent pamphlet written by John Cressel, to which reference was made on page 33. This publication, which was entitled _The Grand Concern of England Explained_, appeared in 1673. It informs us that the stage coaches, to which John Cressel strongly objects:—

“Are kept by innkeepers ... or else ... by such persons as before the late Act for reducing the number of hackney coaches in London [_see_ page 33] to 400, were owners of coaches and drove hackney. But when the number of 400 was full and they not licensed, then to avoid the penalties of the Act they removed out of the city dispersing themselves into every little town within twenty miles of London where they set up for stagers and drive every day to London and in the night-time drive about the city.”

These intruders,[14] whose number John Cressel says is “at least 2,000,” paid no £5, and took bread from the mouths of the four hundred licensed hackney coachmen.

[14] Owing to the profitable nature of the business these unlicensed hackney coaches increased until on November 30, 1687, a Royal Proclamation was issued appointing new Commissioners with authority to make an end of them.

John Cressel’s purpose in writing his pamphlet was to call the attention of Parliament to the necessity which, in his opinion, existed for the suppressing all or most of the stage coaches and caravans which were then plying on the roads; and incidentally he gives some interesting particulars concerning the stage coach service of his time. Taking the York, Chester and Exeter coaches as examples, he says that each of these with forty horses apiece carry eighteen passengers per week from London.[15] In the summer the fare to either of these places was forty shillings and in winter forty-five shillings; the coachman was changed four times on the way, and the usual practice was for each passenger to give each coachman one shilling.

[15] The stage coach carried six passengers, and a coach left London for each of the towns named three times a week.

The journey—200 miles—occupied four days. These early “flying coaches” travelled faster than their successors of a later date. The seventeenth century London-Exeter coach did the journey, one hundred and seventy-five miles, in ten days, whereas in 1755, according to “Nimrod,” proprietors promised “a safe and expeditious journey in a fortnight.”

The “short stages,” _i.e._, those which ran between London and places only twenty or thirty miles distant, were the hackney coaches which had not been fortunate enough to obtain licenses under Charles II.’s Act. These were drawn by four horses and carried six passengers, making the journey to or from London in one day. There were, John Cressel states, stage coaches running to almost every town situated within twenty or twenty-five miles of the capital; and it is worth observing that at this date letters were sent by coach. Coaches ran on both sides of the Thames from Windsor and Maidenhead, and “carry all the letters, little bundles and passengers which were carried by watermen.”

This writer’s arguments against coaches are worthless as such, but they throw side lights on the discomforts of travel at the time. He considered it detrimental to health to rise in the small hours of the morning to take coach and to retire late to bed. With more reason he enquired,

“Is it for a man’s health to be laid fast in foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; and afterwards sit in the cold till fresh teams of horses can be procured to drag the coach out of the foul ways? Is it for his health to travel in rotten coaches and have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait half the day before making good their stage?”

John Cressel was prone to exaggeration, but there is plenty of reliable contemporary evidence to show that his picture of the coach roads was not overdrawn. Yet when this advocate for the suppression of coaches seeks to rouse public sentiment, he reproaches those men who use them for effeminacy and indulgence in luxury! One of his quaintest arguments in favour of the saddle horse is that the rider’s clothes “are wont to be spoyled in two or three journies”; which is, he urges, an excellent thing for trade as represented by the tailors.

John Cressel, it will be gathered from this, viewed the innovation from a lofty stand-point. He describes the introduction of stage coaches as one of the greatest mischiefs that have happened of late years to the King. They wrought harm, he said:

(1) By destroying the breed of good horses, the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman.

(2) By hindering the breed of watermen who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwarks of the kingdom.

(3) By lessening His Majesty’s revenues; for there is not the fourth part of saddle horses either bred or kept now in England that there was before these coaches set up, and would be again if suppressed.

Travelling on horseback was cheaper than by coach. The “chapman” or trader could hire a horse from the hackneyman at from 6s. to 12s. per week. John Cressel estimates that a man could come from “York, Exeter or Chester to London, and stay twelve days for business (which is the most that country chapmen usually do stay), for £1 16s., horse hire and horse meat 1s. 2d. per day.” From Northampton it cost 16s. to come to London on horseback, from Bristol 25s., Bath 20s., Salisbury 20s. or 25s., and from Reading 7s.

If men would not ride, John Cressel urged them to travel in the long waggons which moved “easily without jolting men’s bodies or hurrying them along as the running coaches do.” The long waggon was drawn by four or five horses and carried from twenty to twenty-five passengers. He proposed that there should be one stage per week from London to each shire town in England; that these should use the same team of horses for the whole journey, that their speed should not exceed thirty miles a day in summer and 25 in winter, and that they should halt at different inns on each journey to support the innkeeping business. If these proposals were carried out, the writer thought stage coaches would “do little or no harm.”

John Cressel’s pamphlet was answered by another from the pen of a barrister, who showed up the futility of his arguments and deductions, but did not find great fault with his facts and figures.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HIGH ROADS.

It is commonly believed that the introduction of stage coaches produced the first legislative endeavour to improve the country roads; this is not the case: nor had the sufferings of travellers by “long waggon” any influence upon legislators if comparison of dates be a reliable test; for it was not until 1622 that any attempt was made to save the roads. In that year James I. issued a Proclamation in which it was stated that inasmuch as the highways were ploughed up by “unreasonable carriages,” and the bridges shaken, the use of four-wheeled carts for carrying goods and agricultural produce was forbidden, carts with two wheels only being allowed.

In 1629 Charles I. issued a Proclamation confirming that of his father, and furthermore forbidding common carriers and others to convey more than twenty hundredweight in the two-wheeled vehicles which were lawful, and also forbidding the use of more than five horses at once; the avowed object being to prevent destruction of the road.

We may fairly reason from the terms of this Proclamation that it was recognised that on occasion five horses might be required to draw one ton along the roads; and from this we can form our own idea of the condition to which traffic and rains might reduce the highways.

In 1661 the restrictions on cart traffic were modified by Charles II.’s Proclamation, which permitted carts and waggons with four wheels, and drawn by ten or more horses, to carry sixty or seventy hundredweight, and forbade more than five horses to be harnessed to any four-wheeled cart unless the team went in pairs. The orders issued thus by Proclamation were made law by two Acts of Charles II. in 1670; the second of which forbade the use of more than eight horses or oxen unless harnessed two abreast.

In 1663 the first turnpike gate was erected; this novelty was put on the Great North Road to collect tolls for repair of the highway in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon, where in places it had become “ruinous and almost impassable.” The turnpike was so unpopular that for nearly a century no gate was erected between Glasgow and Grantham.

Nothing more clearly proves the badness of the roads in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than the number of patents granted to inventors for devices calculated to prevent carriages from over-turning. The first invention towards this end was patented in 1684, and between that date and 1792 nine more patents were granted for devices to prevent upsetting, or to cause the body of the vehicle to remain erect though the wheels turned over.

Few thought it worth trying to discover a method of improving the roads which caused accidents. In 1619, one John Shotbolt took out a patent for “strong engines for making and repairing of roads”; another was issued in 1699 to Nathaniel Bard, who also protected “an engine for levelling and preserving roads and highways”; and in the same year Edward Heming was granted a patent for a method of repairing highways “so as to throw all the rising ridges into the ruts.” History omits to tell us what measure of success rewarded these inventions: if the Patent Specification files form any guide to an opinion, inventors gave up in despair trying to devise means of keeping the roads in order, for not until 1763 does another ingenious person appear with a remedy thought worthy of letters patent.

Repairs to the highways were effected by forced labour when their condition made improvement absolutely necessary. Thus, in 1695, surveyors were appointed by Act of Parliament to require persons to work on the road between London and Harwich, which in places had become almost impassable. Labourers were to be paid at local rates of hire, were not to be called upon to travel more than four miles from home, nor to work more than two days in the week: nor were they liable to be summoned for road-mending during seed, hay and harvest-time. This Act also revised the system of tolls on vehicles: any stage, hackney, or other coach and any calash or chariot was to pay 6d. toll; a cart 8d. and a waggon 1s.

The Company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was founded in 1677 by Charles II. The foundation of the company shows that the trade of coach-building was by this time large and important, while the interest taken by the King must have given an impetus to the business. We have evidence that coaches of English build were appreciated on the Continent in an old “List of the Names of all the Commodities of English Product and Manufacture that was Exported to France from England during what may be called the Interval of Peace from Christmas, 1698, to Christmas, 1702.” The list includes both coaches and harness for coaches.

In this connection it is to be observed that by the terms of its charter the Coachmakers’ Company was empowered to seek out and destroy bad work wherever they might find such. Under these conditions it is not surprising that English workmanship became famous.

Hyde Park, as Pepys and other writers show us, was the best place in London to see the coaches of the gentry. In an undated petition, submitted by “a great number of licensed hackney coachmen,” there is reference to the “four hundred licensed coachmen in Hyde Park,” from which it might be inferred that these formed a body of license-holders distinct from the four hundred licensed by Charles II. in 1663.

HACKNEY CABS AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE.

In 1694, when the Parliament was hard pressed for money to carry on the French war, the London cabs or hackney coaches were more heavily taxed under a new system of licenses; the number licensed to ply for hire was raised from 400 to 700, and for each license, which held good for twenty-one years, the sum of £50 was to be paid down, while £4 per annum was to be paid as “rent.” All stage coaches in England and Wales were to pay a tax of £8 a year. This Act confirmed the old tariff of fares for hackney coaches in London (_see_ p. 42), and the prohibition against plying on Sundays, which had been in force since 1662, was partially withdrawn. The new Act allowed 175 cabs to ply for hire on Sundays; the Commissioners were enjoined to arrange matters so that the 700 licensed cabmen should be employed in turn on Sunday.

This Act caused great discontent among the original 400 licensed coachmen, as it made them equally liable with the additional 300 licensees to the £50 impost; their grievances found vent in a petition, wherein they prayed that they, the Original Four Hundred, might be “incorporated” (presumably as a guild or company), and that all stage coaches running between London and places thirty miles therefrom might be suppressed.

The Act of 1693 compelled the hackney coachman to carry a fare ten miles out of London if required, and doubtless the uncertainty of finding a “fare” to bring back was partly owing to the short stages, which ran on every road.

The five Commissioners who were appointed to carry out the provisions of this law discharged their duties with no greater integrity than their predecessors. Yet another Petition from the 700 hackney coachmen refers incidentally to the circumstance that in 1694 three of the five were dismissed for accepting bribes from tradesmen who wanted licenses; the petition also prays for better regulations to control the “many hundred coaches and horses let for hire without license, likewise shaises, hackney chairs and short stages.”

The “shaise” or chaise was evidently a vehicle of a different type from the hackney coach. The post-chaise for hire was introduced into England about this time from France by John, a son of Mr. Jethro Tull, the famous agriculturist who in 1733 published a work, entitled “Horse Hoeing Husbandry,” which attracted great attention and laid the foundation of the use of implements in farming and improvements in methods of cultivation. In 1740 John Tull was granted a patent for a sedan chair fixed on a wheel carriage for horse draught.

MANNERS OF THE CABMAN.

The licensed coachmen had good grounds for complaint, as we learn from an edict issued in 1692 by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the law was systematically evaded; in that year only 160 hackney coachmen applied for licenses and the number plying in the streets was about one thousand. The men were a turbulent set; several, we read, were indicted for “standing of their coaches [in the streets] as a common nuisance, for assaulting constables and tradesmen who attempt to remove them from before their shops.” There were no side walks for foot-passengers in those days, and thus the standing coach might be so placed as to block the entrance to a shop.

Mons. Misson has the following passage concerning the hackney coachman; it is interesting as an illustration of contemporary manners:—

“If a coachman has a dispute about his fare with a gentleman that has hired him, and the gentleman offers to fight him to decide the quarrel, the coachman consents with all his heart. The gentleman pulls off his sword, lays it in some shop with his cane, gloves and cravat, and boxes in the manner I have described. If the coachman is soundly drubbed, which happens almost always, that goes for payment, but if he is the _beator_ the _beatee_ must pay the money about which they quarrelled. I once saw the late Duke of Grafton at fisticuffs in the open street, the widest part of the Strand, with such a fellow whom he lamm’d most horribly.”

The same author says that the London squares are enclosed with railings to keep the coaches from crossing them.

CAB DRIVING A LUCRATIVE OCCUPATION.

It has been remarked on a previous page that the hackney coachman drove a thriving business; how profitable it was we may learn from two petitions which were evoked by Queen Anne’s Act of 1710, which increased the number of licenses to 800 on payment of 5s. a week, such licenses to hold good for thirty-two years. Seven hundred coaches were more than profitable employment could be found for, if we might believe the inevitable petition put in against this Act; but nevertheless the new 800 licensees joined in petitioning that their licenses “may again be made assets” as under the Act of 1694. “In consideration of which, notwithstanding the rent of 5s. per week, we most humbly offer to raise £16,000 as a fine of £20 on each license for the use of His Majesty King George.”

That there was money to be made in the business is shown even more clearly by a petition submitted by James, Lord Mordington and others about this time. The petitioners offer to “farm the 800 hackney coaches which are now thought necessary” at £6 per license for 21 years; they were also prepared to pay £2,000 a year during that period, on which the King might raise a sum of £20,000; to pay £500 a year to the orphans of the City of London; and also to raise and equip a regiment of foot at a cost of £3,000!

The Act of 1710, it should be observed, altogether removed the prohibition against plying on Sunday. It licensed 200 hackney chairs and fixed the chair tariff at two-thirds of that in force for the coach (1s. for one and a half miles, and 1s. 6d. for two miles). An injunction to the Commissioners to fix at the Royal Exchange a table of distances must have been appreciated by the users of hackney coaches in London. It also repeated the injunction to use horses of fourteen hands at least; which repetition seems to have been very necessary, as Misson remarks that the regulation at the time of his visit was “but ill obeyed.”

It was about this time that a curious system of wig stealing was adopted by the London thieves. We read in the _Weekly Journal_ of March 30, 1713, that:—

“The thieves have got such a villainous way now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of hackney carriages, and take away their wigs or the fine headdresses of gentlewomen.”

The writer counsels persons travelling alone in a hackney coach to sit on the front seat to baffle the thieves.

In vol. 3 of the _Carriage Builders’ and Harness Makers’ Art Journal_ (1863) was published an advertisement from an old newspaper; this was thought by the contributor who discovered it to be the first advertisement of the practical application of springs to coaches; it refers to a patent granted for fourteen years to Mr. John Green in 1691:—

“All the nobility and gentry may have the carriages of their coaches made new or the old ones altered, after this new invention, at reasonable rates; and hackney and stage coachmen may have licenses from the Patentees, _Mr. John Green_ and _Mr. William Dockwra_, his partner, at the rate of 12_d._ per week, to drive the roads and streets, some of which having this week began, and may be known from the common coaches by the words Patent Coach being over both doors in carved letters. These coaches are so hung as to render them easier for the passenger and less labour to the horses, the gentleman’s coaches turning in narrow streets and lanes in as little or less room than any French carriage with crane neck, and not one third part of the charge. The manner of the coachman’s sitting is more convenient, and the motion like that of a sedan, being free from the tossing and jolting to which other coaches are liable over rough and broken roads, pavements or kennels. These great Conveniences (besides others) are invitation sufficient for all persons that love their own ease and would save their horses draught, to use these sort of carriages and no other, since these carriages need no alteration.”

This advertisement is the more noteworthy as it clearly refers to some kind of turning head; however valuable the improvements thus offered, the springs at least do not appear to have been appreciated, for their use did not become general till the latter half of the eighteenth century.

COACHES AND ROADS IN QUEEN ANNE’S TIME.

From the advertisements in old newspapers we obtain some particulars of the speed made by stage coaches in the early part of the eighteenth century. In 1703, when the roads were good, the coach from London to Portsmouth did the journey, about ninety miles, in fourteen hours. In 1706, the York coach left London on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, performing the 200 mile journey in four days; each passenger was allowed 14 lbs. of luggage and overweight was charged for at 3d. per lb. In winter the cross-roads were execrable, as appears from the _Annals of Queen Anne_ (London, 1704). In December, 1703, the King of Spain slept at Petworth in Sussex, on his way from Portsmouth to Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there: concerning the journey one of the Prince’s attendants writes:—

“We set out at six o’clock in the morning to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) til we arrived at our journey’s end. “’Twas hard service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything and passing through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life; we were thrown but once indeed in going, but both our coach, which was the leading, and his highnesse’s body-coach would have suffered very often if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently poised it or supported it with their shoulders from Godalmin almost to Petworth; and the nearer we approached to the Duke’s house the more unaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours time to conquer them, and indeed we had never done it if our good master had not several times lent us a pair of horses out of his own coach, whereby we were enabled to trace out the way for him.”

COACHING IN GEORGE I.’S AND GEORGE II.’S REIGNS.

Markland,[16] referring to the above passage, states on the authority of a correspondent that in 1748 persons travelling from Petworth to Guildford were obliged to make for the nearest point of the great road from Portsmouth to London; plainly indicating that the main arteries of traffic were much superior to the cross-roads.

[16] _Remarks on the Early Use of Carriages in England._

Dean Swift, writing to Pope on August 22, 1726, refers to the “closeness and confinement of the uneasy coach.” At this period there was still considerable prejudice against the use of carriages by men who were physically able to ride, as appears from a letter written by Swift to his friend Mr. Gay, on September 10, 1731:—

“If your ramble was on horseback I am glad of it on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage coaches and your friends’ coaches; for you are as arrant a cockney as any hosier in Cheapside ... you love twelve-penny coaches too well, considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half-a-crown a day ... a coach and six horses is all the exercise you can bear.”

The reference to Mr. Gay’s income indicates that the saddle was a much cheaper means of travelling than the coach. Six horses seem to have been the number used in private coaches during the first half of the eighteenth century, if we may judge by the frequency with which Swift refers to “to coach and six.”

An agreement made in 1718 between a Mr. Vanden Bampde and Charles Hodges, a job-master, is worth noticing. Under this contract Hodges undertook to maintain for Mr. Bampde “a coach, chariot, and harness neat and clean, and in all manner of repair at his own charge, not including the wheels.” If the coachman should break the glass when the carriage was empty, Hodges was to make good the damage. He was to supply at a charge of 5s. 6d. a day, a pair of “good, strong, serviceable, handsome well-matched horses of value between £50 and £60”; also a “good, sober, honest, creditable coachman,” who, with the horses, should attend as Mr. Bampde or his lady might require in London or Westminster. If Mr. Bampde went into the country Hodges was to find him one or more pairs of horses at half-a-crown per pair per day extra.

DEAN SWIFT ON COACHES AND DRIVERS.

The hackney coachmen appear to have been quite as independent and offensive a class in Swift’s time as they were in Pepys’. Writing from Dublin on July 8, 1733, he compares the advantages of residence in that city with residence in London, and gives prominence to the following items:—

“I am one of the governors of all the hackney coaches, carts and carriages round this town; who dare not insult me like your rascally waggoners or coachmen, but give me the way.”

It may be observed here that there was still plenty of work for the wherrymen on the Thames in the middle of the eighteenth century. Swift writes on April 16, 1760, praying Mr. Warburton to leave London and pay him a visit at Twickenham, and by way of inducement he adds: “If the press be to take up any part of your time, the sheets may be brought you hourly thither by my waterman.”

The Dean’s _Humorous Advice to Servants_ contains some sarcastic observations addressed to the coachman, which shed light upon what we must suppose was the usual character of that servant. He is advised that “you are strictly bound to nothing but to step into the box and carry your lord and lady;” and he is enjoined to take every opportunity of drinking. The following passage shows how wheels of carriages suffered from the battering on the roads:—

“Take care that your wheels be good; and get a new set bought as often as you can whether you are allowed the old as your perquisite or not; in one case it will turn to your honest profit and on the other it will be a just punishment on your master’s covetousness, and probably the coach-maker will consider you too.”

ROADS IN THE 18TH CENTURY.

Every author of the time has something to say about the roads. Daniel Bourn[17] says:—

“So late as thirty or forty years ago [_i.e._, 1723-33] the roads of England were in a most deplorable condition. Those that were narrow were narrow indeed, often to that degree that the stocks of the wheels bore hard against the bank on each side, and in many places they were worn below the level of the neighbouring surface, many feet, nay, yards perpendicular; and a wide-spreading, brushy hedge intermixed with old half-decayed trees and stubbs hanging over the traveller’s head intercepting the benign influence of the heavens from his path, and the beauties of the circumjacent country from his view, made it look more like the retreat of wild beasts and reptiles than the footsteps of man. In other parts where the road was wide, it might be, and often was too much so, and exhibited a scene of a different aspect. Here the wheel-carriage had worn a diversity of tracks which wore either deep, or rough and stony, or high or low as Mother Nature had placed the materials upon the face of the ground; the space between these were frequently furzy hillocks of thorny brakes, through or among which the equestrian traveller picked out his entangled and uncouth steps.

“To these horrible, stony, deep, miry, uncomfortable, dreary roads the narrow-wheel waggon seems to be best adapted, and these were frequently drawn by seven, eight, or even ten horses, that with great difficulty and hazard dragged after them twenty-five or thirty hundredweight, seldom more.”

[17] _Treatise of Wheeled Carriages_, London, 1763.

Bourn’s reference to the “narrow-wheel waggon” touches a matter which formed the subject of hot debate for generations. It was urged that the narrow wheels of waggons were largely the means of cutting up the roads, and no doubt these did contribute to the general condition of rut and ridge that characterised them. This view was adopted by Parliament, and to encourage the use of wide wheels a system of turnpike tolls was adopted which treated the wide tire far more leniently than the narrow; anything under 9 inches in width being considered narrow.

Bourn was a warm advocate for wide wheels, and the book from which the above passage is taken describes an improved waggon invented by himself; the drawing is from the inventor’s work. The wheels of this vehicle resemble small garden rollers; they are 2 feet high and 16 inches wide. Each is attached independently to the body of the waggon and the fore wheels being placed side by side in the centre, while the hind wheels are set wide apart, the waggon is practically designed to fulfil the functions of a road-roller.[18] It does not appear that Bourn’s invention obtained any general acceptance, which is perhaps not very surprising.

[18] In the _St. James’s Chronicle_ of December 30, 1772, a correspondent “observes with particular pleasure the good effects of the rolling machine on the turnpike road to Stony Stratford. For this important improvement Mr. Sharp is responsible.” The writer proceeds to describe with the exactness and appreciation due to so useful an invention, the first patent of the familiar road-roller.

SPEED OF THE 18TH CENTURY STAGE COACH.

In 1742, the Oxford coach, leaving London at seven in the morning, reached High Wycombe (about forty miles) at five in the evening, remained there the night, and concluded the journey on the following day. The Birmingham coach made its journey at about the same pace, forty miles per day, resting half a day at Oxford. Night travel does not seem to have been at all usual. Apart from the badness of the roads, the audacity of highwaymen was a sufficient reason for refraining from journeys by night.

Some improvements were made in private carriages at this period, but there was little change for the better in the stage coaches, which differed slightly from the “machine” of a century earlier; the driver’s seat was safer and less uncomfortable, and that was the only noteworthy alteration. An advertisement of 1750 announces “accommodation behind the coach for baggage and passengers; fares 21s., and servants 10s. 6d., riding either in the basket behind or on the box beside the driver.”

Endeavour to expedite the service between the great towns of the kingdom is shown in an advertisement of the “Flying Coach,” which was put on the London and Manchester road in 1754. This informs possible patrons that “incredible as it may appear, this coach will actually arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.” The distance between the two cities is about 187 miles, making the rate of speed a little over 44 miles per day.

The stage coach of 1755 is thus described by Mr. Thrupp.

“They were covered with dull black leather, studded by way of ornament with broad-headed nails, with oval windows in the quarters, the frames painted red. On the panels were displayed in large characters the names of the places where the coach started and whither it went. The roof rose in a high curve with an iron rail around it. The coachman and guard sat in front upon a high narrow boot, often garnished with a spreading hammer-cloth with a deep fringe. Behind was an immense basket supported by iron bars in which passengers were carried at lower fares. The whole coach was usually drawn by three horses, on the first of which a postillion rode, in a cocked hat and a long green-and-gold coat. The machine groaned and creaked as it went along with every tug the horses gave it, and the speed was frequently but four miles an hour.”

Three horses may have done the work in summer, but there is no reason to suppose that the roads of 1755 were any better than they had been sixteen years earlier, when Thomas Pennant thus described a journey in March from Chester to London. The stage, he says:—

“was then no despicable vehicle for country gentlemen. The first day, with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty miles; the second day to the Welsh Harp; the third to Coventry; the fourth to Northampton; the fifth to Dunstable; and as a wondrous effort on the last, to London, before the commencement of night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.”

THE APPLICATION OF SPRINGS.

In the year 1768 Dr. R. Lovell Edgeworth, who had devoted much attention to the subject, and had made numerous experiments,[19] succeeded in demonstrating that springs were as advantageous to the horses of, as to the passengers in a coach; and he constructed a carriage for which the Society of English Arts and Manufactures awarded him three gold medals. In this conveyance the axletrees were divided and the motion of each wheel was relieved by a spring. Just one dozen patents for springs were granted during the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to say which invention had most influence on methods of building coaches. In 1772 a patent was granted to James Butler for a new coach-wheel the spokes of which were constructed of springs; but this curious contrivance is mentioned nowhere—so far as the writer’s investigations have shown—but in the Patent Office files, whence we may conclude it was a failure.

[19] _An Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages._ London, 1817.

The adoption of springs was certainly gradual. It is probably right to assume that wealthy men led the way by having coaches built on springs or altering their vehicles. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the period of the coach without and the coach with springs. The illustrations show that travelling carriages on springs and braces were built in 1750. These drawings prove that, clumsy though the public conveyances were, private carriages were both tolerably light and comfortable. The “whip springs” to which the braces are attached were in general use ten years later.

A curious error arose from the application of springs to public conveyances, according to Dr. Lovell Edgeworth. Their introduction, it must be premised, led to the accommodation of passengers and loading of baggage on top of the stage coach, and coachmen, finding the vehicle drew more easily, attributed the fact, not to the springs, but to the increased height and reduced length of the load.[20]

[20] Abolition of the basket on the hind axle would have materially reduced the length of the load.

In the belief that a high and short load possessed some mysterious property which made it easier to draw than a low long one, builders vied with each other in building lofty vehicles. “Hence in all probability,” says the authority we are quoting, “arose the preposterous elevation of public carriages.”

OUTSIDE PASSENGERS.

Dr. Lovell Edgeworth gives us to understand that the practice of carrying passengers on the roof of the coach followed the application of springs to stage coaches; and in view of the belief noticed above this seems exceedingly probable. The practice had clearly been in vogue for some years when the _Annual Register_ published the following paragraph:—

“_September 7 (1770)._—It were greatly to be wished the stage coaches were put under some regulations as to the numbers of persons and quantity of baggage. Thirty-four persons were in and about the Hertford coach this day when it broke down by one of the braces giving way.”

In 1775, we learn from the same publication, stage coaches generally carried eight persons inside and often ten outside passengers. On another page appears the statement that “there are now of these vehicles [stage coaches], flies, machines and diligences upwards of 400, and of other wheeled carriages 17,000.”

In 1785 was passed George III.’s Act, which forbade the conveyance of more than six persons on the roof of any coach and more than two on the box. This Act was superseded in 1790 by another which permitted only one person to travel on the box and only four on the roof of any coach drawn by three or more horses. A coach drawn by less than three horses might carry one passenger on the box and three on the roof, but such vehicles might not ply more than twenty-five miles from the London Post Office.

The first “long coaches” (_i.e._ long-stage vehicles) and those called diligences were superseded by what were called the “old heavies,” carrying six inside passengers and twelve out.[21]