CHAPTER VIII 



THE COACHING ERA 



WHILST the Legislature had been actively engaged in en- 

 deavouring to adapt wheeled vehicles to roads, the number 

 of vehicles of various types using the roads had greatly 

 increased as the result of expanding trade and travel, com- 

 bined with the further stimulus offered by that system of 

 turnpike roads the story of which will be told in later 

 chapters. 



The vehicle that first performed in this country the functions 

 of a public coach in transporting a number of passengers 

 from one place to another was, of course, the long waggon, 

 of which an account has already been given. Stage-coaches 

 began to come into use about the year 1659, when, as shown 

 by the " Diary " of Sir William Dugdale, there was a Coventry 

 coach on the road. The three coaches a week between London 

 and York, Chester and Exeter, spoken of by John Cressett 

 as running in 1673, carrying their six passengers apiece on 

 each journey, went, at that time, only in summer, on account 

 of the roads ; and even in the summer it was no unusual thing 

 for the passengers to have to walk miles at a time because the 

 horses could not do more than drag the coach itself through the 

 mire. The usual speed was from four to four and a half miles 

 an hour. 



The first stage-coach between London and Edinburgh ran 

 in 1658. It went once a fortnight, and the fare was 4. In 

 1734 a weekly coach from Edinburgh to London was an- 

 nounced. It was to do the journey in nine days, " or three 

 days sooner than any coach that travels that road " ; but 

 either such rapid travelling as this was a piece of bluff on the 

 part of the advertiser or the conditions of travel went from bad 

 to worse since in 1 760 the Edinburgh coach for London left only 

 once a month, and was from fourteen to sixteen days on the 

 way. The fact that one coach a month sufficed to carry all the 



