4 THE COACHING ERA 



stand stock-still behind the standing cart or waggon, 

 on most beastly and insufferable deep wet ways, to the 

 great endangering of our horses, and the negleft of 

 important business: nor durst we adventure to stir (for 

 the most imminent danger of those deep ruts, and un- 

 reasonable ridges) till it has pleased mister carter to 

 jog on which we have taken very kindly."^ 



Such was the tenacity of the mud that, during the 

 Civil War, the Parliamentarians captured 800 horse, 

 not in battle, after a full fair fight, but "while sticking 

 in the mire." Dr. Burton opined that the reason Sussex 

 women, oxen and swine, were all long-legged arose 

 from the necessity of forcibly pulling their feet out of the 

 mud with every step they took. At a time when all the 

 roads in the kingdom were bad, those in Sussex had 

 the distinftion of being among the worst. One of the 

 courtiers who accompanied Queen Anne's husband, 

 Prince George of Denmark, on a visit to Petworth in 

 1703, has left a dismal account of the experiences which 

 befell their party: 



"We set out at six o'clock in the morning to go for 

 Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only 

 when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) 

 till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas hard service 

 for the Prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that 

 day without eating anything, and passing through the 

 worst ways that ever I saw in my life: we were thrown 

 but once indeed in going, but both our coach which 

 was leading and His Highness's body coach, would have 

 suffered very often, if the nimble boors of Sussex had not 



^ Thomas Mace's tradl on the State of the Roads, 1675. 



