STAGE-COACHES 19 



subjedled themselves to by using a stage-coach. It was 

 neither advantageous for men's health nor business, 

 "to be laid fast in foul ways, and to be forced to wade 

 up to the knee in mire; afterwards to sit in the cold till 

 teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out! Is it 

 for the health to travel in rotten coaches, and to have the 

 tackle or pearch, or axletree broken, and then to wait 

 three or four hours, sometimes half a day to have them 

 mended?" 



"To be called out of bed into coaches an hour before 

 day, and to be hurried about in coaches till two or three 

 hours within night. Stifled with heat and choked with 

 dust in summer. Starving or freezing with cold in 

 winter, or choked with filthy fogs. Often brought to 

 inns by torch light when it is too late to sit up and get 

 supper, and next morning forced into the coach so early 

 they can get no breakfast." The exceeding discomfort of 

 these statements rather detradls from the luxury of 

 coaching which was Cressel's theme at the beginning of 

 his pamphlet. 



Chamberlayne, in his Present State of Great Britain, 

 published in 1673, expressed very different sentiments: 

 "There is of late such an admirable commodiousness 

 for both men and women in the country, that the like 

 hath not been known in all the world, and that is by 

 stage-coaches wherein anyone may be transported to any 

 place, sheltered from foul weather, foul ways, free from 

 endamaging one's health and one's body by hard jogging 

 or over violent motion." 



The first coach between Oxford and London took two 



