champaigne between St. Neots and Cambridge,
that Rose was weary, and we were forced to
change again. But Mrs. Katherine could not
ride, insomuch that we were forced to
go at a foot-pace, and it was late and raining."
The wretched equestrians were therefore
compelled to seek the nearest wayside inn, where
they met with wretched lodging, and still worse
company. After getting to Cambridge, where
they had little pleasure from the incessant
rain, they set out on their return, intending
for St. Neots that night; "but in our way also
were strangely prevented. Mrs. Robinson was
thrown off her horse at the bridge, and
dragged by the feet in the stirrup. She got
up, was dirtied sadly, but yet unhurt; and
after half-an-hour's stay, we essayed to march
again, and at the town's end met our company
coming on foot back again, which much
amazed me. But we were forced to return
back to our inn again, for my poor cousin
Hannah was fallen into a pond, and so we got
the same lodging, got her to bed, and were
forced to stay at Cambridge this night also."
It is not difficult to imagine (John Cresset to
the contrary, notwithstanding) with what
delight Mrs. Robinson, wet and weary, and
cousin Hannah, with her broken head and
her cold bath in the pond, would have hailed
the Flying Coach.

But merciless John Cresset will give them
no quarter. To the argument that sick
persons find the benefit of them, he
answers, "if they must ride, let them ride in
the long wagon coaches, which will do no
harm—if prohibited within forty miles
of London." If poor people are
extravagant  enough to travel, "it is not fit that
they should be encouraged in their pride, and
suffered to ride amongst gentlemen, or like
persons of honour in a coach with four or six
horses." In conclusion, John Cresset, who would
have made a most successful Protectionist
leader at the present day, declares solemnly that
Flying Coaches are a humbug; tells the public
that it has been imposed upon, and mentions
many worshipful justices at the quarter
sessions who "have certified to His Majesty and
his honourable Privy Council the great
mischiefs occasioned by these coaches." He
concludes with the recommendation that one
coach only be allowed to each shire town,
and that, to start but once a-week, "to
go through with the same horses they
set forth with, and not to travel above
thirty miles a day. Thus regulated, they
would do little or no harm, especially if all
be suppressed within forty or fifty miles of
London."

We do not know whether any answer to
this stinging little pamphlet ever appeared;
but so earnest were John Cresset and his
supporters to put down the enormity of
flying coaches, that the following year the
same pamphlet, scarcely altered in a word,
was republished under the more attractive
title of "The Grand Concern of England
Explained." The grand concern of travellers,
however, was comfortable and comparatively
swift travelling, and flying coaches multiplied,
in spite of occasional accidents. During the winter
the greater number seem to have been laid
aside; this being rendered necessary, especially
in the more distant parts of the country,
by the unsafe state of the roads, and the
danger of sudden floods. A sad instance of
the latter is recorded in the Domestic
Intelligence, of sixteen hundred and seventy-
nine.  A coach between Boston and
Lincoln, was carried away by the violence
of the October floods, when all the six
passengers, together with the horses, were
drowned, and the coachman narrowly escaped.
Ralph Thoresby, in his Diary, sixteen
hundred and seventy-eight, mentions that all the
stages in Yorkshire were also taken off the
road at the approach of winter. When
at Hull, suffering severely from ague, his
father hired one for their sole use to bring
them both to York; an arrangement that well
suited the sickly youth, but which as little
suited the stout Yorkshire clothier, his father,
who could not endure the effeminacy of that
way of travelling. In summer time, the
chief danger was from highwaymen, who
sometimes collected in considerable
numbers. Thus, in the same Domestic
Intelligence, we read that "several
passengers, both men and women, to the
number of fifteen, going in three or four
coaches toward Bath and Bristol, were set
upon by some highwaymen (supposed to be
soldiers), well armed, about Stokechurch, in
Oxfordshire [a very desolate part at this
time] who robbed them all of very
considerable value." For such dangers, the state
of the roads was chiefly answerable; or
rather the country gentlemen, whose business
it was to keep them in order; but who
never did so until compelled by local Acts of
Parliament to have them mended now and
then.

Thirty years after Antony à Wood's
coach performed its eventful journey,
the Vice-chancellor's regulations were just
the same, and the fare, as then, ten
shillings. From the lively account the Spectator
gives of his journey up to London, from
Sir Roger de Coverly's, with Mrs. Betty
Arable the great fortune, and the officer,
and the quaker, we find that he
travelled at much the same speed as these
stages did, so bitterly denounced by John
Cresset forty years before. The boots of the
Oxford flying coach would, however, have
been of advantage here; for he tells us the
captain's half-pike was placed near the coachman,
and the drum behind the coach; and
then "our cloak bag" was fixed in the seat of
the coach. Thus our great-grandfathers
and their sons jolted along for more than a
century, until Mr. Palmer startled the public,
and aroused the indignation of every stage
coachman on the road, by his daring project