CHAPTER X THE COACH AS NEWS-BEARER 



PEOPLE who live in this twentieth century, 

 and consider a daily paper, telegraph and tele- 

 phone, necessities without which life would be 

 unthinkable, cannot realize the time when there 

 was no official organ for the distribution of news, and 

 when Kings might die, empires totter and fall, and 

 wars begin and end, without the inhabitants of the 

 country districts being any the wiser, or hearing of the 

 matter till long afterwards.-"- 



News filtered through the provinces by the agencies 

 of travellers who halted at the various inns on the road, 

 it then circulated byword of mouth, so that by the time 

 it reached the remote villages it was so distorted and 

 garbled as to bear scant resemblance to the original 

 matter. 



The pedlars and pack-horse carriers were more 

 reliable authorities, and they considered the latest news 

 from London as part of their stock in trade, though, as 

 they travelled slowly, it, like the goods they carried, 



^ Lord Macaulay says that the news of Queen Elizabeth's 

 death was not known in parts of Devon and Cornwall till the 

 Court of her successor had ceased to wear mourning for her. 

 Bridgewater did not hear that Oliver Cromwell had assumed the 

 Protectorship till nineteen days after the event. The execution 

 of King Charles I was not known in parts of Wales till two 

 months after it had taken place, whilst the churches in the 

 Orkneys put up prayers for him long after he was beheaded, 

 and their successors did the same for James II after he had left 

 the kingdom. 



