THE EXETER ROAD 137 



was once represented by Sheridan, and the neighbour- 

 hood of which was the scene of an amusing difference 

 between a toll-keeper and a guard, thus pleasantly told 

 by Mr. Stanley Harris in his justly well-known work 

 The Coaching Age. 



" The Exeter Defiance, one of Mrs. Anne Nelson's 

 coaches from the Bull Inn, Aldgate, went through the 

 gate at Staines ; all the tolls at the gates below were 

 paid by the guard every Monday, amounting to about 

 £^0. It so happened that the keeper of the gate near 

 Ilchester had got in arrear with his payments to the 

 trustees, and accordingly their clerk served a notice on 

 the guard of the coach not to pay him any more tolls. The 

 gatekeeper to counteract this move, shut the gate before 

 the time for the arrival of the coach. When the coach 

 came in sight therefore, the guard blew his horn to no 

 purpose, and couldn't get through till he had paid three 

 shillings. Meanwhile with the assistance of a horse and 

 trap, the pikekeeper reached the next toll, which the 

 coach also found barred against it. This keeper being 

 more obdurate than the other, the guard produced 

 his tool-box with the object of breaking through 

 the outwork. This led to fisticuffs between himself 

 and the keeper, in which the keeper came off second 

 best. The bout ending in the gate's being opened." 



Ilminster, to conclude, as readers of Thackeray may 

 remember, was graced by the presence of Barry Lyndon 

 in 1773, who lay at the Bell (now the George or the 

 Swan presumably, for the Bell is at Ilchester) on his 

 third night from town. Here, as he had previously 

 done at Andovcr, he engaged himself in the pleasing 

 distraction of cracking a bottle with the landlord, and 

 overcoming by this recipe Lady Lyndon's natural vice 

 of pride. There is nothing after this to notice in the 

 fifteen miles between Ilminster and Honiton, where 

 this Wincanton route joins the mail road from Salis- 

 bury to Exeter, down which I now propose to travel. 



And I think that I will not go by the Quicksilver 



