COACHING 



THE many boons conferred by Mr. John Palmer upon 

 his generation faded before the advance of the 

 railways ; but he has deserved well of posterity, if 

 only for that he altered the coach team from three 

 horses to four. Until that enterprising man undertook to 

 demonstrate that the coach could carry letters more rapidly 

 and safely than could the post-boy, our ancestors had been 

 content with the unicorn team ; but after Palmer had aston- 

 ished the world by making the journey from Bath to London, 

 in 1784, at a rate of nearly seven miles an hour, the team of 

 four horses gradually but steadily supplanted that of three in 

 the stages on almost every road in the country. 



It is generally assumed that fast coaching only came into 

 existence after the macadamisation of the roads ; but this is 

 not quite the case. Under favourable conditions the speed 

 attained in pre-Macadam days was nearly as great as it became 

 later. The Sporting Magazine of June 1807 says : ' Lately one 

 of the stage coaches on the North road ran from London to 

 Stamford, a distance of 90 miles, in 9 hrs. 4 mins. The 

 passengers, four in number, breakfasted and dined on the 

 road, so it must have run at the rate of 12 miles an hour all 

 the time it was travelling.' 



The ' old heavies ' discarded under Palmer's drastic rule 

 worked out their lives as ordinary stage coaches, and some of 

 these remained on the road until well on in the nineteenth 

 century. 



Nimrod's description of the old-time coachman is worth 

 giving :— 



' The old-fashioned coachman to a heavy coach — and they 



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