30 OX THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



horse proprietor in London, especially when he went 

 into partnership with Benjamin Worthy Home, 

 Edward Sherman's name ought to be familiar in the 

 postal month as a household word, if only because his 

 London horses stood in the Liberty, on the very spot 

 where the Post-Office has now concentrated its ad- 

 ministrative organization. 



Where the mail-coach horse mangers ranged, the 

 chariot - horses of the Eomans may have fed ; for 

 underneath was the foundation of the old wall of 

 London, and where Sherman's horses pawed the 

 ground, on being put to, I have picked up a tile of, 

 perhaps, a.d. 306^ — when the Eomans rebuilt and 

 walled London — with the broad mark of the moulder's 

 thumb yet imprinted on the clay. 



Sherman at the outset was a stockbroker ; then 

 he married in succession three rich wives ; built, or 

 altered, the Bull and Mouth, and stabled his horses 

 beneath it. With plenty of capital and a fine head of 

 cattle, he sent coaches out of his yard in 1836 which 

 were models of construction and finish. The night 

 mails to Glasgow and Leeds worked, of course, to a 

 Post-Office time-table ; but with the day coaches 

 Sherman had a free hand, and the ground flew beneath 

 his horses' hoofs. 



Then was the coaching world astonished by the 

 spectacle of journeys performed b}^ the day mail to 

 Birmingham in twelve hours ; to Exeter, by the flying 

 Telegraph, in 17 i hours ; to Leicester in 11:^ hours 

 (the boasted ' elegant post-coach ' from the Swan with 



