If we seem in this chapter to make a divergence from the stream of postal history, it is only to make passing reference to the tributaries which helped to feed the main stream. The condition of the roads, and no less the modes of travelling, bore a most intimate relationship, at all the points in its history, to the development of the post-office system and its communications throughout the kingdom. The seventeenth century, as we have seen, was eventful in important postal improvements; the period was, comparatively speaking, very fruitful also in great changes and improvements in the internal character of the country. No question that the progress of the former depended greatly on the state of the latter. James the First, whatever might be his character in other respects, was indefatigable in his exertions to open out the resources of his kingdom. The fathers of civil engineering, such as Vermuyden and Sir Hugh Myddleton, lived during his reign, and both these eminent men were employed under his auspices, either in making roads, draining the fen country, improving the metropolis, or in some other equally useful scheme. The troubles of the succeeding reign had the effect of frustrating the development of various schemes of public utility proposed and eagerly sanctioned by James. Under the Commonwealth, and at intervals during the two succeeding reigns, many useful improvements of no ordinary moment were carried out.

In the provinces, though considerable advances had been made in this respect during the century, travelling was still exceedingly difficult. In 1640, perhaps the Dover Road, owing to the great extent of continental traffic constantly kept up, was the best in England; yet three or four days were usually taken to travel it. In that year, Queen Henrietta and household were brought "with expedition" over that short distance in four long days. Short journeys were accomplished in a reasonable time, inasmuch as little entertainment was required. It was different when a long journey was contemplated, seeing how generally wretched were the hostelries of the period.[26] So bad, again, were some of the roads, that it was not at all uncommon, when a family intended to travel, for servants to be sent on beforehand to investigate the country and report upon the most promising track. Fuller tells us that during his time he frequently saw as many as six oxen employed in dragging slowly a single person to church. Waylen says that 800 horses were taken prisoners at one time during the civil wars by Cromwell's forces, "while sticking in the mud."

Many improvements were made in modes of conveyance during the century. A kind of stage-coach was first used in London about 1608; towards the middle of the century they were gradually adopted in the metropolis, and on the better highways around London. In no case, however, did they attempt to travel at a greater speed than three miles an hour. Before the century closed, stage-coaches were placed on three of the principal roads in the kingdom, namely those between London and York, Chester, and Exeter. This was only for the summer season; "during winter," in the words of Mr. Smiles, "they did not run at all, but were laid up for the season, like ships during Arctic frosts." Sometimes the roads were so bad, even in summer, that it was all the horses could do to drag the coach along, the passengers, per force, having to walk for miles together. With the York coach especially the difficulties were really formidable. Not only were the roads bad, but the low midland counties were particularly liable to floods, when, during their prevalence, it was nothing unusual for passengers to remain at some town en route for days together, until the roads were dry.

Public opinion was divided as to the merits of stage-coach travelling. When the new threatened altogether to supersede the old mode of travelling on horseback, great opposition was manifested to it, and the organs of public opinion (the pamphlet) began to revile it. In 1673, for instance, a pamphlet[27] was written which went so far as to denounce the introduction of stage-coaches as the greatest evil "that had happened of late years to these kingdoms." Curious to know how these sad consequences had been brought about, we read on and find it stated that "those who travel in these coaches contracted an idle habit of body; became weary and listless when they had rode a few miles, and were then unable to travel on horseback, and not able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields." In the very same year another writer, descanting on the improvements which had been introduced into the Post-Office, goes on to say, that "besides the excellent arrangement of conveying men and letters on horseback, there is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways; free from endamaging of one's health and one's body by hard jogging or over violent motion; and this not only at a low price (about a shilling for every five miles), but with such velocity and speed in one hour as that the posts in some foreign countreys cannot make in a day."[28] M. SoubriÈre, a Frenchman of letters who landed at Dover in the reign of Charles II., alludes to stage-coaches, but seems to have thought less of their charms than the author we have just quoted. "That I might not take post," says he, "or again be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover to London in a wagon. I was drawn by six horses placed one after another, and driven by a wagoner who walked by the side of them. He was clothed in black and appointed in all things like another St. George. He had a brave monteror on his head, and was a merry fellow, fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself."

The stage-wagon here referred to was almost exclusively used for the conveyance of merchandise. On the principal roads strings of stage-wagons travelled together. A string of stage-wagons travelled between London and Liverpool, starting from the Axe Inn, Aldermanbury, every Monday and Thursday, and occupying ten days on the road during summer and generally about twelve in the winter season. Beside these conveyances, there were "strings of horses," travelling somewhat quicker, for the carriage of light goods and passengers. The stage-wagon, as may be supposed, travelled much slower on other roads than they did between London and Liverpool. On most roads, in fact, the carriers never changed horses, but employed the same cattle throughout, however long the journey might be. It was, indeed, so proverbially slow in the north of England, that the publicans of Furness, in Lancashire, when they saw the conductors of the travelling merchandise trains appear in sight on the summit of Wrynose Hill, on their journey between Whitehaven and Kendal, were jocularly said to begin to brew their beer, always having a stock of good drink manufactured by the time the travellers reached the village![29]

Whilst communication between different large towns was comparatively easy—passengers travelling from London to York in less than a week before the close of the century—there were towns situated in the same county, in the year 1700, more widely separated for all practical purposes than London and Inverness are at the present day. If a stranger penetrated into some remote districts about this period, his appearance would call forth, as one writer remarks, as much excitement as would the arrival of a white man in some unknown African village. So it was with Camden in his famous seventeenth-century tour. Camden acknowledges that he approached Lancashire from Yorkshire, "that part of the country lying beyond the mountains towards the western ocean," with a "kind of dread," but trusted to Divine Providence, which, he said, "had gone with him hitherto," to help him in the attempt. Country people still knew little except of their narrow district, all but a small circle of territory being like a closed book to them. They still received but few letters. Now and then, a necessity would be laid upon them to write, and thereupon they would hurry off to secure the services of the country parson, or some one attached to the great house of the neighbourhood, who generally took the request kindly.[30] Almost the only intelligence of general affairs was communicated by pedlars and packmen, who were accustomed to retail news with their wares. The wandering beggar who came to the farmer's house craving a supper and bed was the principal intelligencer of the rural population of Scotland so late as 1780.[31] The introduction of newspapers formed quite an era in this respect to the gentlefolk of the country, and to some extent the poorer classes shared in the benefit. The first English newspaper published bears the date of 1622. Still earlier than this, the News Letter, copied by the hand, often found its way into the country, and, when well read at the great house of the district, would be sent amongst the principal villagers till its contents became diffused throughout the entire community. When any intelligence unusually interesting was received either in the news letter or the more modern newspaper, the principal proprietor would sometimes cause the villagers and his immediate dependants to be summoned at once, and would read to them the principal paragraphs from his porch. The reader of English history will have an imperfect comprehension of the facts of our past national life if he does not know, or remember, how very slowly and imperfectly intelligence of public matters was conveyed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what a bearing—very difficult to understand in these days—such circumstances had upon the facts themselves. Thus, a rebellion in one part of the country, which was popular throughout the kingdom, might be quelled before the news of the rising reached another part of the country. Remote districts waited for weeks and months to learn the most important intelligence. Lord Macaulay relates that the news of Queen Elizabeth's death, which was known to King James in three days, was not heard of in some parts of Devonshire and Cornwall till the court of her successor had ceased to wear mourning for her. The news of Cromwell having been made Protector only reached Bridgewater nineteen days after the event, when the church bells were set a-ringing. In some parts of Wales the news of the death of King Charles I. was not known for two months after its occurrence. The churches in the Orkneys continued to put up the usual prayers for him for months after he was beheaded; whilst their descendants did the same for King James long after he had taken up his abode at St. Germains.

In Scotland, all the difficulties in travelling were felt to even a greater degree than in England. There were no regular posts to the extreme north of Scotland, letters going as best they could by occasional travellers and different routes. Nothing could better show the difficulties attendant on locomotion of any sort in Scotland, than the fact that an agreement was entered into in 1678 to run a coach between Edinburgh and Glasgow, to be drawn by six horses, the journey, there and back, to be performed in six days. The distance was only forty-four miles, and the coach travelled over the principal post-road in the country!

The reader has thus some idea of the difficulties which stood in the way of efficient postal communication during the seventeenth century. However much the work of the Post-Office, and the slow and unequal manner in which correspondence was distributed, may excite the scorn of the present generation, living in the days of cheap and quick postage, they must nevertheless agree with Lord Macaulay in considering that the postal system of the Stuarts was such as might have moved the envy and admiration of the polished nations of antiquity, or even of the contemporaries of our own Shakespeare or Raleigh. In Cornwall, Lincolnshire, some parts of Wales, and amongst the hills and dales of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, letters, it is true, were only received once a week, if then; but in numbers of large towns they were delivered two and three times a week. There was daily communication between London and the Downs, and the same privileges were extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath, at the season when those places were crowded with pleasure-seekers.[32]

Accounts survive of the Post-Office as it existed towards the close of the seventeenth century, an outline of which, contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine by a correspondent in the early part of the present century, we must be excused for here presenting to the reader. The Postmaster-General of the period, under the Duke of York, was at that time the Earl of Arlington. The letters, it would seem, were forwarded from London to different parts on different days. For instance: Every Monday and Tuesday the Continental mails were despatched, part on the former day, the remainder on the latter. Every Saturday letters were sent to all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. On other days posts were despatched to the Downs, also to one or two important towns and other smaller places within short distances of London. The London Post-Office was managed by the Postmaster-General and a staff of twenty-seven clerks.[33] In the provinces of the three countries, there were 182 deputy-postmasters. Two packet-boats sailed between England and France; two were appointed for Flanders, three for Holland, three for Ireland, and at Deal two were engaged for the Downs. "As the masterpiece," so our authority winds up, "of all these grand arrangements, established by the present Postmaster-General, he hath annexed (sic) and appropriated the market-towns of England so well to the respective postages, that there is no considerable one of them which hath not an easy and certain conveyance for the letters thereof once a week. Further, though the number of letters missive was not at all considerable in our ancestors' day, yet it is now so prodigiously great (and the meanest of people are so beginning to write in consequence) that this office produces in money 60,000l. a year. Besides, letters are forwarded with more expedition, and at less charges, than in any other foreign country. A whole sheet of paper goes 80 miles for twopence, two sheets for fourpence, and an ounce of letter for but eightpence, and that in so short a time, by night as well as day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes one hundred and twenty miles, and in five days an answer to a letter may be had from a place distant 200 miles from the writer!"