8o STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORD 



foreign countries liaAe our respectful sympatliy, 

 for Chamberlayne in thus extolling our superiority 

 was singing the praises of four miles an hour ! 



Prom the limho of half-forgotten things we 

 dra": occasional references to coaches towards the 

 close of the seventeenth century. In Ai:>ril 1694 

 a London and Warwick stage was announced to 

 go every Monday, to make the journey in two 

 days, " performed (if God permit) by Nicholas 

 Rothwell " ; and in 1696 the " Confatharrat " 

 coach was already spoken of as a familiar object 

 on the London and Norwich road. All Ave know 

 of the " Confatharrat " is that it came to the 

 " Four Swans," in Bishopsgate Street Within. Its 

 curious name is probal)ly the seventeenth-century 

 spelling of the word " confederate," and the coach 

 itself Avas, no doubt, run by an association, or " con- 

 federacy," of owners and innkeepers, in succession 

 to some unlucky person Avho singly had attempted 

 it and failed. 



On some roads enterprise slackened. Thus, in 

 1700, the "Ely " coach to Exeter slept the fifth 

 night from London at Axminster, Avhere the next 

 morning a Avoman " shaved the coach," and on the 

 afternoon of the sixth day it crawded into Exeter. 

 Eorty-three years earlier it had taken only four 

 days. 



Nicholas RotliAvell, of the London and War- 

 wick stage in 1691, reappears in an extremely 

 interesting broadsheet advertisement of 1731, 

 announcing that the " Birmingham stage-coach in 

 two days and a half begins. May the 21th." 



