2 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



period only to be properly set forth by first 

 narrating how journeys were made from place to 

 place before the continuous history of wheeled 

 trafiic begins. That history, measured by mere 

 count of years, is not a long one. It cannot, in 

 its remotest origin, go back beyond the first 

 appearance of the stage-waggon, about 1590, when 

 the peasantry of this kingdom began to obtain an 

 occasional lift on the roads, and sat among the 

 goods which it was the first business of those 

 waggons to carry. The peasant, then, was the 

 first coach-passenger, for while he was carried 

 thus, everyone else, in all the estates of the 

 realm, from King and Queen down to the middle 

 classes, rode horseback, and it was not until 1G57 

 and the establishment of the Chester Stage that 

 the Coaching Age opened for the public in 

 general. 



If, then, we please to pronounce for that event 

 as the true beginning, and allow 1848, the year 

 when one of the last coaches, the Bedford "Times," 

 Avas Avithdrawn from the London and Bedford 

 road in consequence of the opening of the 

 Bletchley and Bedford branch railway, to be the 

 end, Ave have the beginning, the groAvth and 

 perfection of the old coaching era, and its final 

 extinction, all comprised Avithin a period of a 

 hundred and ninety-one years. 



Wheeled conveyances are generally said by the 

 usual books of reference to take their origin in 

 this country with the introduction of Queen 

 Mary's Coronation carriage in 1553 ; but, so far 



