io6 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



hoAv late would come to their inns, may be gathered 

 from the great classic instance in Shakesjieare, 

 where the two carriers in the First Part of King 

 Henry the Fourth are discovered in the innyard at 

 Eochester preparing to set forth for London. It 

 is two o'clock in the morning-, and London but 

 thirty miles away, yet it will not be earlier than 

 " time to go to lied with a candle " before that 

 gammon of l)acon and those two razes of ginger 

 are delivered at Charing Cross. 



Shakespeare, of course, here wrote, not of the 

 manners and customs of Henry the Fourth's time, 

 but of Avhat he had himself heard and seen, and 

 what might so be seen and heard on any day, early 

 in the morning, in the yard of any considerable 

 hostelry in the kingdom. He has fixed for ever, in 

 his deathless pages, the road life that existed when 

 the sixteenth century was drawing to its close. 



Contemporary with, but originating even 

 earlier than, the stage-waggons were the pack- 

 horses, which dated from a time when even the 

 broad-Avheeled wains would have sunk hopelessly 

 in the mud of the best roads in the country. By 

 pack-horse, at an earlier date than 1500, all goods, 

 and even such heavy articles as building-stone, 

 coals and timber, were carried, for the very 

 eloquent reason that, before the passing of the 

 first General HighAvay Act, in 1555, which was 

 the first obligation upon the parishes to repair and 

 maintain the roads, nothing had been done to keep 

 them in repair for many centuries ; and the 

 parishes, with the best will in the world, could 



