54 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SADDLE-HORSE. 



From the time that stage and hackney 

 coaches became numerous, the saddle-horse 

 gradually fell into disuse for ordinary travel, 

 though farmers and others whose vocation 

 compelled frequent journeys over rough 

 tracks and on roads along which coaches 

 could not ply, continued until the earlier 

 years of the nineteenth century to ride as 

 their forefathers had done. 



With the saddle-horse went the pack-horse, 

 which was now replaced as a carrier of goods 

 by the canal boat, the waggon and the 

 carrier's cart. 



The change was necessarily very slow. 

 In the year 1673 one John Cressel wrote a 

 pamphlet. The Grand Concern of England 

 Explained, wherein he complained of the 

 harm wrought by the stage coaches.* He 

 declared since these had been set up "there 

 is not the fourth part of saddle-horses either 

 bred or kept in England that there was 

 before," and that there would be again if 



* We must not associate the vehicles of this period 

 with those of the brief "golden age" of coaching. 

 These early stage coaches were cumbrous, heavy, 

 springless carriages, drawn by heavy horses and 

 travelled, as a rule, at a pace of not more than four 

 or five miles an hour. 



