—_ a ae 
27 
forth against landlords who charge excessive prices for the stones 
required to mend the roads, and he goes on to speak of the 
‘‘dailie incroching of the covetous upon the highwaies. 
Whereas some streets within these five and twentie yeares have 
beene in most places fiftie foot broad according to the law, 
whereby the traveller might either escape the theefe, or shift the 
mier, or passe by the loaden cart without danger of himselfe and 
his horse ; now they are brought unto twelve or twentie or six 
and twenty at the most, which is another cause also whereby the 
waies be the worse, and manie an honest man encombred in his 
journeie. But what speake I of these things whereof I doo not 
thinke to heare a just redresse, because the error is so common 
and the benefit thereby so sweete and profitable to manie, by 
such houses and cotages as are raised upon the same.” 
I must call your attention for a moment to one other statute 
of great importance, the Statute 12, Car. IL., c. 85, which first 
established the General Post Office and provided for the appoint- 
ment of a Postmaster-General. The dangers and inconveniences 
of private posts had resulted in the establishment of several 
public post offices, and now these had to give way to a general 
public post, and a monopoly which grew into a prolific source of 
royal revenue. What concerns us more particularly, however, 
in this statute, is its bearing upon the great roads of the country 
and on travelling. Coaches had only recently been introduced, 
and this method of travelling was still above the reach of most 
wayfarers. For the most part the gentry rode on horseback, or 
in their own carriages drawn by four horses or more ; the poor 
in the straw of the stage waggon which was the general 
conveyance for heavy goods; but that was only on the best 
highways; and on the byroads, and generally throughout the 
country north of York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by 
long trains of pack-horses, which often bore also between the 
baskets the traveller of humble condition. The traveller who 
wished to move expeditiously rode post. The Statute of 
Charles II. placed the provision of post horses in the hands of 
the Postmaster-General or his deputies, and fresh saddle horses 
and guides were to be procured at convenient distances along the 
great lines of road. The statute imposed on the new post office 
the duty of providing these post-horses, and the still more 
important duty of establishing postal stations on certain great 
lines of road which are specified. The two lines which nearly 
concern us were the great north-west and the great north-east 
roads. I need not describe them, for if you take the routes of 
the London and North-Western and the Great Northern Railways, 
you have them at once; and these two great roads, vastly im- 
proved, are at this day the finest in the country. 
