284 HIGHWAYS 



shown in a previous chapter, rendered travelling in the winter months 

 difficult, and sometimes, except for horsemen, impossible. But after 

 1760 a determined effort was made at improvement. Here and there 

 some local genius, like " Blind Jack " Metcalf of Knaresborough, 

 had already anticipated the methods of Telford and McAdam. 

 In other parts of England, the turnpike trusts were placing portions 

 of the highways in better repair. But the districts for which they 

 were formed were often too small to be useful. Thus the main road 

 from Shrewsbury to Bangor (85 miles) was in the care of six trusts, 

 most of them in debt, all too poor to pay for skilled labour, and each 

 too jealous of the others to co-operate. The multiplication of these 

 turnpike trusts, though it often defeated its own object, affords 

 strong evidence of the extent to which public attention had been 

 called to the need for improved facilities of communication. 

 Between 1760 and 1774 no less than 452 Turnpike Acts were passed, 

 and in the sixteen years from 1785 to 1800 this number was increased 

 by 643. Two General Highway Acts were passed in 1773 * which 

 consolidated the previous legislation on the subject of parochial lia- 

 bility for road repair, transferred the appointment of surveyors to the 

 justices of the peace out of lists of names submitted by each parish, 

 allowed the compulsory statute labour for six days to be commuted 

 by money payments, and authorised the levy of a rate, not exceeding 

 6d. in the pound, for the provision of road materials. In 1784 

 Palmer organised the service of mail-coaches. But letters were often 

 still left at inns on main thoroughfares, where they remained in the 

 bar till the ink had faded and the wrapper had turned the colour 

 of saffron. The arrival of the pedlar was still eagerly expected in 

 country villages, where he did not always appear as the philosophical 

 enthusiast of the poet's licence. Rather he was the milliner of rural 

 beauties, the arbiter of fashion to village bucks, the newsagent of 

 the alehouse politician, the retailer of the most recent gossip, the 

 vendor of smuggled tea, the purveyor of the latest amorous ditty. 

 He was typical of the times when villages were isolated, self-sufficing, 

 dependent on his summer and winter circuits for their knowledge of 

 the world beyond the parish boundaries. 



Both Young and Marshall note the improvement which was made 



during the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the roads of 



certain districts. Yet their writings, as well as the reports to the 



Board of Agriculture (1793-1815), afford abundant evidence that else- 



1 13 Geo. III. cc. 78 and 84. 



