CHAPTER VII 



LOADS, WHEELS AND ROADS 



BEFORE dealing more fully with the development of coaches 

 and coaching and of vehicular traffic in general, it will be 

 desirable to revert to the new perplexities which such develop- 

 ment brought to those who were concerned with the care of 

 the roads, and sec in what way it was endeavoured to meet 

 them. 



In Macpherson's " Annals of Commerce " the following is 

 given under date 1629 : 



" The great increase of the commerce of England of late 

 years very much increased the inland carriage of goods, 

 whereby the roads were more broken than heretofore. King 

 Charles issued his proclamation, confirming one of his father's 

 in the 2oth year of his reign, for the preservation of the public 

 roads of England, commanding that no carrier or other person 

 whatsoever shall travel with any waine, cart or carriage 

 with more than two wheels nor with above the weight of 

 twenty hundred ; nor shall draw any waine, cart or other 

 carriage with above five horses at once." 



The King Charles here spoken of was, of course, Charles I., 

 and the 2oth year of the reign of his father, James I., takes 

 us back to 1623. That year, therefore, gives us the date 

 for the starting of a policy, not of adapting the roads to the 

 steadily increasing traffic, but of adapting the traffic to the 

 roads ; and this policy, as far as successive rulers and govern- 

 ments were concerned (efforts in the way of actual road 

 betterment being left almost exclusively to individual initia- 

 tive or private enterprise), was persevered in more or less 

 consistently for a period of close on two centuries. 



The State policy here in question was applied mainly in two 

 directions : (i) the restriction to a certain weight of the loads 

 carried ; and (2) the enforcing of regulations as to the breadth 

 of wheels. The former alone is mentioned in the references 



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