THE HORSEMEN 25 



on a pillion and clutched them convulsively round 

 the waist as the horse stumhled along. 



Nor did stage-coaches immediately change this 

 time-honoured way of getting about the country, 

 for there existed an aristocratic prejudice against 

 using public vehicles. Offensive persons who 

 never owned carriages of their OAvn were used to 

 give themselves insufferable airs when journeying 

 by coach, and hint, for the admiration or envy 

 of their fellow -passengers, that an accident had 

 happened to their own private equipage. Satirists 

 of the time soon seized upon this contemptible 

 resort of the snob, and used it to advantage in 

 contemporary literature. Thus we find the com- 

 mitteeman's wife in Sir Robert Howard's comedy 

 explaining her presence in the Reading coach to 

 be owing to her own carriage being disordered, 

 adding that if her husband knew she had been 

 obliged to ride in the stage he would " make the 

 house too hot to hold some." 



Here and there we find excejitions to this 

 general rule. In the coach passing through 

 Preston in 1662, one Parker was fellow-traveller 

 with " persons of great qualitie, such as knightes 

 and ladyes " ; and on one occasion in 1682 the winter 

 coach on its four days ' journey between Notting- 

 ham and London had for passenger Sir Ralph 

 Knight, of Langold, Yorks ; but the single gentle- 

 men in good health continued for years after the 

 introduction of stage-coaches to go on horseback, 

 and when their families came to town they usually 

 took the family chariot, and either contracted with 



