250 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



came together on one coach that any disputes 

 arose. 



Mail-coaches had not long been established 

 before the guards, those protectors of his Majesty's 

 mails, presuming upon their position, became the 

 tyrants of the road. Pennant, writing in 1792, 

 tells how, in his district of Wales, "the guards, 

 relying on the name of royalty, in the course of 

 the Irish road through North Wales, committed 

 great excesses. One, on a trifling quarrel, shot 

 dead a poor old gatekeeper. ... In Anglesey 

 another of these guards discharged his pistol 

 wantonly in the face of a chaise-horse, drawing his 

 master, the Eev. John Bulkeley, who was flung 

 out and died, either on the spot or soon after. 

 These guards shoot at dogs, hogs, sheep, and 

 poultry as they pass the road, and even in towns, 

 to the great terror and danger of the inhabitants." 

 As with the mail-guards, so with the mail-coach- 

 men. " It has been a common practice with them 

 to divert themselves Avith flinging out their lashes 

 at harmless passengers, by way of fun. Very 

 lately, one of these wretches succeeded so well as 

 to twist his lash round a poor fellow's neck in the 

 parish where I live. He dragged the man under 

 the wheels, by which one of his arms was broken." 



Not only Pennant complained of the early 

 mail-guards. The country in general went in 

 terror of them and their lethal weapons, the bell- 

 mouthed blunderbusses which they carried to 

 protect the mails and were wont to discharge at 

 random as they went along. It was, with some 



