58 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE 



Associated Counties of East Anglia were little 

 att'ected by the contest, but theirs was an excep- 

 tional exj^erience, l)rouglit al)out l)y that associa- 

 tion, entered upon for mutual protection against 

 either side, and to prevent the scene of warfare 

 being pitched within those limits. It is not likely 

 that any service of coaches ran in the disturbed 

 period, when confidence was so rudely shaken ; and 

 it was not until the Commonwealth had been 

 established some years that the first coaching 

 advertisement of Avhich Ave have any knowledge 

 appeared. 



In writing thus, it is not forgotten that some- 

 where about the year 1610 a foreiii^ner from the 

 wilds of Pomerania obtained a Royal patent grant- 

 ing him, for the term of fifteen years, the exclusive 

 right of running coaches or waggons between 

 Edinburgh and Leith. We have no details of this 

 purely local service, but it is to be sujiposed that 

 it was little more than a stage- waggon carrying 

 goods and passengers too infirm to ride horseback 

 between Edinburgh and its seaport. We are 

 equally ignorant of the length of time the service 

 lasted. 



The next reference to stage-coaches is equally 

 detached and inconclusive. It is found in a 

 booklet issued by John Taylor, describing a 

 journey he made to the Isle of Wight in 1648. 

 He and his party set out on Octol)er 19th to see 

 the captive Charles the Eirst, their " gracious 

 Soveraigne, afilicted Lord and Master," im- 

 prisoned at Carisbrooke Castle. They " hired the 



