196 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OP YORE 



To look upon our forbears, therefore, as though 

 they were strange creatures whose movements 

 were not governed by as much common sense as 

 our own would be absurd. 



The reason for the regulations proclaimed in 

 1622 and again in 1629 was set forth in the state- 

 ment that the four-wheeled waggons used up to 

 that time had, with their excessive burdens, so 

 galled the highways and the very foundations of 

 bridges that they had become common nuisances. 



The carriers and drovers and their kind were, 

 in 1627, forbidden to travel on Sunday, under a 

 penalty of 20s. By the terms of this Act, 

 which began by stating that " the Lord's Day, 

 commonly called Sunday," Avas " much broken 

 and profaned by carriers, waggoners, carters, wain- 

 men, butchers, and drovers of cattle, to the great 

 dishonour of God and reproach of religion," any 

 of these persons travelling or causing their servants 

 to travel or come to their inns on Sundays could 

 be convicted on the evidence of witnesses, or on 

 their own confession, at any time up to six months 

 after the commission of the offence, and the magis- 

 trates could at their discretion aAvard one-third of 

 the penalty to the informer and two-thirds to the 

 poor of the parish. Thus early did the informer, 

 who was in later years to play so important a part, 

 come upon the scene. The notion of a conscious- 

 stricken carrier or drover confessing to the heinous 

 crime of travelling on Sunday is amusing. 



The next intervention was that of the Sunday 

 Trading Act of 1676, a Puritanical measure whose 



