152 THE COACHING ERA 



was liable to be somewhat out of date by the time they 

 reached the end of their journey. 



When coaches began to ply their uneven way along 

 the road, they became important fadlors in country life, 

 for it was through their agency that the villagers in the 

 provinces became acquainted with the happenings of 

 the great world which pulsated far beyond the ken of 

 their uneventful humdrum existence. 



Samuel Crisp (the beloved "Daddy Crisp" of Fanny 

 Burney's diary), in a letter written at Chesington in 

 1780, tells his sister that the Epsom coachman has just 

 brought the news ^ "that there had been another Riot on 

 Tuesday with the cry of No Popery! and that some of the 

 Rioters were shot and others apprehended." 



The summer of 1820 was a noteworthy one, both for 

 the intense heat, which caused horses to drop dead in the 

 roads and labourers in the fields, and for the excitement 

 created by the trial of Queen Caroline. The populace 

 sided with her enthusiastically, cheered wildly when 

 she appeared in Court, hooted her enemies with equal 

 fervour, and in the provinces "along the line of the mails, 

 crowds stood waiting in the burning sunshine for news 

 of the trial."2 



During the stirring years of the late eighteenth and 

 early nineteenth centuries, when events of great magni- 

 tude followed each other in quick succession, it was by 

 the coaches that the country-folk heard with horror of 

 the atrocities of the French Revolution; followed the 



1 Burford Papers. W. H. Hutton. 



2 A History of the Thirty Years' Peace. H.^Martineau. 



