If Shrewsbury was a place to and from which came and went many fast coaches, it certainly sent forth one coach that was phenomenally slow. The “Shrewsbury and Chester Highflyer,” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was very much less of a flyer than might have been expected from its name.

Those two places are forty miles apart. The “Highflyer” set out from Shrewsbury at eight o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Chester, under favourable circumstances, at the same hour in the evening. This snail-like crawl of little over three miles an hour is so remarkable that it invites investigation, whereupon some extraordinary things are revealed. At Wrexham, for example, two hours were allowed for dinner, and if his passengers wanted to linger over another bottle, Billy Williams, the coachman, who had looked in at the coffee-room door to announce the starting, would affably say, “Don’t let me disturb you, gentlemen.”

“Billy Williams,” as he was to one class, “Mr. William Williams” to another, “Chester Billy” and “Shrewsbury Billy” to the rest, was—need it be said?—a Welshman, and if any one wished for a little extra time in which to see Wrexham Church and its tower—one of the “wonders of Wales”—his patriotic ardour could not withstand the application for a further halt. Then, when Ellesmere was reached, another long stop was made to sample the cwrw da, the famous ale of that place; and, in fact, stops anywhere and everywhere, so that the wonder was, not that the journey occupied twelve hours, but that it did not take twenty-four. It must, indeed, have required some sharp driving, between whiles, to perform the distance in a dozen hours, and it was probably during one of these spurts that another coachman—one Jem Robins—was killed by being crushed under the coach when on one occasion it was overturned at an abrupt corner.

Billy Williams, however, made a peaceful end. He retired, or was retired by the railway’s usurpation of his line of country. He was what our grandfathers called an “original,” and a protÉgÉ of the Honourable Thomas Kenyon, at Pradoe, to whom he gave an excellent reason why horses should seem to go better at night.

“Hang me, Billy!” the honourable had exclaimed, “I’ve tried to account for it, but never could.”

“Why, I’m surprised at you,” said Billy; “do you mean you don’t know that?” “Why, of course I don’t,” replied the squire. “Well, then,” said Billy, “if you want to know the real reason, it’s because you’ve had your dinner.”

Billy was the hero of a story that long made a laughing-stock of him. The Honourable Thomas Kenyon was driving on one occasion to Chester races, but before setting out with his party from Pradoe thought that, as it was a particularly hot day, Billy might feel more comfortable if he exchanged his breeches and leather tops for lighter raiment. He accordingly told him to go upstairs and put on a pair of his own white trousers. Billy went up, and came back attired in a manner his host had never contemplated, for he had put the trousers on over the other garments!

Those days of fast coaches and slow coaches seem very remote from these railway times, when by a quick train you may reach Shrewsbury from London in three hours and thirty-five minutes, arriving, without turning a hair, at the castellated building that serves for a railway station, say, by the 2.10 p.m. train from Paddington, bringing you to the capital of the “proud Salopians” at 5.45, not too late for tea. Thus, between lunch and the afternoon cup you have accomplished what the “Wonder” at its best took fourteen hours and three-quarters to do. This forty-eight-miles-an-hour gait is, of course, not remarkable as railway travelling goes, but it would have sufficiently startled the old Shropshire squires, who thought they knew something of pace, aye, and went it themselves, in every sense.

Those were fine fellows, and their grand and beautiful old town of the Three Loggerheads still keeps an air—historic, racy, and individual—even in these levelling days. The memory of the hard-drinking, hard-swearing, and anything and everything but hard-working, Shropshire squires of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, who drank deep and left no heeltaps, “to friends all round the Wrekin,” will not readily fade. The heritages of their descendants—gout and encumbered estates—forbid the generous capacity of their forbears for old port and gambling to be forgot, and such things, however excellent they may be as vouchers for the fact that they lived their lives of old, are little desired by a generation that also desires to live and go the pace after its own ideals.

There remain in Shrewsbury many signs of this fine old free-handed way of living, when the town was not only the capital of the Marches of Wales, but resorted to for its “season” by the county families, who had their own town houses here, and came to them from their rural seats just as do their descendants to the London season. For another thing, the picturesque old town—seated so grandly within the girdle of the yellow Severn that enfolds it lovingly—is full of the queerest, quaintest inns that can be imagined; their strangely roomy and cavernous construction equalled only by their uniquely incongruous signs.

Much has already been said of the “Lion” inn, in connection with coaching, and let it now be more particularly treated, first of all with the remark that it was the foremost inn of its day. It was also the scene of some of Mytton’s mad exploits: that Jack Mytton, of Halston, who was a true pattern and faithful exemplar of the old-time Shropshire squire. They still show the window through which he leaped, for pure devilment, when he was being chaired, shoulder-high, by the enthusiastic burgesses on his return for Parliament in 1819. He sprang from the chair on that occasion, and alighted, amid a shower of broken glass, in the bar. No one was particularly surprised, for his was a freakish nature; but they would have been astonished if he had walked in, in the usual way, by the door.

It was here, too, that the adventure of the foxes, narrated by “Nimrod,” occurred. Mytton, “on going into the bar of the ‘Lion Inn’ one evening when somewhat ‘sprung’ by wine, was told there was a box in the coach-office for him, which contained two brace of foxes. He requested it might be brought to him, when, taking up the poker, he knocked the lid off it, and let the foxes out in the room in which the landlady and some of her female friends were assembled—giving a thrilling view-halloa at the time. Now it cannot be said they ‘broke cover’ in good style; but it may safely be asserted that they broke such a great quantity of bottles, glasses, and crockery-ware as to have rendered the joke an expensive one.”

It will not be matter for surprise, after this, when it is said that Jack Mytton was absolutely the most fearless and dare-devil among the courageous, reckless spirits of his time. He was always ready to risk breaking his own neck, and that of any one else who might have the misfortune to be thrown into his company while driving; and the story told of him and his nervous friend in a gig together is perfectly true. The friend gently remonstrated with him on his wild driving. “We may be upset,” said he. “Were you ever much hurt, then, by being upset in a gig?” inquired Mytton. “No, thank God!” exclaimed the friend, “for I was never upset in one.” “What!” replied the squire, “never upset in a gig? What a d—d slow fellow you must be,” and, running his near wheel up the bank, over they both went.