The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

Indeed the charges might have been reckoned by time, the travelling being at the rate of about 10s. a day. Another advertisement in 1739 thus sets forth the merits of some of the stage-coaches of the period:-- "Exeter Flying Stage-coach in three days, and Dorchester and Blandford in two days. Go from the Saracen's Head Inn, in Friday Street, London, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and from the New Inn, in Exeter, every Tuesday and Thursday." Then the advertisement makes known the fact, with regard to another coach, that the stage begins "Flying on Monday next." They were not satisfied in those days with a coach "going," "running," or "proceeding," but they set them "flying" at the rates of speed which may be gathered from these notices. Nearly thirty years later another advertisement set forth that the Taunton Flying Machine, hung on steel springs, sets out from the Saracen's Head Inn, in Friday Street, London, and Taunton, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at three o'clock in the morning, the journey taking two days. There were places inside for six passengers, and the fares were as follows, viz.:-- To Taunton, L1 16 0 " Ilminster, 1 14 0 " Yeovil, 1 8 0 " Sherborne, 1 6 0 " Shaftesbury, 1 4 0 Outside passengers, and children in the lap, were half these fares. To follow out in a historical fashion the development of the coaching period down to the introduction of railways, would be beyond the purpose of this work, nor will the limits of these pages admit of so great an extension of the subject. The earlier modes of travelling, and the difficulties of the roads, are treated of in several histories of England in a general way, and more fully in such books as the 'Lives of the Engineers,' by Smiles; 'Old Coaching Days,' by Stanley Harris; and 'Annals of the Road,' by Captain Malet,--all of which contain much that is entertaining and interesting. Here it is proposed merely to recall some of the incidents of the coaching days, so far as they relate to the mail-service, between the time when Palmer's mail-coaches were put on the road in 1784, down to the time when they were shouldered off the road by the more powerful iron horse.