Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling,
to be set against the more noble method of travelling by horseback,
as of yore.  "What advantage is it to men's health," says the
writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these
coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them
from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled
with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often
brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit
up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach
so early that they can get no breakfast?  What addition is this to
men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes
sick, antient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose
humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and
many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the
crowd of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel with
tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up
to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams of
horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to
travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch, or
axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes
half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to
make good their stage?  Is it for a man's pleasure, or advantageous
to his health and business, to travel with a mixed company that he
knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by the rudeness of
a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman; necessitated to
lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no
accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners
of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the
guests?"  Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate
suppression of stagecoaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.

Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate affair.
Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches were
advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an
hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers.
The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a
small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach
and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the
road while making the journey between the two places.  The long coach
"put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road."  Whether the coach
was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was determined by
the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a chairman at the
beginning of the journey.

In 1700, York was a week distant from London, and Tunbridge Wells,
now reached in an hour, was two days.  Salisbury and Oxford were
also each a two days journey, Dover was three days, and Exeter
five. The Fly coach from London to Exeter slept at the latter place
the fifth night from town; the coach proceeding next morning to
Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman Barber "shaved
the coach."*[13]

Between London and Edinburgh, as late as 1763, a fortnight was
consumed, the coach only starting once a month.*[14]  The risk of
breaks-down in driving over the execrable roads may be inferred
from the circumstance that every coach carried with it a box of
carpenter's tools, and the hatchets were occasionally used in
lopping off the branches of trees overhanging the road and
obstructing the travellers' progress.

Some fastidious persons, disliking the slow travelling, as well as
the promiscuous company which they ran the risk of encountering in
the stage, were accustomed to advertise for partners in a postchaise,
to share the charges and lessen the dangers of the road; and,
indeed, to a sensitive person anything must have been preferable to
the misery of travelling by the Canterbury stage, as thus described
by a contemporary writer:--

   "On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I blest,
    Between two plump old women to be presst!
    A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd,
    And a fat landlord, filled the other side.
    Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load
    Boils roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road:
    One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears,
    Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears;
    Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,'
    The sick'ning child returns his milk and toast!"

When Samuel Johnson was taken by his mother to London in 1712, to
have him touched by Queen Anne for "the evil," he relates,--
"We went in the stage-coach and returned in the waggon, as my mother
said, because my cough was violent; but the hope of saving a few
shillings was no slight motive....  She sewed two guineas in her
petticoat lest she should be robbed....  We were troublesome to the
passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the stage-coach
was common in those days to parsons in much higher rank."

Mr. Pennant has left us the following account of his journey in
the Chester stage to London in 1789-40: "The first day," says he,
"with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty
miles; the second day to the 'Welsh Harp;' the third, to Coventry;
the fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a
wondrous effort, on the last, to London, before the commencement of
night.  The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight,
drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.
We were constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night,
and in the depth of winter proportionally later.  The single
gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jackboots and trowsers,
up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded
against the mire, defied the frequent stumble and fall, arose and
pursued their journey with alacrity; while, in these days, their
enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy
chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of
Sybaris."

No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of the travelling of the
country continued to be performed on horseback, this being by far
the pleasantest as well as most expeditious mode of journeying.
On his marriage-day, Dr. Johnson rode from Birmingham to Derby with
his Tetty, taking the opportunity of the journey to give his bride
her first lesson in marital discipline.  At a later period James
Watt rode from Glasgow to London, when proceeding thither to learn
the art of mathematical instrument making.

And it was a cheap and pleasant method of travelling when the
weather was fine.  The usual practice was, to buy a horse at the
beginning of such a journey, and to sell the animal at the end of
it.  Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled from London to Edinburgh in
1753, being nineteen days on the road, the whole expenses of the
journey amounting to only four guineas.  The mare on which he rode,
cost him eight guineas in London, and he sold her for the same
price on his arrival in Edinburgh.

Nearly all the commercial gentlemen rode their own horses, carrying
their samples and luggage in two bags at the saddle-bow; and hence
their appellation of Riders or Bagmen.  For safety's sake, they
usually journeyed in company; for the dangers of travelling were
not confined merely to the ruggedness of the roads.  The highways
were infested by troops of robbers and vagabonds who lived by
plunder. Turpin and Bradshaw beset the Great North Road; Duval,
Macheath, Maclean, and hundreds of notorious highwaymen infested
Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Shooter's Hill, and all the
approaches to the metropolis.  A very common sight then, was a
gibbet erected by the roadside, with the skeleton of some
malefactor hanging from it in chains; and " Hangman's-lanes" were
especially numerous in the neighbourhood of London.*[15]  It was
considered most unsafe to travel after dark, and when the first
"night coach" was started, the risk was thought too great, and it
was not patronised.

[Image] The Night Coach

Travellers armed themselves on setting out upon a journey as if
they were going to battle, and a blunderbuss was considered as
indispensable for a coachman as a whip.  Dorsetshire and Hampshire,
like most other counties, were beset with gangs of highwaymen; and
when the Grand Duke Cosmo set out from Dorchester to travel to
London in 1669, he was "convoyed by a great many horse-soldiers
belonging to the militia of the county, to secure him from
robbers."*[16]

Thoresby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed
safely "the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the
highwayman," and he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole,
"a notorious robbing place" near Grantham.  Like every other
traveller, that good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on
one occasion he was thrown into great consternation near Topcliffe,
in Yorkshire, on missing them, believing that they had been
abstracted by some designing rogues at the inn where he had last
slept.*[17]  No wonder that, before setting out on a journey in
those days, men were accustomed to make their wills.

When Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, travelled from Edinburgh to
London in 1756, she relates in her Diary that she travelled in her
own postchaise, attended by John Rattray, her stout serving man, on
horseback, with pistols at his holsters, and a good broad sword by
his side.  The lady had also with her in the carriage a case of
pistols, for use upon an emergency.  Robberies were then of
frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Bawtry, in Yorkshire;
and one day a suspicious-looking character, whom they took to be a
highwayman, made his appearance; but "John Rattray talking about
powder and ball to the postboy, and showing his whanger, the fellow
made off" Mrs. Calderwood started from Edinburgh on the 3rd of
June, when the roads were dry and the weather was fine, and she
reached London on the evening of the 10th, which was considered a
rapid journey in those days.

The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not greatest
in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis itself.
The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the
Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had
the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty
fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised
similar advantages.  Foot passengers proceeding towards Kensington
and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a sufficiently
numerous band had collected to set footpads at defiance, and then
they started in company at known intervals, of which a bell gave
due warning.  Carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde
Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols presented at the
breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon to deliver up
their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of curious instances
of this sort, he himself having been robbed in broad day, with Lord
Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle, and many more.
A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in 1757, illustrates the
imperfect postal communication of the period.  The boy who carried
the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde
Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the
opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the horse's crupper
and got away undiscovered!

The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as tedious
and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the conveyance of
passengers.  Corn and wool were sent to market on horses'
backs,*[18] manure was carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel
was conveyed from the moss or the forest in the same way.  During
the winter months, the markets were inaccessible; and while in some
localities the supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in
others the superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility
of consuming it or of transporting it to places where it was
needed.  The little coal used in the southern counties was
principally sea-borne, though pack-horses occasionally carried coal
inland for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges.  When Wollaton
Hall was built by John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580,
the stone was all brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in
Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles distant, and they loaded back with
coal, which was taken in exchange for the stone.

[Image] The Pack-horse Convoy

The little trade which existed between one part of the kingdom and
another was carried on by means of packhorses, along roads little
better than bridle-paths.  These horses travelled in lines, with
the bales or panniers strapped across their backs.  The foremost
horse bore a bell or a collar of bells, and was hence called the
"bell-horse."  He was selected because of his sagacity; and by the
tinkling of the bells he carried, the movements of his followers
were regulated.  The bells also gave notice of the approach of the
convoy to those who might be advancing from the opposite direction.
This was a matter of some importance, as in many parts of the path
there was not room for two loaded horses to pass each other, and
quarrels and fights between the drivers of the pack-horse trains
were frequent as to which of the meeting convoys was to pass down
into the dirt and allow the other to pass along the bridleway. The
pack-horses not only carried merchandise but passengers, and at
certain times scholars proceeding to and from Oxford and Cambridge.
When Smollett went from Glasgow to London, he travelled partly on
pack-horse, partly by waggon, and partly on foot; and the
adventures which he described as having befallen Roderick Random
are supposed to have been drawn in a great measure from his own
experiences during; the journey.

A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang up between the
northern counties, since become pre-eminently the manufacturing
districts of England; and long lines of pack-horses laden with
bales of wool and cotton traversed the hill ranges which divide
Yorkshire from Lancashire.  Whitaker says that as late as 1753 the
roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way little wider than
a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn in a
single line; this deep narrow road being flanked by an elevated
causeway covered with flags or boulder stones.  When travellers
encountered each other on this narrow track, they often tried to
wear out each other's patience rather than descend into the dirt
alongside.  The raw wool and bale goods of the district were nearly
all carried along these flagged ways on the backs of single horses;
and it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils
by which the conduct of the traffic was attended.  On horseback
before daybreak and long after nightfall, these hardy sons of trade
pursued their object with the spirit and intrepidity of foxhunters;
and the boldest of their country neighbours had no reason to
despise either their horsemanship or their courage.*[19]
The Manchester trade was carried on in the same way.  The chapmen
used to keep gangs of pack-horses, which accompanied them to all the
principal towns, bearing their goods in packs, which they sold to
their customers, bringing back sheep's wool and other raw materials
of manufacture.

The only records of this long-superseded mode of communication are
now to be traced on the signboards of wayside public-houses.
Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but
all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still
painted on village sign-boards -- things as retentive of odd bygone
facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.*[20]

Footnotes for Chapter II.

*[1] King Henry the Fourth (Part I.), Act II. Scene 1.

*[2] Part of the riding road along which the Queen was accustomed
to pass on horseback between her palaces at Greenwich and Eltham is
still in existence, a little to the south of Morden College,
Blackheath.  It winds irregularly through the fields, broad in some
places, and narrow in others.  Probably it is very little different
from what it was when used as a royal road.  It is now very
appropriately termed "Muddy Lane."

*[3] 'Depeches de La Mothe Fenelon,' 8vo., 1858.  Vol. i. p. 27.

*[4] Nichols's ' Progresses,' vol. ii., 309.

*[5] The title of Mace's tract (British Museum) is "The Profit,
Conveniency, and Pleasure for the whole nation: being a short
rational Discourse lately presented to his Majesty concerning the
Highways of England: their badness, the causes thereof, the reasons
of these causes, the impossibility of ever having them well mended
according to the old way of mending: but may most certainly be
done, and for ever so maintained (according to this NEW WAY)
substantially and with very much ease, &c., &c.  Printed for the
public good in the year 1675."

*[6] See Archaelogia, xx., pp. 443-76.

*[7] "4th May, 1714.  Morning: we dined at Grantham, had the annual
solemnity (this being the first time the coach passed the road in
May), and the coachman and horses being decked with ribbons and
flowers, the town music and young people in couples before us; we
lodged at Stamford, a scurvy, dear town.  5th May: had other
passengers, which, though females, were more chargeable with wine
and brandy than the former part of the journey, wherein we had
neither; but the next day we gave them leave to treat themselves."
--Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. ii., 207.

*[8] "May 22, 1708.  At York.  Rose between three and four, the
coach being hasted by Captain Crome (whose company we had) upon the
Queen's business, that we got to Leeds by noon; blessed be God for
mercies to me and my poor family."--Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. ii., 7.

*[9] Thoresby's 'Diary,' vol. i.,295.

*[10] Waylen's 'Marlborough.'

*[11] Reprinted in the 'Harleian Miscellany,' vol. viii., p. 547.
supposed to have been written by one John Gressot, of the
Charterhouse.

*[12] There were other publications of the time as absurd (viewed
by the light of the present day) as Gressot's.  Thus, "A Country
Tradesman," addressing the public in 1678, in a pamphlet entitled
'The Ancient Trades decayed, repaired again,--wherein are
declared the several abuses that have utterly impaired all the
ancient trades in the Kingdom,' urges that the chief cause of the
evil had been the setting up of Stage-coaches some twenty years
before.  Besides the reasons for suppressing; them set forth in the
treatise referred to in the text, he says, "Were it not' for them
(the Stage-coaches), there would be more Wine, Beer, and Ale, drunk
in the Inns than is now, which would be a means to augment the
King's Custom and Excise. Furthermore they hinder the breed of
horses in this kingdom [the same argument was used against Railways],
because many would be necessitated to keep a good horse that keeps
none now.  Seeing, then, that there are few that are gainers by them,
and that they are against the common and general good of the
Nation, and are only a conveniency to some that have occasion to go
to London, who might still have the same wages as before these
coaches were in use, therefore there is good reason they should be
suppressed.  Not but that it may be lawful to hire a coach upon
occasion, but that it should be unlawful only to keep a coach that
should go long journeys constantly, from one stage or place to
another, upon certain days of the week as they do now"-- p. 27.

*[13] Roberts's 'Social History of the Southern Counties,' p. 494.
Little more than a century ago, we find the following advertisement
of a Newcastle flying coach:-- "May 9, 1734.--A coach will set out
towards the end of next week for London, or any place on the road.
To be performed in nine days,--being three days sooner than any
other coach that travels the road; for which purpose eight stout
horses are stationed at proper distances."

*[14] In 1710 a Manchester manufacturer taking his family up to
London, hired a coach for the whole way, which, in the then state
of the roads, must have made it a journey of probably eight or ten
days.  And, in 1742, the system of travelling had so little
improved, that a lady, wanting to come with her niece from
Worcester to Manchester, wrote to a friend in the latter place to
send her a hired coach, because the man knew the road, having
brought from thence a family some time before."--Aikin's 'Manchester.'

*[15] Lord Campbell mentions the remarkable circumstance that
Popham, afterwards Lord Chief Justice in the reign of Elizabeth,
took to the road in early life, and robbed travellers on Gad's
Hill. Highway robbery could not, however, have been considered a
very ignominious pursuit at that time, as during Popham's youth a
statute was made by which, on a first conviction for robbery, a
peer of the realm or lord of parliament was entitled to have
benefit of clergy, "though he cannot read!" What is still more
extraordinary is, that Popham is supposed to have continued in his
course as 'a highwayman even after he was called to the Bar.
This seems to have been quite notorious, for when he was made Serjeant
the wags reported that he served up some wine destined for an
Alderman of London, which he had intercepted on its way from
Southampton.--Aubrey, iii., 492.--Campbell's 'Chief Justices,' i.,
210.

*[16] Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany,' p. 147.

*[17] "It is as common a custom, as a cunning policie in thieves,
to place chamberlains in such great inns where cloathiers and
graziers do lye; and by their large bribes to infect others, who
were not of their own preferring; who noting your purses when you
draw them, they'l gripe your cloak-bags, and feel the weight, and
so inform the master thieves of what they think, and not those
alone, but the Host himself is oft as base as they, if it be left
in charge with them all night; he to his roaring guests either
gives item, or shews the purse itself, who spend liberally, in hope
of a speedie recruit."  See 'A Brief yet Notable Discovery of
Housebreakers,' &c., 1659. See also 'Street Robberies Considered;
a Warning for Housekeepers,' 1676; 'Hanging not Punishment Enough,'
1701; &c.

*[18] The food of London was then principally brought to town in
panniers.  The population being comparatively small, the feeding of
London was still practicable in this way; besides, the city always
possessed the great advantage of the Thames, which secured a supply
of food by sea.  In 'The Grand Concern of England Explained,' it is
stated that the hay, straw, beans, peas, and oats, used in London,
were principally raised within a circuit of twenty miles of the
metropolis; but large quantities were also brought from
Henley-on-thames and other western parts, as well as from below
Gravesend, by water; and many ships laden with beans came from
Hull, and with oats from Lynn and Boston.

*[19] 'Loides and Elmete, by T.D. Whitaker, LL.D., 1816, p. 81.
Notwithstanding its dangers, Dr. Whitaker seems to have been of
opinion that the old mode of travelling was even safer than that
which immediately followed it; "Under the old state of roads and
manners," he says, "it was impossible that more than one death
could happen at once; what, by any possibility, could take place
analogous to a race betwixt two stage-coaches, in which the lives
of thirty or forty distressed and helpless individuals are at the
mercy of two intoxicated brutes?"

*[20] In the curious collection of old coins at the Guildhall there
are several halfpenny tokens issued by the proprietors of inns
bearing the sign of the pack-horse, Some of these would indicate
that packhorses were kept for hire.  We append a couple of
illustrations of these curious old coins.

[Image]


CHAPTER III.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS INFLUENCED BY THE STATE OF THE ROADS.

While the road communications of the country remained thus imperfect,
the people of one part of England knew next to nothing of the other.
When a shower of rain had the effect of rendering the highways
impassable, even horsemen were cautious in venturing far from home.
But only a very limited number of persons could then afford to
travel on horseback. The labouring people journeyed on foot,
while the middle class used the waggon or the coach.  But the amount
of intercourse between the people of different districts
--then exceedingly limited at all times--was, in a country so wet
as England, necessarily suspended for all classes during the greater
part of the year.

The imperfect communication existing between districts had the
effect of perpetuating numerous local dialects, local prejudices,
and local customs, which survive to a certain extent to this day;
though they are rapidly disappearing, to the regret of many, under
the influence of improved facilities for travelling.  Every village
had its witches, sometimes of different sorts, and there was
scarcely an old house but had its white lady or moaning old man
with a long beard.  There were ghosts in the fens which walked on
stilts, while the sprites of the hill country rode on flashes of
fire. But the village witches and local ghosts have long since
disappeared, excepting perhaps in a few of the less penetrable
districts, where they may still survive.  It is curious to find
that down even to the beginning of the seventeenth century, the
inhabitants of the southern districts of the island regarded those
of the north as a kind of ogres.  Lancashire was supposed to be
almost impenetrable-- as indeed it was to a considerable
extent,--and inhabited by a half-savage race.  Camden vaguely
described it, previous to his visit in 1607, as that part of the
country " lying beyond the mountains towards the Western Ocean."
He acknowledged that he approached the Lancashire people "with a
kind of dread," but determined at length "to run the hazard of the
attempt," trusting in the Divine assistance. Camden was exposed to
still greater risks in his survey of Cumberland. When he went into
that county for the purpose of exploring the remains of antiquity
it contained for the purposes of his great work, he travelled along
the line of the Roman Wall as far as Thirlwall castle, near
Haltwhistle; but there the limits of civilization and security
ended; for such was the wildness of the country and of its lawless
inhabitants beyond, that he was obliged to desist from his
pilgrimage, and leave the most important and interesting objects of
his journey unexplored.

About a century later, in 1700, the Rev.  Mr. Brome, rector of
Cheriton in Kent, entered upon a series of travels in England as if
it had been a newly-discovered country.  He set out in spring so
soon as the roads had become passable.  His friends convoyed him on
the first stage of his journey, and left him, commending him to the
Divine protection.  He was, however, careful to employ guides to
conduct him from one place to another, and in the course of his
three years' travels he saw many new and wonderful things.  He was
under the necessity of suspending his travels when the winter or
wet weather set in, and to lay up, like an arctic voyager, for
several months, until the spring came round again.  Mr. Brome
passed through Northumberland into Scotland, then down the western
side of the island towards Devonshire, where he found the farmers
gathering in their corn on horse-back, the roads being so narrow
that it was impossible for them to use waggons.  He desired to
travel into Cornwall, the boundaries of which he reached, but was
prevented proceeding farther by the rains, and accordingly he made
the best of his way home.*[1]  The vicar of Cheriton was considered
a wonderful man in his day,-- almost as as venturous as we should
now regard a traveller in Arabia.  Twenty miles of slough, or an
unbridged river between two parishes, were greater impediments to
intercourse than the Atlantic Ocean now is between England and
America.  Considerable towns situated in the same county, were then
more widely separated, for practical purposes, than London and
Glasgow are at the present day. There were many districts which
travellers never visited, and where the appearance of a stranger
produced as great an excitement as the arrival of a white man in an
African village.*[2]

The author of 'Adam Bede' has given us a poet's picture of the
leisure of last century, which has "gone where the spinning-wheels
are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the
pedlars who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.  "Old
Leisure" lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and
homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree walls, and
scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning
sunshine, or sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon,
when the summer pears were falling."  But this picture has also its
obverse side. Whole generations then lived a monotonous, ignorant,
prejudiced, and humdrum life.  They had no enterprize, no energy,
little industry, and were content to die where they were born.  The
seclusion in which they were compelled to live, produced a
picturesqueness of manners which is pleasant to look back upon, now
that it is a thing of the past; but it was also accompanied with a
degree of grossness and brutality much less pleasant to regard, and
of which the occasional popular amusements of bull-running,
cock-fighting, cock-throwing, the saturnalia of Plough-Monday, and
such like, were the fitting exponents.

People then knew little except of their own narrow district.  The
world beyond was as good as closed against them.  Almost the only
intelligence of general affairs which reached them was communicated
by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail to their
customers the news of the day with their wares; or, at most, a
newsletter from London, after it had been read nearly to pieces at
the great house of the district, would find its way to the village,
and its driblets of information would thus become diffused among
the little community.  Matters of public interest were long in
becoming known in the remoter districts of the country.  Macaulay
relates that the death of Queen Elizabeth was not heard of in some
parts of Devon until the courtiers of her successor had ceased to
wear mourning for her.  The news of Cromwell's being made Protector
only reached Bridgewater nineteen days after the event, when the
bells were set a-ringing; and the churches in the Orkneys continued
to put up the usual prayers for James II.  three months after he
had taken up his abode at St. Germains.  There were then no shops
in the smaller towns or villages, and comparatively few in the
larger; and these were badly furnished with articles for general
use.  The country people were irregularly supplied by hawkers, who
sometimes bore their whole stook upon their back, or occasionally
on that of their pack-horses. Pots, pans, and household utensils
were sold from door to door. Until a comparatively recent period,
the whole of the pottery-ware manufactured in Staffordshire was
hawked about and disposed of in this way.  The pedlars carried
frames resembling camp-stools, on which they were accustomed to
display their wares when the opportunity occurred for showing them
to advantage.  The articles which they sold were chiefly of a
fanciful kind--ribbons, laces, and female finery; the housewives'
great reliance for the supply of general clothing in those days
being on domestic industry.

Every autumn, the mistress of the household was accustomed to lay
in a store of articles sufficient to serve for the entire winter.
It was like laying in a stock of provisions and clothing for a
siege during the time that the roads were closed.  The greater part
of the meat required for winter's use was killed and salted down at
Martinmas, while stockfish and baconed herrings were provided for
Lent. Scatcherd says that in his district the clothiers united in
groups of three or four, and at the Leeds winter fair they would
purchase an ox, which, having divided, they salted and hung the
pieces for their winter's food.*[3]  There was also the winter's
stock of firewood to be provided, and the rushes with which to
strew the floors--carpets being a comparatively modern invention;
besides, there was the store of wheat and barley for bread, the
malt for ale, the honey for sweetening (then used for sugar), the
salt, the spiceries, and the savoury herbs so much employed in the
ancient cookery.  When the stores were laid in, the housewife was
in a position to bid defiance to bad roads for six months to come.
This was the case of the well-to-do; but the poorer classes, who
could not lay in a store for winter, were often very badly off both
for food and firing, and in many hard seasons they literally
starved.  But charity was active in those days, and many a poor
man's store was eked out by his wealthier neighbour.

When the household supply was thus laid in, the mistress, with her
daughters and servants, sat down to their distaffs and spinning-wheels;
for the manufacture of the family clothing was usually the work of
the winter months.  The fabrics then worn were almost entirely of
wool, silk and cotton being scarcely known.  The wool, when not
grown on the farm, was purchased in a raw state, and was carded,
spun, dyed, and in many cases woven at home: so also with the linen
clothing, which, until quite a recent date, was entirely the
produce of female fingers and household spinning-wheels.  This kind
of work occupied the winter months, occasionally alternated with
knitting, embroidery, and tapestry  work.  Many of our country
houses continue to bear witness to the steady industry of the
ladies of even the highest ranks in those times, in the fine
tapestry hangings with which the walls of many of the older rooms
in such mansions are covered.

Among the humbler classes, the same winter's work went on.
The women sat round log fires knitting, plaiting, and spinning by
fire-light, even in the daytime.  Glass had not yet come into
general use, and the openings in the wall which in summer-time
served for windows, had necessarily to be shut close with boards to
keep out the cold, though at the same time they shut out the light.
The chimney, usually of lath and plaster, ending overhead in a cone
and funnel for the smoke, was so roomy in old cottages as to
accommodate almost the whole family sitting around the fire of logs
piled in the reredosse in the middle, and there they carried on
their winter's work.

Such was the domestic occupation of women in the rural districts in
olden times; and it may perhaps be questioned whether the
revolution in our social system, which has taken out of their hands
so many branches of household manufacture and useful domestic
employment, be an altogether unmixed blessing.

Winter at an end, and the roads once more available for travelling,
the Fair of the locality was looked forward to with interest.  Fairs
were among the most important institutions of past times, and were
rendered necessary by the imperfect road communications. The right
of holding them was regarded as a valuable privilege, conceded by
the sovereign to the lords of the manors, who adopted all manner of
devices to draw crowds to their markets.  They were usually held at
the entrances to valleys closed against locomotion during winter,
or in the middle of rich grazing districts, or, more frequently, in
the neighbourhood of famous cathedrals or churches frequented by
flocks of pilgrims.  The devotion of the people being turned to
account, many of the fairs were held on Sundays in the churchyards;
and almost in every parish a market was instituted on the day on
which the parishioners were called together to do honour to their
patron saint.

The local fair, which was usually held at the beginning or end of
winter, often at both times, became the great festival as well as
market of the district; and the business as well as the gaiety of
the neighbourhood usually centred on such occasions.  High courts
were held by the Bishop or Lord of the Manor, to accommodate which
special buildings were erected, used only at fair time.  Among the
fairs of the first class in England were Winchester, St. Botolph's
Town (Boston), and St. Ives.  We find the great London merchants
travelling thither in caravans, bearing with them all manner of
goods, and bringing back the wool purchased by them in exchange.

Winchester Great Fair attracted merchants from all parts of Europe.
It was held on the hill of St. Giles, and was divided into streets
of booths, named after the merchants of the different countries who
exposed their wares in them.  "The passes through the great woody
districts, which English merchants coming from London and the West
would be compelled to traverse, were on this occasion carefully
guarded by mounted 'serjeants-at-arms,' since the wealth which was
being conveyed to St. Giles's-hill attracted bands of outlaws from
all parts of the country."*[4]  Weyhill Fair, near Andover, was
another of the great fairs in the same district, which was to the
West country agriculturists and clothiers what Winchester St.
Giles's Fair was to the general merchants.

The principal fair in the northern districts was that of
St. Botolph's Town (Boston), which was resorted to by people from
great distances to buy and sell commodities of various kinds.
Thus we find, from the 'Compotus' of Bolton Priory,*[5] that the
monks of that house sent their wool to St. Botolph's Fair to be sold,
though it was a good hundred miles distant; buying in return their
winter supply of groceries, spiceries, and other necessary
articles. That fair, too, was often beset by robbers, and on one
occasion a strong party of them, under the disguise of monks,
attacked and robbed certain booths, setting fire to the rest; and
such was the amount of destroyed wealth, that it is said the veins
of molten gold and silver ran along the streets.

The concourse of persons attending these fairs was immense.
The nobility and gentry, the heads of the religions houses, the
yeomanry and the commons, resorted to them to buy and sell all
manner of agricultural produce.  The farmers there sold their wool
and cattle, and hired their servants; while their wives disposed of
the surplus produce of their winter's industry, and bought their
cutlery, bijouterie, and more tasteful articles of apparel.
There were caterers there for all customers; and stuffs and wares
were offered for sale from all countries.  And in the wake of this
business part of the fair there invariably followed a crowd of
ministers to the popular tastes-- quack doctors and merry andrews,
jugglers and minstrels, singlestick players, grinners through
horse-collars, and sportmakers of every kind.

Smaller fairs were held in most districts for similar purposes of
exchange.  At these the staples of the locality were sold and
servants usually hired.  Many were for special purposes--cattle
fairs, leather fairs, cloth fairs, bonnet fairs, fruit fairs.
Scatcherd says that less than a century ago a large fair was held
between Huddersfield and Leeds, in a field still called Fairstead,
near Birstal, which used to be a great mart for fruit, onions, and
such like; and that the clothiers resorted thither from all the
country round to purchase the articles, which were stowed away in
barns, and sold at booths by lamplight in the morning.*[6]  Even
Dartmoor had its fair, on the site of an ancient British village or
temple near Merivale Bridge, testifying to its great antiquity; for
it is surprising how an ancient fair lingers about the place on
which it has been accustomed to be held, long after the necessity
for it has ceased.  The site of this old fair at Merivale Bridge is
the more curious, as in its immediate neighbourhood, on the road
between Two Bridges and Tavistock, is found the singular-looking
granite rock, bearing so remarkable a resemblance to the Egyptian
sphynx, in a mutilated state.  It is of similarly colossal
proportions, and stands in a district almost as lonely as that in
which the Egyptian sphynx looks forth over the sands of the
Memphean Desert.*[7]

[Image] Site of an ancient British village and fair on Dartmoor.

The last occasion on which the fair was held in this secluded spot
was in the year 1625, when the plague raged at Tavistock; and there
is a part of the ground, situated amidst a line of pillars marking
a stone avenue--a characteristic feature of the ancient aboriginal
worship--which is to this day pointed out and called by the name of
the "Potatoe market."

But the glory of the great fairs has long since departed.  They
declined with the extension of turnpikes, and railroads gave them
their death-blow.  Shops now exist in every little town and
village, drawing their supplies regularly by road and canal from
the most distant parts.  St. Bartholomew, the great fair of
London,*[8] and Donnybrook, the great fair of Dublin, have been
suppressed as nuisances; and nearly all that remains of the dead
but long potent institution of the Fair, is the occasional
exhibition at periodic times in country places, of pig-faced
ladies, dwarfs, giants, double-bodied calves, and such-like
wonders, amidst a blatant clangour of drums, gongs, and cymbals.
Like the sign of the Pack-Horse over the village inn door, the
modern village fair, of which the principal article of merchandise
is gingerbread-nuts, is but the vestige of a state of things that
has long since passed away.

There were, however, remote and almost impenetrable districts which
long resisted modern inroads.  Of such was Dartmoor, which we have
already more than once referred to.  The difficulties of
road-engineering in that quarter, as well as the sterility of a
large proportion of the moor, had the effect of preventing its
becoming opened up to modern traffic; and it is accordingly curious
to find how much of its old manners, customs, traditions, and
language has been preserved.  It looks like a piece of England of
the Middle Ages, left behind on the march.  Witches still hold
their sway on Dartmoor, where there exist no less than three
distinct kinds-- white, black, and grey,*[9]--and there are still
professors of witchcraft, male as well as female, in most of the
villages.

As might be expected, the pack-horses held their ground in Dartmoor
the longest, and in some parts of North Devon they are not yet
extinct.  When our artist was in the neighbourhood, sketching the
ancient bridge on the moor and the site of the old fair, a farmer
said to him, "I well remember the train of pack-horses and the
effect of their jingling bells on the silence of Dartmoor.
My grandfather, a respectable farmer in the north of Devon, was the
first to use a 'butt' (a square box without wheels, dragged by a
horse) to carry manure to field; he was also the first man in the
district to use an umbrella, which on Sundays he hung in the
church-porch, an object of curiosity to the villagers."  We are also
informed by a gentleman who resided for some time at South Brent',
on the borders of the Moor, that the introduction of the first cart
in that district is remembered by many now living, the bridges
having been shortly afterwards widened to accommodate the wheeled
vehicles.

The primitive features of this secluded district are perhaps best
represented by the interesting little town of Chagford, situated in
the valley of the North Teign, an ancient stannary and market town
backed by a wide stretch of moor.  The houses of the place are
built of moor stone--grey, venerable-looking, and substantial--some
with projecting porch and parvise room over, and granite-mullioned
windows; the ancient church, built of granite, with a stout old
steeple of the same material, its embattled porch and granite-groined
vault springing from low columns with Norman-looking capitals,
forming the sturdy centre of this ancient town clump.

A post-chaise is still a phenomenon in Chagford, the roads and
lanes leading to it being so steep and rugged as to be ill adapted
for springed vehicles of any sort.  The upland road or track to
Tavistock scales an almost precipitous hill, and though well enough
adapted for the pack-horse of the last century, it is quite
unfitted for the cart and waggon traffic of this.  Hence the horse
with panniers maintains its ground in the Chagford district; and
the double-horse, furnished with a pillion for the lady riding
behind, is still to be met with in the country roads.

Among the patriarchs of the hills, the straight-breasted blue coat
may yet be seen, with the shoe fastened with buckle and strap as in
the days when George III. was king; and old women are still found
retaining the cloak and hood of their youth.  Old agricultural
implements continue in use.  The slide or sledge is seen in the
fields; the flail, with its monotonous strokes, resounds from the
barn-floors; the corn is sifted by the windstow--the wind merely
blowing away the chaff from the grain when shaken out of sieves by
the motion of the hand on some elevated spot; the old wooden plough
is still at work, and the goad is still used to urge the yoke of
oxen in dragging it along.

[Image] The Devonshire Crooks

"In such a place as Chagford," says Mr. Rowe, "the cooper or rough
carpenter will still find a demand for the pack-saddle, with its
accompanying furniture of crooks, crubs, or dung-pots.  Before the
general introduction of carts, these rough and ready contrivances
were found of great utility in the various operations of husbandry,
and still prove exceedingly convenient in situations almost, or
altogether, inaccessible to wheel-carriages.  The long crooks are
used for the carriage of corn in sheaf from the harvest-field to
the mowstead or barn, for the removal of furze, browse,
faggot-wood, and other light materials.  The writer of one of the
happiest effusions of the local muse,*[10] with fidelity to nature
equal to Cowper or Crabbe, has introduced the figure of a
Devonshire pack-horse bending under the 'swagging load' of the
high-piled crooks as an emblem of care toiling along the narrow and
rugged path of life.  The force and point of the imagery must be
lost to those who have never seen (and, as in an instance which
came under my own knowledge, never heard of) this unique specimen
of provincial agricultural machinery. The crooks are formed of two
poles,*[11] about ten feet long, bent, when green, into the
required curve, and when dried in that shape are connected by
horizontal bars.  A pair of crooks, thus completed, is slung over
the pack-saddle--one 'swinging on each side to make the balance
true.' The short crooks, or crubs, are slung in a similar manner.
These are of stouter fabric, and angular shape, and are used for
carrying logs of wood and other heavy materials. The dung-pots, as
the name implies, were also much in use in past times, for the
removal of dung and other manure from the farmyard to the fallow or
plough lands.  The slide, or sledge, may also still occasionally
be seen in the hay or corn fields, sometimes without, and in other
cases mounted on low wheels, rudely but substantially formed of
thick plank, such as might have brought the ancient Roman's harvest
load to the barn some twenty centuries ago."

Mrs. Bray says the crooks are called by the country people
"Devil's tooth-picks."  A correspondent informs us that the queer
old crook-packs represented in our illustration are still in use in
North Devon.  He adds: "The pack-horses were so accustomed to their
position when travelling in line (going in double file) and so
jealous of their respective places, that if one got wrong and took
another's place, the animal interfered with would strike at the
offender with his crooks."

Footnotes for Chapter III.

*[1] 'Three Years' Travels in England, Scotland, and Wales.'
By James Brome, M.A., Rector of Cheriton, Kent.  London, 1726.

*[2] The treatment the stranger received was often very rude.
When William Hutton, of Birmingham, accompanied by another gentleman,
went to view the field of Bosworth, in 1770, "the inhabitants,"
he says, "set their dogs at us in the street, merely because we were
strangers.  Human figures not their own are seldom seen in these
inhospitable regions.  Surrounded with impassable roads, no
intercourse with man to humanise the mind.  nor commerce to smooth
their rugged manners, they continue the boors of Nature."
In certain villages in Lancashire and Yorkshire, not very remote from
large towns, the appearance of a stranger, down to a comparatively
recent period, excited a similar commotion amongst the villagers,
and the word would pass from door to door, "Dost knaw'im?" "Naya."
"Is 'e straunger?" "Ey, for sewer."  "Then paus' 'im-- 'Eave a duck
[stone] at 'im-- Fettle 'im!"  And the "straunger" would straightway
find the "ducks" flying about his head, and be glad to make his
escape from the village with his life.

*[3] Scatcherd, 'History of Morley.'

*[4] Murray's ' Handbook of Surrey, Hants, and Isle of Wight,' 168.

*[5] Whitaker's 'History of Craven.'

*[6] Scatcherd's 'History of Morley,' 226.

*[7] Vixen Tor is the name of this singular-looking rock.  But it
is proper to add, that its appearance is probably accidental, the
head of the Sphynx being produced by the three angular blocks of
rock seen in profile.  Mr. Borlase, however, in his ' Antiquities
of Cornwall,' expresses the opinion that the rock-basins on the
summit of the rock were used by the Druids for purposes connected
with their religious ceremonies.

*[8] The provisioning of London, now grown so populous, would be
almost impossible but for the perfect system of roads now
converging on it from all parts.  In early times, London, like
country places, had to lay in its stock of salt-provisions against
winter, drawing its supplies of vegetables from the country within
easy reach of the capital.  Hence the London market-gardeners
petitioned against the extension of tumpike-roads about a century
ago, as they afterwards petitioned against the extension of
railways, fearing lest their trade should be destroyed by the
competition of country-grown cabbages.  But the extension of the
roads had become a matter of absolute necessity, in order to feed
the huge and ever-increasing mouth of the Great Metropolis, the
population of which has grown in about two centuries from four
hundred thousand to three millions. This enormous population has,
perhaps, never at any time more than a fortnight's supply of food
in stock, and most families not more than a few days; yet no one
ever entertains the slightest apprehension of a failure in the
supply, or even of a variation in the price from day to day in
consequence of any possible shortcoming.  That this should be so,
would be one of the most surprising things in the history of modern
London, but that it is sufficiently accounted for by the
magnificent system of roads, canals, and railways, which connect it
with the remotest corners of the kingdom.  Modern London is mainly
fed by steam.  The Express Meat-Train, which runs nightly from
Aberdeen to London, drawn by two engines and makes the journey in
twenty-four hours, is but a single illustration of the rapid and
certain method by which modem London is fed.  The north Highlands
of Scotland have thus, by means of railways, become grazing-grounds
for the metropolis.  Express fish trains from Dunbar and Eyemouth
(Smeaton's harbours), augmented by fish-trucks from Cullercoats and
Tynemouth on the Northumberland coast, and from Redcar, Whitby, and
Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast, also arrive in London every
morning.  And what with steam-vessels bearing cattle, and meat and
fish arriving by sea, and canal-boats laden with potatoes from
inland, and railway-vans laden with butter and milk drawn from a
wide circuit of country, and road-vans piled high with vegetables
within easy drive of Covent Garden, the Great Mouth is thus from
day to day regularly, satisfactorily, and expeditiously filled.