78 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE 



would secure a place to York, and, arriving there, 

 book again by a York and Edinburgh coach. The 

 Edinburgh stage from London, once a fortnight, 

 is, indeed, not heard of again until 17oi. 



Many of the coaches mentioned l:»y De Laune 

 went twice and thrice a Aveek, and a large propor- 

 tion of those to places not beyond twenty or 

 twenty-five miles from London made double 

 journeys in the day. Thus Windsor had no fewer 

 than seven coaches, six of them in and out daily. 

 The age, it will be conceded, was not Avithout 

 enterprise. But the omissions are striking ; 

 Okehampton, Plymouth, and Cornwall, in- 

 cluded in the purview of the pioneers of 1G58, 

 are not mentioned. Liverpool, Sheffield, New- 

 castle, Leicester, Hereford and others were 

 outside their activities. No one, it seemed, wanted 

 to go to Glasgow ; Manchester men were content 

 to ride horseback ; Leeds, now numbering some 

 430,000 inhabitants, and increasing by 2,000 a 

 year, was a town of only 7,000, and the clothiers 

 rode to York and caught the London coach there. 

 To Bath and Bristol, however, there were five 

 coaches; to Exeter, four; to Guildford, three; 

 to Cambridge, Braintree, Canterbury, Chelmsford, 

 Gloucester, Lincoln and Stamford, Norwich, Ox- 

 ford, Portsmouth, Reading, Saffron Walden, and 

 Ware, two each. 



Despite the four coaches between Exeter and 

 London mentioned by De Laune in 1681, the 

 Mayor of Lyme Begis, having in October 1081 

 uro-ent official business in London, is found, in 



