94 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DA YS OF YORE 



Viceroyalty of India is now and much more so 

 than that of Ireland for long years past has been. 

 Shrewsbury remained the capital of the Marches 

 of Wales until 1689, and the history of the Council 

 that thence ruled the border-lands is still singularly 

 fresh. Nor did it lose its importance even with 

 the abolition of that body ; for, more than else- 

 Avhere, the town, until the railways came— suddenly 

 breaking up the old order and centralising every- 

 thing in London — Avas a centre of social life for 

 wide surrounding districts. The titled and gentle 

 families of Shropshire, Herefordshire and North 

 "Wales who had resorted to the old Court of the 

 Marches continued to adorn Shrewsbury, which 

 had its own fashionable season and its own self- 

 contained interests. The whole social movement 

 of those surrounding districts was centred here, 

 and at a time when the great manufacturing 

 future of England had not dawned, creating vastly 

 populated cities and towns, Shrewsbury was not 

 rivalled as a coaching centre even by Bath. A 

 Shrewsbury coach Avas in existence in 1681, but 

 the roads betAveen the Salopian capital and London 

 proved too bad, and it did not last long, nor was 

 it succeeded by any other coach until the spring 

 of 1753. Stage-waggons Avere on the road in the 

 interval between 17o7 and that date, but they did 

 not fit the requirements of the gentlefolk, Avho, 

 when they did not ride horseback or drive in their 

 own chariots to London, posted across country to 

 Ivetsey Bank, Avhere they caught the Chester and 

 London stage. 



