*[9] The white witches are kindly disposed, the black cast the
"evil eye," and the grey are consulted for the discovery of theft,
&c.
*[10] See 'The Devonshire Lane', above quoted
*[11] Willow saplings, crooked and dried in the required form.
CHAPTER IV.
ROADS AND TRAVELLING IN SCOTLAND IN THE LAST CENTURY.
The internal communications of Scotland, which Telford did so much
in the course of his life to improve, were, if possible, even worse
than those of England about the middle of last century. The land
was more sterile, and the people were much poorer. Indeed, nothing
could be more dreary than the aspect which Scotland then presented.
Her fields lay untilled, her mines unexplored, and her fisheries
uncultivated. The Scotch towns were for the most part collections
of thatched mud cottages, giving scant shelter to a miserable
population. The whole country was desponding, gaunt, and haggard,
like Ireland in its worst times. The common people were badly fed
and wretchedly clothed, those in the country for the most part
living in huts with their cattle. Lord Kaimes said of the Scotch
tenantry of the early part of last century, that they were so
benumbed by oppression and poverty that the most able instructors
in husbandry could have made nothing of them. A writer in the
'Farmer's Magazine' sums up his account of Scotland at that time in
these words:--"Except in a few instances, it was little better than
a barren waste."*[1]
The modern traveller through the Lothians--which now exhibit
perhaps the finest agriculture in the world--will scarcely believe
that less than a century ago these counties were mostly in the
state in which Nature had left them. In the interior there was
little to be seen but bleak moors and quaking bogs. The chief part
of each farm consisted of "out-field," or unenclosed land, no
better than moorland, from which the hardy black cattle could
scarcely gather herbage enough in winter to keep them from
starving. The "in-field" was an enclosed patch of illcultivated
ground, on which oats and "bear," or barley, were grown; but the
principal crop was weeds.
Of the small quantity of corn raised in the country, nine-tenths
were grown within five miles of the coast; and of wheat very little
was raised--not a blade north of the Lothians. When the first crop
of that grain was tried on a field near Edinburgh, about the middle
of last century, people flocked to it as a wonder. Clover,
turnips, and potatoes had not yet been introduced, and no cattle
were fattened: it was with difficulty they could be kept alive.
All loads were as yet carried on horseback; but when the farm was
too small, or the crofter too poor to keep a horse, his own or his
wife's back bore the load. The horse brought peats from the bog,
carried the oats or barley to market, and bore the manure a-field.
But the uses of manure were as yet so little understood that, if a
stream were near, it was usually thrown in and floated away, and in
summer it was burnt.
What will scarcely be credited, now that the industry of Scotland
has become educated by a century's discipline of work, was the
inconceivable listlessness and idleness of the people. They left
the bog unreclaimed, and the swamp undrained. They would not be at
the trouble to enclose lands easily capable of cultivation.
There was, perhaps, but little inducement on the part of the
agricultural class to be industrious; for they were too liable to
be robbed by those who preferred to be idle. Andrew Fletcher,
of Saltoun--commonly known as "The Patriot," because he was so
strongly opposed to the union of Scotland with England*[2]--
published a pamphlet, in 1698, strikingly illustrative of the
lawless and uncivilized state of the country at that time.
After giving a dreadful picture of the then state of Scotland:
two hundred thousand vagabonds begging from door to door and robbing
and plundering the poor people,-- "in years of plenty many
thousands of them meeting together in the mountains, where they
feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets,
burials, and other like public occasions, they are to be seen, both
men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and
fighting together,"--he proceeded to urge that every man of a
certain estate should be obliged to take a proportionate number of
these vagabonds and compel them to work for him; and further,
that such serfs, with their wives and children, should be incapable
of alienating their service from their master or owner until he had
been reimbursed for the money he had expended on them: in other
words, their owner was to have the power of selling them.
"The Patriot" was, however, aware that "great address, diligence,
and severity" were required to carry out his scheme; "for," said he,
"that sort of people are so desperately wicked, such enemies of all
work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud in
esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to
call Slavery, that unless prevented by the utmost industry and
diligence, upon the first publication of any orders necessary for
putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with
hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children, than
appear abroad to have them and themselves taken into such
service."*[3]
Although the recommendations of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun were
embodied in no Act of Parliament, the magistrates of some of the
larger towns did not hesitate to kidnap and sell into slavery lads
and men found lurking in the streets, which they continued to do
down to a comparatively recent period. This, however, was not so
surprising as that at the time of which we are speaking, and,
indeed, until the end of last century, there was a veritable slave
class in Scotland--the class of colliers and salters--who were
bought and sold with the estates to which they belonged, as forming
part of the stook. When they ran away, they were advertised for
as negroes were in the American States until within the last few
years. It is curious, in turning over an old volume of the 'Scots
Magazine,' to find a General Assembly's petition to Parliament for
the abolition of slavery in America almost alongside the report of
a trial of some colliers who had absconded from a mine near
Stirling to which they belonged. But the degraded condition of the
home slaves then excited comparatively little interest. Indeed, it
was not until the very last year of the last century that praedial
slavery was abolished in Scotland--only three short reigns ago,
almost within the memory of men still living.*[4] The greatest
resistance was offered to the introduction of improvements in
agriculture, though it was only at rare intervals that these were
attempted. There was no class possessed of enterprise or wealth.
An idea of the general poverty of the country may be inferred from
the fact that about the middle of last century the whole circulating
medium of the two Edinburgh banks--the only institutions of the
kind then in Scotland--amounted to only 200,000L., which was
sufficient for the purposes of trade, commerce, and industry.
Money was then so scarce that Adam Smith says it was not uncommon
for workmen, in certain parts of Scotland, to carry nails instead
of pence to the baker's or the alehouse. A middle class could
scarcely as yet be said to exist, or any condition between the
starving cottiers and the impoverished proprietors, whose available
means were principally expended in hard drinking.*[5]
The latter were, for the most part, too proud and too ignorant to
interest themselves in the improvement of their estates; and the few
who did so had very little encouragement to persevere. Miss Craig,
in describing the efforts made by her father, William Craig,
laird of Arbigland, in Kirkcudbright, says, "The indolent obstinacy
of the lower class of the people was found to be almost
unconquerable. Amongst other instances of their laziness, I have
heard him say that, upon the introduction of the mode of dressing
the grain at night which had been thrashed during the day, all the
servants in the neighbourhood refused to adopt the measure, and
even threatened to destroy the houses of their employers by fire if
they continued to insist upon the business. My father speedily
perceived that a forcible remedy was required for the evil.
He gave his servants the choice of removing the thrashed grain in
the evening, or becoming inhabitants of Kirkcudbright gaol: they
preferred the former alternative, and open murmurings were no
longer heard."*[6]
The wages paid to the labouring classes were then very low. Even
in East Lothian, which was probably in advance of the other Scotch
counties, the ordinary day's wage of a labouring man was only five
pence in winter and six pence in summer. Their food was wholly
vegetable, and was insufficient in quantity as well as bad in
quality. The little butcher's meat consumed by the better class
was salted beef and mutton, stored up in Ladner time (between
Michaelmas and Martinmas) for the year's consumption. Mr. Buchan
Hepburn says the Sheriff of East Lothian informed him that he
remembered when not a bullock was slaughtered in Haddington market
for a whole year, except at that time; and, when Sir David Kinloch,
of Gilmerton sold ten wedders to an Edinburgh butcher, he
stipulated for three several terms to take them away, to prevent
the Edinburgh market from being overstocked with fresh butcher's
meat!*[7]
The rest of Scotland was in no better state: in some parts it was
even worse. The rich and fertile county of Ayr, which now glories
in the name of "the garden of Scotland," was for the most part a
wild and dreary waste, with here and there a poor, miserable,
comfortless hut, where the farmer and his family lodged. There
were no enclosures of land, except one or two about a proprietor's
residence; and black cattle roamed at large over the face of the
country. When an attempt was made to enclose the lands for the
purposes of agriculture, the fences were levelled by the
dispossessed squatters. Famines were frequent among the poorer
classes; the western counties not producing food enough for the
sustenance of the inhabitants, few though they were in number.
This was also the case in Dumfries, where the chief part of the grain
required for the population was brought in "tumbling-cars" from the
sandbeds of Esk; "and when the waters were high by reason of spates
[or floods], and there being no bridges, so that the cars could not
come with the meal, the tradesmen's wives might be seen in the
streets of Dumfries, crying; because there was no food to be
had."*[8]
The misery of the country was enormously aggravated by the wretched
state of the roads. There were, indeed, scarcely any made roads
throughout the country. Hence the communication between one town
and another was always difficult, especially in winter. There were
only rough tracks across moors, and when one track became too
deep, another alongside of it was chosen, and was in its turn
abandoned, until the whole became equally impassable. In wet
weather these tracks became "mere sloughs, in which the carts or
carriages had to slumper through in a half-swimming state, whilst,
in times of drought it was a continual jolting out of one hole into
another."*[9]
Such being the state of the highways, it will be obvious that very
little communication could exist between one part of the country
and another. Single-horse traffickers, called cadgers, plied
between the country towns and the villages, supplying the
inhabitants with salt, fish, earthenware, and articles of clothing,
which they carried in sacks or creels hung across their horses'
backs. Even the trade between Edinburgh and Glasgow was carried on
in the same primitive way, the principal route being along the high
grounds west of Boroughstoness, near which the remains of the old
pack-horse road are still to be seen.
It was long before vehicles of any sort could be used on the Scotch
roads. Rude sledges and tumbling-cars were employed near towns,
and afterwards carts, the wheels of which were first made of
boards. It was long before travelling by coach could be introduced
in Scotland. When Smollett travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh on
his way to London, in 1739, there was neither coach, cart, nor
waggon on the road. He accordingly accompanied the pack-horse
carriers as far as Newcastle, "sitting upon a pack-saddle between
two baskets, one of which," he says, "contained my goods in a
knapsack."
In 1743 an attempt was made by the Town Council of Glasgow to set
up a stage-coach or "lando." It was to be drawn by six horses,
carry six passengers, and run between Glasgow and Edinburgh, a
distance of forty-four miles, once a week in winter, and twice a
week in summer. The project, however, seems to have been thought
too bold for the time, for the "lando" was never started. It was
not until the year 1749 that the first public conveyance, called
"The Glasgow and Edinburgh Caravan," was started between the two
cities, and it made the journey between the one place and the other
in two days. Ten years later another vehicle was started, named
"The Fly" because of its unusual speed, and it contrived to make
the journey in rather less than a day and a half.
About the same time, a coach with four horses was started between
Haddington and Edinburgh, and it took a full winter's day to
perform the journey of sixteen miles: the effort being to reach
Musselburgh in time for dinner, and go into town in the evening.
As late as 1763 there was as only one stage-coach in all Scotland
in communication with London, and that set out from Edinburgh only
once a month. The journey to London occupied from ten to fifteen
days, according to the state of the weather; and those who
undertook so dangerous a journey usually took the precaution of
making their wills before starting.
When carriers' carts were established, the time occupied by them on
the road will now appear almost incredible. Thus the common
carrier between Selkirk and Edinburgh, a distance of only
thirty-eight miles, took about a fortnight to perform the double
journey. Part of the road lay along Gala Water, and in summer time,
when the river-bed was dry, the carrier used it as a road. The
townsmen of this adventurous individual, on the morning of his
way-going, were accustomed to turn out and take leave of him,
wishing him a safe return from his perilous journey. In winter the
route was simply impracticable, and the communication was suspended
until the return of dry weather.
While such was the state of the communications in the immediate
neighbourhood of the metropolis of Scotland, matters were, if
possible, still worse in the remoter parts of the country. Down to
the middle of last century, there were no made roads of any kind in
the south-western counties. The only inland trade was in black
cattle; the tracks were impracticable for vehicles, of which there
were only a few--carts and tumbling-cars--employed in the immediate
neighbourhood of the towns. When the Marquis of Downshire
attempted to make a journey through Galloway in his coach, about
the year 1760, a party of labourers with tools attended him, to
lift the vehicle out of the ruts and put on the wheels when it got
dismounted. Even with this assistance, however, his Lordship
occasionally stuck fast, and when within about three miles of the
village of Creetown, near Wigton, he was obliged to send away the
attendants, and pass the night in his coach on the Corse of Slakes
with his family.
Matters were, of course, still worse in the Highlands, where the
rugged character of the country offered formidable difficulties to
the formation of practicable roads, and where none existed save
those made through the rebel districts by General Wade shortly
after the rebellion of 1715. The people were also more lawless
and, if possible, more idle, than those of the Lowland districts
about the same period. The latter regarded their northern
neighbours as the settlers in America did the Red Indians round
their borders--like so many savages always ready to burst in upon
them, fire their buildings, and carry off their cattle.*[10]
Very little corn was grown in the neighbourhood of the Highlands,
on account of its being liable to be reaped and carried off by the
caterans, and that before it was ripe. The only method by which
security of a certain sort could be obtained was by the payment of
blackmail to some of the principal chiefs, though this was not
sufficient to protect them against the lesser marauders. Regular
contracts were drawn up between proprietors in the counties of
Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton, and the Macgregors, in which it was
stipulated that if less than seven cattle were stolen--which
peccadillo was known as picking--no redress should be required; but
if the number stolen exceeded seven--such amount of theft being
raised to the dignity of lifting--then the Macgregors were bound to
recover. This blackmail was regularly levied as far south as
Campsie--then within six miles of Glasgow, but now almost forming
part of it--down to within a few months of the outbreak of the
Rebellion of 1745.*[11]
Under such circumstances, agricultural improvement was altogether
impossible. The most fertile tracts were allowed to lie waste, for
men would not plough or sow where they had not the certain prospect
of gathering in the crop. Another serious evil was, that the
lawless habits of their neighbours tended to make the Lowland
borderers almost as ferocious as the Higlanders themselves. Feuds
were of constant occurrence between neighbouring baronies, and even
contiguous parishes; and the country fairs, which were tacitly
recognised as the occasions for settling quarrels, were the scenes
of as bloody faction fights as were ever known in Ireland even in
its worst days. When such was the state of Scotland only a century
ago, what may we not hope for from Ireland when the civilizing
influences of roads, schools, and industry have made more general
progress amongst her people?
Yet Scotland had not always been in this miserable condition. There
is good reason to believe that as early as the thirteenth century,
agriculture was in a much more advanced state than we find it to
have been the eighteenth. It would appear from the extant
chartularies of monastic establishments, which then existed all
over the Lowlands, that a considerable portion of their revenue was
derived from wheat, which also formed no inconsiderable part of
their living. The remarkable fact is mentioned by Walter de
Hemingford, the English historian, that when the castle of
Dirleton, in East Lothian, was besieged by the army of Edward I.,
in the beginning of July, 1298, the men, being reduced to great
extremities for provisions, were fain to subsist on the pease and
beans which they gathered in the fields.*[12] This statement is all
the more remarkable on two accounts: first, that pease and beans
should then have been so plentiful as to afford anything like
sustenance for an army; and second, that they should have been fit
for use so early in the season, even allowing for the difference
between the old and new styles in the reckoning of time.
The magnificent old abbeys and churches of Scotland in early times
also indicate that at some remote period a degree of civilization
and prosperity prevailed, from which the country had gradually
fallen. The ruins of the ancient edifices of Melrose, Kilwinning,
Aberborthwick, Elgin, and other religious establishments, show that
architecture must then have made great progress in the North,
and lead us to the conclusion that the other arts had reached a like
stage of advancement. This is borne out by the fact of the number
of well-designed and well-built bridges of olden times which still
exist in different parts of Scotland. "And when we consider," says
Professor Innes, "the long and united efforts required in the early
state of the arts for throwing a bridge over any considerable
river, the early occurrence of bridges may well be admitted as one
of the best tests of civilization and national prosperity."*[13]
As in England, so in Scotland, the reclamation of lands, the
improvement of agriculture, and the building of bridges were mainly
due to the skill and industry of the old churchmen. When their
ecclesiastical organization was destroyed, the country speedily
relapsed into the state from which they had raised it; and Scotland
continued to lie in ruins almost till our own day, when it has
again been rescued from barrenness, more effectually even than
before, by the combined influences of roads, education, and industry.
Footnotes for Chapter IV.
*[1] 'Farmer's Magazine,' 1803. No. xiii. p. 101.
*[2] Bad although the condition of Scotland was at the beginning of
last century, there were many who believed that it would be made
worse by the carrying of the Act of Union. The Earl of Wigton was
one of these. Possessing large estates in the county of Stirling,
and desirous of taking every precaution against what he supposed to
be impending ruin, he made over to his tenants, on condition that
they continued to pay him their then low rents, his extensive
estates in the parishes of Denny, Kirkintulloch, and Cumbernauld,
retaining only a few fields round the family mansion ['Farmer's
Magazine,' 1808, No. xxxiv. p. 193]. Fletcher of Saltoun also
feared the ruinous results of the Union, though he was less
precipitate in his conduct than the Earl of Wigton. We need
scarcely say how entirely such apprehensions were falsified by the
actual results.
*[3] 'Fletcher's Political Works,' London, 1737, p. 149. As the
population of Scotland was then only about 1,200,000, the beggars
of the country, according to the above account, must have
constituted about one-sixth of the whole community.
*[4] Act 39th George III. c. 56. See 'Lord Cockburn's
Memorials,' pp. 76-9. As not many persons may be aware how recent
has been the abolition of slavery in Britain, the author of this
book may mention the fact that he personally knew a man who had
been "born a slave in Scotland," to use his own words, and lived to
tell it. He had resisted being transferred to another owner on the
sale of the estate to which he was "bound," and refused to "go below,"
on which he was imprisoned in Edinburgh gaol, where he lay for a
considerable time. The case excited much interest, and probably
had some effect in leading to the alteration in the law relating
to colliers and salters which shortly after followed.
*[5] See 'Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle,' passim.
*[6] 'Farmer's Magazine.' June. 1811. No. xlvi. p. 155.
*[7] See Buchan Hepburn's 'General View of the Agriculture and
Economy of East Lothian,' 1794, p. 55.
*[8]Letter of John Maxwell, in Appendix to Macdiarmid's 'Picture of
Dumfries,' 1823
*[9] Robertson's 'Rural Recollections,' p. 38.
*[10] Very little was known of the geography of the Highlands down
to the beginning of the seventeenth century The principal
information on the subject being derived from Danish materials.
It appears, however, that in 1608, one Timothy Pont, a young man
without fortune or patronage, formed the singular resolution of
travelling over the whole of Scotland, with the sole view of
informing himself as to the geography of the country, and he
persevered to the end of his task through every kind of difficulty;
exploring 'all the islands with the zeal of a missionary, though
often pillaged and stript of everything; by the then barbarous
inhabitant's. The enterprising youth received no recognition nor
reward for his exertions, and he died in obscurity, leaving his
maps and papers to his heirs. Fortunately, James I. heard of the
existence of Pont's papers, and purchased them for public use. They
lay, however, unused for a long time in the offices of the Scotch
Court of Chancery, until they were at length brought to light by
Mr. Robert Gordon, of Straloch, who made them the basis of the
first map of Scotland having any pretensions to accuracy that was
ever published.
*[11] Mr. Grant, of Corrymorry, used to relate that his father,
when speaking of the Rebellion of 1745, always insisted that a
rising in the Highlands was absolutely necessary to give employment
to the numerous bands of lawless and idle young men who infested
every property.--Anderson's 'Highlands and Islands of Scotland,'
p. 432.
*[12] 'Lord Hailes Annals,' i., 379.
*[13] Professor Innes's 'Sketches of Early Scottish History.' The
principal ancient bridges in Scotland were those over the Tay at
Perth (erected in the thirteenth century) over the Esk at Brechin
and Marykirk; over the Bee at Kincardine, O'Neil, and Aberdeen;
over the Don, near the same city; over the Spey at Orkhill; over
the Clyde at Glasgow; over the Forth at Stirling; and over the Tyne
at Haddington.
CHAPTER V.
ROADS AND TRAVELLING IN ENGLAND TOWARDS THE END OF LAST CENTURY.
The progress made in the improvement of the roads throughout
England was exceedingly slow. Though some of the main throughfares
were mended so as to admit of stage-coach travelling at the rate of
from four to six miles an hour, the less frequented roads continued
to be all but impassable. Travelling was still difficult, tedious,
and dangerous. Only those who could not well avoid it ever thought
of undertaking a journey, and travelling for pleasure was out of
the question. A writer in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' in 1752 says
that a Londoner at that time would no more think of travelling into
the west of England for pleasure than of going to Nubia.
But signs of progress were not awanting. In 1749 Birmingham
started a stage-coach, which made the journey to London in three
days.*[1] In 1754 some enterprising Manchester men advertised a
"flying coach" for the conveyance of passengers between that town
and the metropolis; and, lest they should be classed with
projectors of the Munchausen kind, they heralded their enterprise
with this statement: "However incredible it may appear, this coach
will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and
a half after leaving Manchester!"
Fast coaches were also established on several of the northern
roads, though not with very extraordinary results as to speed.
When John Scott, afterwards Lord Chancellor Eldon, travelled from
Newcastle to Oxford in 1766, he mentions that he journeyed in what
was denominated "a fly," because of its rapid travelling; yet he
was three or four days and nights on the road. There was no such
velocity, however, as to endanger overturning or other mischief.
On the panels of the coach were painted the appropriate motto of
Sat cito si sat bene--quick enough if well enough--a motto which
the future Lord Chancellor made his own.*[2]
The journey by coach between London and Edinburgh still occupied
six days or more, according to the state of the weather. Between
Bath or Birmingham and London occupied between two and three days
as late as 1763. The road across Hounslow Heath was so bad, that
it was stated before a Parliamentary Committee that it was
frequently known to be two feet deep in mud. The rate of
travelling was about six and a half miles an hour; but the work was
so heavy that it "tore the horses' hearts out," as the common
saying went, so that they only lasted two or three years.
When the Bath road became improved, Burke was enabled, in the
summer of 1774, to travel from London to Bristol, to meet the
electors there, in little more than four and twenty hours; but his
biographer takes care to relate that he "travelled with incredible
speed." Glasgow was still ten days' distance from the metropolis,
and the arrival of the mail there was so important an event that a
gun was fired to announce its coming in. Sheffield set up a
"flying machine on steel springs" to London in 1760: it "slept" the
first night at the Black Man's Head Inn, Nottingham; the second at
the Angel, Northampton; and arrived at the Swan with Two Necks,
Lad-lane, on the evening of the third day. The fare was 1L. l7s.,
and 14 lbs. of luggage was allowed. But the principal part of the
expense of travelling was for living and lodging on the road, not
to mention the fees to guards and drivers.
Though the Dover road was still one of the best in the kingdom, the
Dover flying-machine, carrying only four passengers, took a long
summer's day to perform the journey. It set out from Dover at four
o'clock in the morning, breakfasted at the Red Lion, Canterbury,
and the passengers ate their way up to town at various inns on the
road, arriving in London in time for supper. Smollett complained
of the innkeepers along that route as the greatest set of
extortioners in England. The deliberate style in which journeys
were performed may be inferred from the circumstance that on one
occasion, when a quarrel took place between the guard and a
passenger, the coach stopped to see them fight it out on the road.
Foreigners who visited England were peculiarly observant of the
defective modes of conveyance then in use. Thus, one Don Manoel
Gonzales, a Portuguese merchant, who travelled through Great
Britain, in 1740, speaking of Yarmouth, says, "They have a comical
way of carrying people all over the town and from the seaside, for
six pence. They call it their coach, but it is only a wheel-barrow,
drawn by one horse, without any covering." Another foreigner, Herr
Alberti, a Hanoverian professor of theology, when on a visit to
Oxford in 1750, desiring to proceed to Cambridge, found there was
no means of doing so without returning to London and there taking
coach for Cambridge. There was not even the convenience of a
carrier's waggon between the two universities. But the most
amusing account of an actual journey by stage-coach that we know
of, is that given by a Prussian clergyman, Charles H. Moritz, who
thus describes his adventures on the road between Leicester and
London in 1782:--
"Being obliged," he says, "to bestir myself to get
back to London, as the time drew near when the
Hamburgh captain with whom I intended to return had
fixed his departure, I determined to take a place as
far as Northampton on the outside. But this ride from
Leicester to Northampton I shall remember as long as I live.
"The coach drove from the yard through a part of the
house. The inside passengers got in from the yard,
but we on the outside were obliged to clamber up in
the street, because we should have had no room for
our heads to pass under the gateway. My companions on
the top of the coach were a farmer, a young man very
decently dressed, and a black-a-moor. The getting up
alone was at the risk of one's life, and when I was
up I was obliged to sit just at the corner of the
coach, with nothing to hold by but a sort of little
handle fastened on the side. I sat nearest the wheel,
and the moment that we set off I fancied that I saw
certain death before me. All I could do was to take
still tighter hold of the handle, and to be strictly
careful to preserve my balance. The machine rolled
along with prodigious rapidity over the stones
through the town, and every moment we seemed to fly
into the air, so much so that it appeared to me a
complete miracle that we stuck to the coach at all.
But we were completely on the wing as often as we
passed through a village or went down a hill.
"This continual fear of death at last became
insupportable to me, and, therefore, no sooner were
we crawling up a rather steep hill, and consequently
proceeding slower than usual, then I carefully crept
from the top of the coach, and was lucky enough to
get myself snugly ensconced in the basket behind.
"'O,Sir, you will be shaken to death!' said the
black-a-moor; but I heeded him not, trusting that he
was exaggerating the unpleasantness of my new
situation. And truly, as long as we went on slowly up
the hill it was easy and pleasant enough; and I was
just on the point of falling asleep among the
surrounding trunks and packages, having had no rest
the night before, when on a sudden the coach
proceeded at a rapid rate down the hill. Then all the
boxes, iron-nailed and copper-fastened, began, as it
were, to dance around me; everything in the basket
appeared to be alive, and every moment I received
such violent blows that I thought my last hour had
come. The black-a-moor had been right, I now saw
clearly; but repentance was useless, and I was
obliged to suffer horrible torture for nearly an
hour, which seemed to me an eternity. At last we came
to another hill, when, quite shaken to pieces,
bleeding, and sore, I ruefully crept back to the top
of the coach to my former seat. 'Ah, did I not tell
you that you would be shaken to death?' inquired the
black man, when I was creeping along on my stomach.
But I gave him no reply. Indeed, I was ashamed; and I
now write this as a warning to all strangers who are
inclined to ride in English stage-coaches, and take
an outside at, or, worse still, horror of horrors, a
seat in the basket.
"From Harborough to Northampton I had a most dreadful
journey. It rained incessantly, and as before we had
been covered with dust, so now we were soaked with
rain. My neighbour, the young man who sat next me in
the middle, every now and then fell asleep; and when
in this state he perpetually bolted and rolled
against me, with the whole weight of his body, more
than once nearly pushing me from my seat, to which I
clung with the last strength of despair. My forces
were nearly giving way, when at last, happily, we
reached Northampton, on the evening of the 14th July,
1782, an ever-memorable day to me.
"On the next morning, I took an inside place for
London. We started early in the morning. The journey
from Northampton to the metropolis, however, I can
scarcely call a ride, for it was a perpetual motion,
or endless jolt from one place to another, in a close
wooden box, over what appeared to be a heap of unhewn
stones and trunks of trees scattered by a hurricane.
To make my happiness complete, I had three travelling
companions, all farmers, who slept so soundly that
even the hearty knocks with which they hammered their
heads against each other and against mine did not
awake them. Their faces, bloated and discoloured by
ale and brandy and the knocks aforesaid, looked, as
they lay before me, like so many lumps of dead flesh.
"I looked, and certainly felt, like a crazy fool when
we arrived at London in the afternoon."*[3]
[Image] The Basket Coach, 1780.
Arthur Young, in his books, inveighs strongly against the execrable
state of the roads in all parts of England towards the end of last
century. In Essex he found the ruts "of an incredible depth,"
and he almost swore at one near Tilbury. "Of all the cursed roads,
"he says, "that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of
barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's
Head at Tilbury. It is for near twelve miles so narrow that a
mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his
waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge.
To add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a
traveller, I must not forget the eternally meeting with chalk
waggons, themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of
them are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty horses may be
tacked to each to draw them out one by one!"*[4] Yet will it be
believed, the proposal to form a turnpike-road from Chelmsford to
Tilbury was resisted "by the Bruins of the country, whose horses
were worried to death with bringing chalk through those vile
roads!"
Arthur Young did not find the turnpike any better between Bury and
Sudbury, in Suffolk: "I was forced to move as slow in it," he says,
"as in any unmended lane in Wales. For, ponds of liquid dirt, and
a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse
that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips
across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but
without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these
sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." Between
Tetsworth and Oxford he found the so-called turnpike abounding in
loose stones as large as one's head, full of holes, deep ruts, and
withal so narrow that with great difficulty he got his chaise out
of the way of the Witney waggons. "Barbarous" and "execrable" are
the words which he constantly employs in speaking of the roads;
parish and turnpike, all seemed to be alike bad. From Gloucester
to Newnham, a distance of twelve miles, he found a "cursed road,"
"infamously stony," with "ruts all the way." From Newnham to
Chepstow he noted another bad feature in the roads, and that was
the perpetual hills; "for," he says, "you will form a clear idea of
them if you suppose the country to represent the roofs of houses
joined, and the road to run across them." It was at one time even
matter of grave dispute whether it would not cost as little money
to make that between Leominster and Kington navigable as to make
it hard. Passing still further west, the unfortunate traveller,
who seems scarcely able to find words to express his sufferings,
continues:--
"But, my dear Sir, what am I to say of the roads in
this country! the turnpikes! as they have the
assurance to call them and the hardiness to make one
pay for? From Chepstow to the half-way house between
Newport and Cardiff they continue mere rocky lanes,
full of hugeous stones as big as one's horse, and
abominable holes. The first six miles from Newport
they were so detestable, and without either
direction-posts or milestones, that I could not well
persuade myself I was on the turnpike, but had
mistook the road, and therefore asked every one I
met, who answered me, to my astonishment, 'Ya-as!'
Whatever business carries you into this country,
avoid it, at least till they have good roads: if they
were good, travelling would be very pleasant."*[5]
At a subsequent period Arthur Young visited the northern counties;
but his account of the roads in that quarter is not more
satisfactory. Between Richmond and Darlington he found them like to
"dislocate his bones," being broken in many places into deep holes,
and almost impassable; "yet," says he, "the people will drink tea!"
--a decoction against the use of which the traveller is found
constantly declaiming. The roads in Lancashire made him almost
frantic, and he gasped for words to express his rage. Of the road
between Proud Preston and Wigan he says: "I know not in the whole
range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this
infernal road. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who
may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country, to avoid
it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their
necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down.
They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet
deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer. What,
therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it receives
is tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose than
jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not
merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts
broken down in those eighteen miles of execrable memory."*[6]
It would even appear that the bad state of the roads in the Midland
counties, about the same time, had nearly caused the death of the
heir to the throne. On the 2nd of September, 1789, the Prince of
Wales left Wentworth Hall, where he had been on a visit to Earl
Fitzwilliam, and took the road for London in his carriage. When
about two miles from Newark the Prince's coach was overturned by a
cart in a narrow part of the road; it rolled down a slope, turning
over three times, and landed at the bottom, shivered to pieces.
Fortunately the Prince escaped with only a few bruises and a
sprain; but the incident had no effect in stirring up the local
authorities to make any improvement in the road, which remained in
the same wretched state until a comparatively recent period.
When Palmer's new mail-coaches were introduced, an attempt was made
to diminish the jolting of the passengers by having the carriages
hung upon new patent springs, but with very indifferent results.
Mathew Boulton, the engineer, thus described their effect upon
himself in a journey he made in one of them from London into
Devonshire, in 1787:--
"I had the most disagreeable journey I ever
experienced the night after I left you, owing to the
new improved patent coach, a vehicle loaded with iron
trappings and the greatest complication of
unmechanical contrivances jumbled together, that I
have ever witnessed. The coach swings sideways, with
a sickly sway without any vertical spring; the point
of suspense bearing upon an arch called a spring,
though it is nothing of the sort, The severity of the
jolting occasioned me such disorder, that I was
obliged to stop at Axminster and go to bed very ill.
However, I was able next day to proceed in a
post-chaise. The landlady in the London Inn, at
Exeter, assured me that the passengers who arrived
every night were in general so ill that they were
obliged to go supperless to bed; and, unless they go
back to the old-fashioned coach, hung a little lower,
the mail-coaches will lose all their custom."*[7]
We may briefly refer to the several stages of improvement --if
improvement it could be called--in the most frequented highways of
the kingdom, and to the action of the legislature with reference to
the extension of turnpikes. The trade and industry of the country
had been steadily improving; but the greatest obstacle to their
further progress was always felt to be the disgraceful state of the
roads. As long ago as the year 1663 an Act was passed*[8]
authorising the first toll-gates or turnpikes to be erected, at
which collectors were stationed to levy small sums from those using
the road, for the purpose of defraying the needful expenses of
their maintenance. This Act, however, only applied to a portion of
the Great North Road between London and York, and it authorised the
new toll-bars to be erected at Wade's Mill in Hertfordshire, at
Caxton in Cambridgeshire, and at Stilton in Huntingdonshire.*[9]
The Act was not followed by any others for a quarter of a century,
and even after that lapse of time such Acts as were passed of a
similar character were very few and far between.
For nearly a century more, travellers from Edinburgh to London met
with no turnpikes until within about 110 miles of the metropolis.
North of that point there was only a narrow causeway fit for
pack-horses, flanked with clay sloughs on either side. It is,
however, stated that the Duke of Cumberland and the Earl of
Albemarle, when on their way to Scotland in pursuit of the rebels
in 1746, did contrive to reach Durham in a coach and six; but there
the roads were found so wretched, that they were under the
necessity of taking to horse, and Mr. George Bowes, the county
member, made His Royal Highness a present of his nag to enable him
to proceed on his journey. The roads west of Newcastle were so bad,
that in the previous year the royal forces under General Wade,
which left Newcastle for Carlisle to intercept the Pretender and
his army, halted the first night at Ovingham, and the second at
Hexham, being able to travel only twenty miles in two days.*[10]
The rebellion of 1745 gave a great impulse to the construction of
roads for military as well as civil purposes. The nimble
Highlanders, without baggage or waggons, had been able to cross the
border and penetrate almost to the centre of England before any
definite knowledge of their proceedings had reached the rest of the
kingdom. In the metropolis itself little information could be
obtained of the movements of the rebel army for several days after
they had left Edinburgh. Light of foot, they outstripped the
cavalry and artillery of the royal army, which were delayed at all
points by impassable roads. No sooner, however, was the rebellion
put down, than Government directed its attention to the best means
of securing the permanent subordination of the Highlands, and with
this object the construction of good highways was declared to be
indispensable. The expediency of opening up the communication
between the capital and the principal towns of Scotland was also
generally admitted; and from that time, though slowly, the
construction of the main high routes between north and south made
steady progress.
The extension of the turnpike system, however, encountered violent
opposition from the people, being regarded as a grievous tax upon
their freedom of movement from place to place. Armed bodies of men
assembled to destroy the turnpikes; and they burnt down the
toll-houses and blew up the posts with gunpowder. The resistance
was the greatest in Yorkshire, along the line of the Great North
Road towards Scotland, though riots also took place in
Somersetshire and Gloucestershire, and even in the immediate
neighbourhood of London. One fine May morning, at Selby, in
Yorkshire, the public bellman summoned the inhabitants to assemble
with their hatchets and axes that night at midnight, and cut down
the turnpikes erected by Act of Parliament; nor were they slow to
act upon his summons. Soldiers were then sent into the district to
protect the toll-bars and the toll-takers; but this was a difficult
matter, for the toll-gates were numerous, and wherever a "pike" was
left unprotected at night, it was found destroyed in the morning.
The Yeadon and Otley mobs, near Leeds, were especially violent. On
the 18th of June, 1753, they made quite a raid upon the turnpikes,
burning or destroying about a dozen in one week. A score of the
rioters were apprehended, and while on their way to York Castle a
rescue was attempted, when the soldiers were under the necessity of
firing, and many persons were killed and wounded. The prejudices
entertained against the turnpikes were so strong, that in some
places the country people would not even use the improved roads
after they were made.*[11] For instance, the driver of the
Marlborough coach obstinately refused to use the New Bath road, but
stuck to the old waggon-track, called "Ramsbury." He was an old
man, he said: his grandfather and father had driven the aforesaid
way before him, and he would continue in the old track till
death.*[12] Petitions were also presented to Parliament against
the extension of turnpikes; but the opposition represented by the
petitioners was of a much less honest character than that of the
misguided and prejudiced country folks, who burnt down the
toll-houses. It was principally got up by the agriculturists in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis, who, having secured the advantages
which the turnpike-roads first constructed had conferred upon them,
desired to retain a monopoly of the improved means of
communication. They alleged that if turnpike-roads were extended
into the remoter counties, the greater cheapness of labour there
would enable the distant farmers to sell their grass and corn
cheaper in the London market than themselves, and that thus they
would be ruined.*[13]
This opposition, however, did not prevent the progress of turnpike
and highway legislation; and we find that, from l760 to l774, no
fewer than four hundred and fifty-two Acts were passed for making
and repairing highways. Nevertheless the roads of the kingdom long
continued in a very unsatisfactory state, chiefly arising from the
extremely imperfect manner in which they were made.
Road-making as a profession was as yet unknown. Deviations were
made in the old roads to make them more easy and straight; but the
deep ruts were merely filled up with any materials that lay nearest
at hand, and stones taken from the quarry, instead of being broken
and laid on carefully to a proper depth, were tumbled down and
roughly spread, the country road-maker trusting to the operation of
cart-wheels and waggons to crush them into a proper shape. Men of
eminence as engineers--and there were very few such at the time--
considered road-making beneath their consideration; and it was even
thought singular that, in 1768, the distinguished Smeaton should
have condescended to make a road across the valley of the Trent,
between Markham and Newark.
The making of the new roads was thus left to such persons as might
choose to take up the trade, special skill not being thought at all
necessary on the part of a road-maker. It is only in this way that
we can account for the remarkable fact, that the first extensive
maker of roads who pursued it as a business, was not an engineer,
nor even a mechanic, but a Blind Man, bred to no trade, and
possessing no experience whatever in the arts of surveying or
bridge-building, yet a man possessed of extraordinary natural
gifts, and unquestionably most successful as a road-maker.
We allude to John Metcalf, commonly known as "Blind Jack of
Knaresborough," to whose biography, as the constructor of nearly
two hundred miles of capital roads--as, indeed, the first great
English road-maker--we propose to devote the next chapter.
Footnotes for Chapter V.
*[1] Lady Luxborough, in a letter to Shenstone the poet, in 1749,
says,--"A Birmingham coach is newly established to our great
emolument. Would it not be a good scheme (this dirty weather, when
riding is no more a pleasure) for you to come some Monday in the
said stage-coach from Birmingham to breakfast at Barrells,
(for they always breakfast at Henley); and on the Saturday following
it would convey you back to Birmingham, unless you would stay longer,
which would be better still, and equally easy; for the stage goes
every week the same road. It breakfasts at Henley, and lies at
Chipping Horton; goes early next day to Oxford, stays there all day
and night, and gets on the third day to London; which from
Birmingham at this season is pretty well, considering how long they
are at Oxford; and it is much more agreeable as to the country than
the Warwick way was."
