THE PERILS OF TRAVELLING^ 283 



Travelling still continued to be a peril. The number of patents 

 that were taken out to prevent coaches from overturning is some 

 evidence of the risk. Nor were the inventions always ejBfective. 

 They did not prevent George II. and his queen from being upset in 

 1730 near Parsons Green on their way into London. In October, 1736, 

 the queen was advised to leave Kensington Palace for St James's, 

 because the road was so " infamously bad " as to separate her from 

 her Ministers by " an impassable gulf of mud." If travelling was so 

 difficult for royal personages over roads in the neighbourhood of 

 London, the perils of penetrating rural districts may be imagined. 

 In the winter months carriage traffic was suspended. Only horsemen 

 could make their way. Judges and lawyers rode the circuits, 

 chasing John Doe and Richard Roe from assize town to assize town 

 on horseback. Few Quarter Sessions passed without some district 

 being " presented " for non-repair of roads, and heavy were the 

 fines inflicted by bruised and shaken judges, who, thinking that the 

 majesty of the law was ill-supported by top-boots, endeavoured to 

 reach their destination in carriages. 



Even after Turnpike Trusts were generally estabhshed, travelling 

 still continued to be neither swift, nor easy, nor safe. Guide-posts 

 were almost unkno^\Ti, and the way was frequently lost. In the 

 reign of Charles II., the stage had taken two days to reach Oxford 

 from London, and the journey to Exeter occupied four days. A 

 century later, the one stage-coach, which pHed once a month 

 between Edinburgh and London, accomphshed the journey in from 

 twelve to fourteen days. Family coaches, lumbering and jolting 

 over the uneven roads, for steel springs were not appHed to carriages 

 before the middle of the eighteenth century, made twenty miles a 

 day. They set out provisioned and armed as if for a siege. When 

 Sir Francis Headpiece travelled to London, he carried with him in 

 his coach " the family basket-hilt-sword, the Turkish scimetar, the 

 old blunder-buss, a good bag of buUets, and a great horn of powder." ^ 

 Such precautions were not always effectual against a well-mounted 

 highwayman, expert in the use of handier weapons ; and the slow 

 pace at which vehicles travelled, unless they were defended with 

 determination, made them easy victims. 



Off the frequented lines of communication, and often even on 

 these, the condition of the eighteenth century roads, as has been 



1 Vanbrugh's Journey to London, produced on the stage by Gibber, in 1728, 

 under the title of the Provoked Husband. 



