22 THE COACHING ERA 



not till 1680 that glass was used for that purpose. The 

 coachman's lot was an unenviable one, for he sat on a 

 bar between the two standard posts from which the 

 coach was hung, with his feet on a board fixed to the 

 top of the porch. Behind the coach was the "Basket," a 

 huge wicker-work strudlure, originally intended for the 

 carriage of luggage, and amongst which the outside 

 passengers sat in exquisite discomfort. 



As was only to be expelled, these unwieldy vehicles 

 frequently overset, and Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, 

 who travelled much on horseback, but took coach 

 occasionally, always did so with the liveliest apprehen- 

 sion and, as five coaches were overturned in one day, he 

 had definite grounds for alarm. That even the early 

 coaches were popular on the road we gather from a brief 

 notice he gives of one of them in connexion with the 

 annual May Day festivities: 



"We dined at Grantham; had the usual solemnity 

 (this being the first time the coach passed the road in 

 May) of the coachmen and horses being decked with 

 ribbons and flowers, the town music, and young people 

 in couples before us." 



By the end of the century coaching had become a 

 national institution, and in a 1680 newspaper a house 

 advertised to let at Eltham in Kent holds out the 

 inducement, "there going a stage-coach thither every 

 day." Hatfield Parsonage too — "In which house persons 

 of quality and reputation have lived" — claimed that 

 "both coaches and waggons go every other day." In 



