EARLY COACHING DAYS g 



not to say daredevil — pace compared with the time 

 consumed by the stage coach advertised in the 

 Mercurius Politicus of 1658 to start from the 

 ' George Inn,' Aldersgate Without, ' every Monday, 

 Wednesday, and Friday. To Salisbury in two days 

 for xxs. To Blandford and Dorchester in two days 

 and a half for xxxs. To Exminster, Nunnington, 

 Axminster, Honiton, and Exeter in four days xls.' 



The ' Exeter Fly ' of a hundred years later than 

 this, which staggered down to Exeter in three days, 

 under the best conditions, and was the swiftest public 

 conveyance down this road at that time, before the 

 new stages and mails were introduced, had been 

 known, it is credibly reported, to take six. 



Palmer's mail coaches, which were started on the 

 Exeter Road in the summer of 1785, rendered all this 

 kind of meandering progress obsolete, except for the 

 poorest class of travellers, who had still for many a 

 long year (indeed, until road travel was killed by the 

 railways) to endure the miseries of a journey in the 

 great hooded luggage waggons of Russell and Com- 

 pany, which, with a team of eight horses, started 

 from Falmouth, and travelling at the rate of three 

 miles an hour, reached London in twelve days. A 

 man on a pony rode beside the team, and with a long 

 whip touched them up when this surprising pace was 

 not maintained. The travellers walked, putting their 

 belongings inside ; and when night was come either 

 camped under the ample shelter of the lumbering 

 waggon, or, if it were winter, were accommodated for a 

 trifle in the stable lofts of the inns they halted at. 

 Messrs. Russell and Company were in business for 



