STAGE-COACHES 23 



June 1668 Pepys says: "All the five coaches that come 

 this day from Bath, as well as we, were gone out of the 

 town before six." 



Improvement in construction and pace of the early- 

 coaches was slow, three or four miles an hour being the 

 recognized rate of progress, and owing to the state of the 

 roads "it happened almost every day that coaches stuck 

 fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some 

 neighbouring farm, to tug them out of the slough." ^ 

 Passengers to lighten the draught were often obliged to 

 walk for miles together, and in 1689 a Dutchman died in 

 the Oxford stage-coach from his exertion in walking up 

 Shotover Hill. People in a hurry would refuse the offer 

 of a lift in a coach with the very reasonable excuse that 

 they had no time to waste, whilst pedlars and packmen 

 would often keep pace alongside the coach displaying 

 their wares. 



In the year 1700 it took a week to get from London 

 to York; whilst Exeter was five days' journey, and Salis- 

 bury two. Some idea of the leisurely pace at which the 

 old stage-coaches used to travel before the age of com- 

 petition began may be gathered from the faft related by 

 one traveller that, when the Exeter coach stopped at 

 Axminster for breakfast, "a woman barber shaved the 

 coach." Another time, a coachman and guard having a 

 difference of opinion, the coach halted and the passengers 

 watched them fight it out on the road. 



The Edinburgh coach, which took ten days in summer 

 and twelve in winter to get to London, made an an- 



^ Macaulay. 



