SCOLE WHITE HART.

THE NORWICH
ROAD: AN EAST
ANGLIAN HIGHWAY

By Charles G. Harper

Author of "The Brighton Road," "The Portsmouth Road,"
"The Dover Road," "The Bath Road,"
"The Exeter Road," and "The Great North Road."

Illustrated by the Author, and from
Old-Time Prints and Pictures.

London: Chapman & Hall ltd. 1901

[All Rights reserved.]

PREFACE

THE author of a little book published in 1818, called A Journey to London, which is nearly all "London" with very little "journey," remarks that "it is as uncommon for a book to go into the world without a preface, as a man without a hat. They are both convenient coverings." Here, then, is the customary covering.

Introducing this, the seventh in a series of books telling the story of our great highways, it may perhaps be as well to re-state the methods used, and objects aimed at. The chief intention is to provide a readable book which shall avoid the style either of a Guide-Book or a History. It is the better fortune to be in the reader's hands than in the dusty seclusion of those formidable works, the County Histories; or disregarded among the guide-books of forgotten holidays. To the antiquary it will, of course, be obvious that this and other volumes of the series "contain many omissions," as the Irish reviewer said; but such things as find no place here have, as a general rule, been disregarded because they not only do not help the Story of the Road along, but rather hinder its progression.

The Norwich Road, in its one hundred and twelve miles, passes by many an historic site and through districts distinguished for their quiet pastoral beauty. In being historic it is not singular, for, as Oliver Wendell Holmes very truly said, "England is one vast museum," and the old road would be remarkable indeed, that, like Canning's "Needy Knife Grinder," had no story to tell. It is, however, in the especial characteristics of East Anglian scenery, speech, customs, and architecture that this road stands apart and is highly individualised. "East Anglia" is no merely arbitrary and meaningless term, as those who travel it, if only on the highway, will speedily find.

But this shall be no trumpet-blast; nor indeed do the charms of Eastern England require such a fanfare, for who has not yet heard of that lovely valley of the Stour, so widely known as "Constable's Country," by whose exquisite water-meadows and shady lanes the old turnpike passes? Scenery such as this; windmills, cornfields, tall elms, winding rivers, and commons populous with geese and turkeys, are typical of the Norwich Road, which may, with this introduction, now be left to recommend itself.

CHARLES G. HARPER.

Petersham, Surrey,

October 1901.

List of Illustrations

SEPARATE PLATES

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

THE ROAD TO NORWICH

THE NORWICH ROAD

I

In the days before railways came, robbing the exits from London of all dignity and purpose, the runaway 'prentice lads of the familiar legends, who were always half starved and continually beaten, revolting at length from their uncomfortable beds under the shop counters and their daily stripes and scorpions, were wont, according to the story-books, to steal at night out of their houses of bondage and make for the roads. Such an one, making in those days for Norwich, and standing at Aldgate in the grey of the morning, looking across the threshold of London, would have seen, in the long broad road stretching before him, the only means of escape. The shilling or so of which he would be the owner would scarce serve him for two or three days' keep; and so, although he might have longed for a place on the coach he could see starting from the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, at 4 a.m., there would have been for such as he no choice but to start afoot, with as light a heart as possible, and chance the offer of a lift on some waggon returning into Essex. Had he, in leaving Aldgate behind, asked some passer-by the way to Norwich, he might have been seized for what he was, a runaway; but, if he escaped suspicion, would have been answered readily enough, for everyone in those times knew the way to lie along the Whitechapel Road and by Mile End Turnpike. Has anyone in these enlightened and highly-educated times courage sufficient to ask his way to Norwich from Aldgate? and, assuming that dauntless courage, is it conceivable that anyone in that crowded street could tell him?

There are no apprentices and no tyrannical masters of the old kind left now, and the only runaways of these days are the bad boys of precocious wits who would not think of tramping the highway while they could raise a railway fare or "lift" a bicycle. But the way still lies open to the explorer from Aldgate, and the old Norwich Road yet follows the line of the Roman way into the country of the Iceni.

Between the era of our imaginary truant and that of the Romans, who originally constructed this road, there yawns a vast gulf of time; certainly not less than eighteen hundred years. The history of the road during that space has largely been forgotten; but, worst of all, we know perhaps less of it and its life in the times of Charles the First, onward to those of William and Mary, than we can recover from Roman historians; and certainly its coaching history is in tatters and fragments, for those who made it did not live in the bright glow of publicity that surrounded the coachmen of roads north, south or west, and died unexploited by the sporting writers of the Coaching Age.

II

Nearly seventeen centuries have passed since, in the great Antonine Itinerary of the Roman Empire, the first guide-book to the roads was compiled, and almost eighty years since Cary and Paterson—the rival Bradshaws and A.B.C.'s of the Coaching Age—issued the last editions of their Travellers Companions, which now, instead of being constantly in the travellers' hands, are treasured on the shelves of collectors interested in relics of days before railways.

The Antonine Itinerary was compiled, A.D. 200-300. Among other roads of which it purports to give an account is the road to Venta Icenorum; the Norwich Road, as we should say. Its statement is brief and to the point, if requiring no little explanation after this lapse of time:—

A hundred and twenty-eight miles, that is to say, between Venta and London. The Romans, of course, calculated all their mileages in Britain from that hoary relic, the still existing "London Stone," which, from behind its modern iron grating in the wall of St Swithin's Church, still turns a battered face towards the heedless, hurrying crowds in Cannon Street, in the City of London.

In coaching days the Norwich Road, in common with most East Anglian routes, was measured from Whitechapel Church, and the distance from that landmark to Norwich given as 111½ miles. The apparent wide difference between those measurements of classic and modern times is very nearly reconciled when we add a mile for the distance between London Stone and Whitechapel Church to the 111½ miles, and when we reduce the Roman miles to English. An English mile measures 5280 feet, while a Roman mile runs only to 4842 feet, this fact accounting, along the road to Norwich, for some 13 miles of the discrepancy, and bringing the difference to the insignificant one of 3½ miles; or, assuming the Roman ruins at Caistor, 3 miles short of Norwich, to mark the site of Venta Icenorum, 6½ miles; no very wide margin of error.

The compiler of that ancient itinerary is unknown. He, or they (for a survey of the Roman Empire cannot have been made by one man), are quite hidden and lost to sight under the title of "Antonine," which was given in honour of the Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla, father and son, who both owned the name Antoninus. By similarly honorary titles we are accustomed to christen our public buildings. Thus, in coming ages, when such earthworms as engineers and architects are forgotten, the "Victoria" Embankment, "Victoria" Station, the "Victoria and Albert" Museum, and the thousand and one other things thus entitled will serve to hand a Sovereign down to futurity, while the names of those who created them, good or ill, will have perished, like the leaves of autumn. Customs change, and fashions cease to be, but snobbery is more enduring than brass or marble, and outlasts the mummies of the Pharaohs.

The compiler who drew up the list of places on the road between Londinium and Venta has chosen to reckon backwards. The "m. p." is the abbreviation for mille passus, or paced Roman miles; the figures after the first line giving the distance from the place last mentioned. Setting out from London, we find "Durolitum" to be identified with the Roman earthworks of Uphall, near Romford; "Cæsaromagus" to be identical with Writtle, near Chelmsford; "Canonium" to stand for Kelvedon; "Camulodunum" for Colchester; and "Ad Ansam" for Stratford St Mary; while "Combretonium" and "Sitomagus" still puzzle antiquaries, who are reduced to the extremity of suggesting the opposite alternatives of Brettenham or Burgh for the one, and Dunwich or Thetford for the other; names with a specious resemblance, and on circuitous routes east or west of the direct road which would more than account for the Roman surveyor's overplus of miles. The direct road, however, is unmistakably Roman, and those who will may seek for the elusive "Sitomagus" and "Combretonium" along it. Haply they may discover them at Scole, Dickleburgh or Long Stratton.

But along the whole length of the road, from London to Norwich, the wayfarer receives impressions of its true Roman character, whether in its appearance or in the place-names on the way. Old Ford and Stratford-at-Bow, where the Roman paved fords crossed the River Lea; that other "old ford" at Ilford, across the River Roding, which was already ancient when the Saxons came and so named it, "Eald Ford," leaving it for later times to corrupt the name into "Ilford" and for uninstructed historians to explain the meaning to have been that it was an "ill ford"; to which condition, indeed, many had descended in mediæval times: these are examples. Others are found at Ingatestone, the Saxon "Ing-atte-stone" = the "meadow at the stone," a Roman milestone that stood by the wayside; in the names of Stanway, Colchester, Stratford St Mary. Little Stonham, Tivetshall, and Long Stratton, places to be more particularly mentioned later in these pages.

It has been aptly pointed out by East Anglian antiquaries that the circuitous route eastward or westward of the straight road between Stratford St Mary and Norwich, on which Sitomagus and Combretonium may have been situated, may probably have been an early Roman way, constructed shortly after the conquest of the Iceni, along an old native trackway, and superseded in later and more settled times by the direct road, overlooked by the Antonine compilers who, working at Rome, the very centre of the Empire, may not have been fully informed of changes in countries like Britain, on the edge of the Unknown. This view, when we consider the long period stretching between the conquest of this part of the country and the final break up of the Romano-British civilisation, about A.D. 450, has much to recommend it. A period of some three hundred and eighty years of colonisation and development, equalling, for example, the great gulf of time between our own day and that of Henry the Eighth, the changes in its course must have rivalled, if not have surpassed, those in our roads between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. During those eras, between the first and the fifth centuries, many of the original winding tracks must have been straightened, or left to the secondary position of byways, while new and straight roads were engineered across country formerly, for one reason or another, avoided. Meanwhile, the Antonine Itinerary-makers must have relied for their surveys upon old and out-of-date information, just as, in our own time, we find many recent maps, printed from the Ordnance Survey of a hundred years ago, still indicating winding roads that have been non-existent for generations, and ignoring the direct highways made by Telford and others just before the opening of the Railway Era.

III

London made no remarkable growth between the Roman and mediæval periods, but this road had in that time slightly altered its course from its starting-point, and, instead of going from Cannon Street to Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Old Ford, left the City by way of Leadenhall Street and Aldgate, continuing down the Mile End and Bow Roads to Stratford.

The traveller of Chaucer's day, coming to Ald Gate, in the City wall, had reached the country. That gate spanned the road at a point marked nowadays by the house, No 2 Aldgate High Street, standing at the boundary of the parishes of St Katharine Cree and St Botolph. In 1374 Chaucer took from the Corporation of London a lease for the remainder of his life of the rooms in this gate, which was pulled down and succeeded by another, built in 1606, which in its turn disappeared in 1761.

From his windows commanding the road Chaucer must often have seen that dainty gentlewoman, the Prioress of St Leonard's, Stratford, riding to or from London, escorted by a numerous train, and from her must have drawn that portrait of the prioress who spoke French with a Cockney accent:—

"After the scole of Stratford-attè-Bowe,
For French of Parys was to hire unknowe."

In Chaucer's day they probably taught French, of sorts, at the Priory schools.

ALDGATE PUMP. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854.

At that time it was no little journey to Stratford, although by measurement less than four miles, and the lady went strongly escorted, as, indeed, did all of consequence, or those who had aught to lose. For the more common wayfarers who went alone on this desperate eastern trail there stood the Chapel and the Holy Well of St Michael the Archangel within the City, where the otherwise unprotected might seek the aid of the Saint's strong arm before leaving the walled City behind on their perilous faring. This chapel stood where Leadenhall Street, Fenchurch Street and Aldgate meet, on a site thrown into the roadway in 1876, when the street was widened. Until that year the crypt of this shrine had filled the prosaic functions of a cellar in the corner house, itself demolished, together with the beautiful Early English arches on which it stood. Adjoining was "Aldgate Pump," which had long before unromantically taken the place of the sanctified spring. That celebrated civic monument is seen in the accompanying illustration, taken in 1854. Many City wits have exercised their satirical powers upon it, and the expression long current of "a draft on Aldgate Pump," a once popular mercantile phrase for a bad note, goes back so far as the days of Fielding. Oddly enough, the water of the pump retained some repute until 1876, when, on being analysed, it was found impure, and the supply closed. The pump, however, is still in existence, rebuilt of its original stones, a few feet away from the old site, and yields water again; not, however, from the old saintly source, but from the strictly secular filter-beds of the New River Water Company.

YARD OF THE "BULL," LEADENHALL STREET. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854.

Having implored the protection of St Michael, travellers of old went, heartened, upon their way down what is now Whitechapel High Street, which Strype, writing in the time of James the First, calls a "spacious fair street," with "sweet and wholesome air." Past hedgerows of elm trees and rustic stiles and bridges, those old wayfarers went, and onward down the Whitechapel Road, where the country was a lovely solitude, with "nothing but the bounteous gifts of Nature and saint-like tokens of innocency," which, according to Sir Thomas More, in 1504, characterised the charming fields of Mile End, Shadwell, Stepney and Limehouse. This, it will be allowed, is scarcely descriptive of those places to-day, whatever they may become when the People's Palace and the University Settlements have done their work.

Thus far for sake of contrast. Let us return to Aldgate for a while, and, without following its fortunes throughout the centuries, glance at it in the Coaching Age, before the squalor of modern Whitechapel had invaded it from the east, or the extension of City business had come to destroy most of that picturesque assemblage of old inns and mediæval gabled houses, to replace them with the giant warehouses and "imposing" offices of modern London.

IV

Although, as we have seen, the East Anglian roads were, in coaching days, measured from Whitechapel Church, the great actual starting-place was Aldgate, where many of the old inns were situated, as, in like manner, the ancient hostelries of the Borough clustered at the beginning of the road to Canterbury and Dover. Aldgate occupies a position midway between London Stone, the Roman starting-point in Cannon Street, and Whitechapel Church, and to and from this spot came and went the stage-coaches, post-chaises and waggons in the palmy days of the road. The mail-coaches, of course, had a starting-point of their own, and set out from the old General Post-Office in Lombard Street, or, in the last years of coaching, from St Martin's-le-Grand.

FRONT OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD," ALDGATE: PRESENT DAY.

It is true that one might have taken coach from many other and more central inns for Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich:—from the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, a fine old galleried inn demolished at the close of 1865; from the "Cross Keys," in the same street; from the "Swan with Two Necks," in Lad Lane, anciently Lady Lane (that is to say, the Lane of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin), now Gresham Street; or from the "Bull," 151 Leadenhall Street, which must by no means be confounded with its namesake in Aldgate High Street. Exactly what that Leadenhall Street hostelry was like let the picture of its old galleried courtyard show.

There was also "another way" to Norwich; out of Bishopsgate, by way of Newmarket, Bury and Thetford. Taking this route, which, although 2½ miles shorter, no true sportsman considered to be the real Norwich Road, one started from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross; from the "White Horse," in Fetter Lane (improved away in 1898); from the "Flower Pot," in Bishopsgate Street; from yet another "Bull," also in Bishopsgate Street; or from the "Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand. But when all these places have been duly set forth, it is to Aldgate that we must turn as the real starting-point.

YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD" IN COACHING DAYS. From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854.

Aldgate in the days before railways was quite unlike the Aldgate of to-day. Certain of the old buildings remain, but the "note" of the place is entirely altered. It is now a noisy, distracting ante-room to the City, in which tinkling tram-cars and costermongers' barrows jostle with elephantine railway goods vans; where the Jewish second-hand clothes shop rubs a greasy shoulder with the "merchant tailor's" vulgar show of electric light, plate glass and wax models; and where the East End, in the person of the aproned, ringleted and ostrich-feathered factory girl, meets the West, in the shape of some City clerk strayed beyond his mercantile or financial frontiers, each regarding the other as a curiosity in these social marches. It is as the meeting of salt water and fresh, this mingling of the tides of City and East End, and to the observant not a little curious. Nothing like it—nothing so marked—is to be seen on any other of the borders of the City. There is, too, a smack of the sea, a certain air of romance, in the street, coming, perhaps, from the windows of the nautical instrument-makers, where the binoculars, the quadrants, the sextants and the sea-faring tackle in general hint of distant climes and the coral reefs of South Pacific isles.

These mariners' emporia were here and in the Minories before railways came, and so also were many fine old inns. For Aldgate, difficult though it may be to realise it to-day, was not only the place whence many of the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches set out, but was also the resting-place of travellers to London; and its inns were quite as well-appointed as those of the more central ones in the City, or those of Charing Cross, or the West End. As travellers by rail to London in modern times resort to the railway hotels, so did our great-grandfathers find rest at the coaching inns at whose thresholds they were set down at their journey's end.

YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD": PRESENT DAY.

The fragments merely of the last of Aldgate's old hostelries remain, in the bold front of Nos. 6 and 7, forming two-thirds of the old frontage of the "Saracen's Head." No. 5, the other third, has been destroyed, and so also has the old appearance of the galleried courtyard, still named "Saracen's Head Yard," but now surrounded by warehouses. The old coach archway remains, and the gables at the back of the buildings are quaint reminiscences of other times. Coaches plied between the "Saracen's Head" and Norwich so far back as 1681, and Strype, the antiquary, born in the neighbourhood, in a court whose name now flaunts the horrid travesty of "Tripe Court," referring to the inn, speaks of it as "very large and of a considerable trade." The existing fragment, with its handsome architectural elevation of richly-moulded plaster in the Renaissance style of the late seventeenth century, is part of the building mentioned by him. Small shops now occupy the ground floor, and the upper rooms are let as tenements.

But the "Bull" was perhaps the most famous of these old inns. From it Mr Pickwick set out for Ipswich, and from Sam Weller's remark on that occasion, "Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," as the coach started, it is evident that the "Bull" possessed a courtyard. At that palmy time of inns and coaches, the opening of the nineteenth century, the "Bull" was, and long had been, in the Nelson family, a noted race of inn and coach proprietors. At that particular time Mrs Ann Nelson, widow of the late host, who died about 1812, was the presiding genius. Associated with her was her son John. Another son, Robert, had a business of his own, and was long proprietor of the "Belle Sauvage," on Ludgate Hill, and partner with others in many coaches. A third son, George, drove the Exeter "Defiance," horsed by his mother out of London.

But to return to the "Bull" and Mrs Nelson, who had, as her husband had, and his father before him, some sort of interest in many coaches running into Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, on main or bye-roads. She also at one time leased the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, and extended her energies so far as to horse the Exeter "Telegraph" and the "Quicksilver" Devonport Mail out of London, together with the Exeter "Defiance" night coach, the Manchester "Telegraph," the Oxford "Defiance," Brighton "Red Rover," and the Leeds "Courier." In their coaching speculations the Nelson family were associated with a pastrycook whose little shop adjoined the gateway of the "Bull." Occasionally a new hand on one of the coaches would send his leaders' noses through the shop front, for that gateway was very narrow and Mrs Nelson's coachmen anything but deliberate. On the other side of the gateway was a whip-maker's shop, kept by one James Johnson, who throve mightily on the custom of the coachmen and others who frequented the "Bull."

This most energetic of landladies and Napoleonic of coach proprietors developed and managed her extensive coaching interests long before her husband died. He, good, easy-going man, had been a fair whip in earlier days, but had long left the box, and had no head for business, although a very fine taste in wines and spirits: the lack of the first probably a corollary of the second. She spared neither herself nor her servants. Rising considerably before the lark, she saw the owls to bed, and was a martinet to her coachmen. Left a widow while in the prime of life, she still wore in old age the dress of her youth. The sketch of her in the picture of the "Bull" yard in coaching days shows exactly what her costume was like. A short skirt revealed high-heeled shoes with large buckles, the heels painted red. Black velvet was her winter wear, and fancy apron, lace neckerchief and frilled cap invariable items. Up to her seventieth year she was the last up at night, scouring the house to see that all was safe; and the first up in the morning, looking after the stable people and seeing that the horses had their feeds and were properly cared for. Inside and outside the house, and down the eastern roads, her influence was despotic and would brook no defiance. Her "Ipswich Blues" had long been famous when an opposition coach was started. Opposition could not be allowed to live, and so the fares were reduced from eight shillings inside and sixteen shillings out, by regular stages until the point was reached when passengers were not only carried for nothing, but were presented with an excellent dinner at Witham. At that point the rivals discreetly retired, when fares rose again to their old level.

ALDGATE, 1820.

Mrs Nelson insisted on the most rigid punctuality. Did the coachman of one of her crack coaches or one of her still more famous "Oppositions" bring his team down her yard five minutes over time, he was reprimanded; ten minutes, and he was fined half-a-crown; a quarter of an hour, and he stood a good chance of being dismissed. She ran a Southend "Opposition" every afternoon by Romford, Brentwood, Billericay, Wickford, Raleigh and Rochford, along Essex roads of a feather-bed softness of mud; but time must be kept. She provided good horses and would not hear of excuses. One day, when the roads were particularly heavy, the "Opposition" came in half an hour late from Southend. The coachman, after the manner of his kind, on driving into the yard and pulling up at the coffee-room door, threw his whip across the wheelers' backs. Mrs Nelson had long been watching the clock, and, coming out, took the whip and hung it up, with the quiet remark, "That whip is no longer yours, Philpot—half an hour behind."

"But the roads are so bad, ma'am," remonstrated poor Toby. "I'm sure, ma'am, the gentlemen knew I did my best; but I felt bound to spare the cattle."

"I find the cattle and employ you to drive them," replied the inexorable landlady; "you have nothing to do but to keep time. Draw your wages and leave the yard."

Under this iron rule it is no wonder that her coachmen were sometimes "pulled up" for furious driving. On one of these occasions she appeared in court in defence of her man. "I understand, Mrs Nelson," blandly remarked the Chairman of the Bench, "that you give your coachmen instructions to race the rival coach."

"Not exactly," replied the lady; "my orders to them are simply that they are to get the road and keep it."

But if a very dragon of strictness, she treated coachmen and guards very well. They had their especial room, and dined as well there, at reduced prices, as any of her coffee-room customers. This especial consideration reflected itself in those functionaries, who jealously preserved the privacy of their room; the amateur coachman who secured the invitation to join them (and to pay out of his own pocket for their wine and spirits) feeling himself greatly honoured.

In other respects, the "Bull" was a model to other houses. No damp sheets in any one of its hundred and fifty beds, no drunken brawlers; nothing a minute out of time, or an inch out of place. Mrs Nelson's fine house was, indeed, nothing less than an institution. In later years her son John took more of the management upon his shoulders, and the business seemed likely to long outlast his time.

V

But a whisper of coming changes disturbed the air as early as 1830. Coachmen and travellers talked in the stableyard and the cosy rooms of the "Bull" of men with strange instruments encountered along the road; "chaps with telescopes on three sticks, and other chaps with chains and things, measuring the fields." It was thus that they described the surveyors, with their theodolites and their staff of men, who were setting out the proposed route of the projected Eastern Counties Railway that was to run all the way from London to Colchester, Norwich and Yarmouth.

John Nelson was too confident in the existing order of things to believe that a few pounds of coal and some boiling water would ever be a match for his horses, or that a time would presently come when those passengers of his who now derided the railways would desert the coaches. The "Bull" had been in his family for more than a hundred and twelve years, as an inn and a coaching house, and he could as soon have imagined the end of the world as a day coming when the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches should no longer enter or leave his yard. It was a good joke for a while, when the coaches came in, to ask "How they were getting on with that railway?" but when the surveys were completed and the prospectus of the "Grand Eastern Counties Railway" was issued in 1834, it was seen that the railway men meant business. The original proposal of the directors was to follow the road closely and to bring the line into Aldgate. When it was seen that the railway was really to be made, Nelson raised an opposition against the Aldgate terminus, and was successful in driving the Company into an out-of-the-way site in Shoreditch, where for many years that terminus remained.

THE YARD OF THE "BULL," WHITECHAPEL, IN COACHING DAYS.

The Eastern Counties Railway was opened as far as Chelmsford in 1839, to Colchester in 1842, and communication to Norwich was opened up in 1845. From the day of the first opening, the "Bull" declined. Old customers still found their way from the slums of Shoreditch to its hospitable door, but were not reinforced by the newer generation of travellers, to whom the road and its end in Aldgate were alike unknown. They went to the City inns, and later to the more central hotels, leaving the "Bull" to slowly sink into neglect. John Nelson made a big bid for success in another line, and ran the "Wellington" omnibuses with success from 1855 until his death, at the age of seventy-four, in June 1868. He had long resided in the West End, and was a man of ample fortune, so that the end of the "Bull's" coaching career hurt him only in sentiment. His mother, that most autocratic and business-like of women, had died ten years before, active almost to the last, although she had reached the age of eighty-five years. Towards the close of 1868 the old inn ended its long career. Its substantial, old-fashioned silver-plate and massive furniture were sold by auction, with the stock of rare old wines, laid in many years before, for that old generation of travellers who delighted in port and sherry, and plenty of both.

The very site of the "Bull" is now sought with pains and labour, and only to be discovered with difficulty by the present generation. It was numbered 25 Aldgate High Street, and stood where Aldgate Avenue, a modern alley rich in offices of "commission agents," and curious things of that kind, now cuts its way through where the old yard used to be.

Close by the "Bull" was another old coaching inn, the "Blue Boar," now quite vanished, kept for a time by John Thorogood. The Thorogoods were in those days, and in these times of amateur coaching are still, a family of coachmen. "Old John," who owned the "Norwich Times," and actually drove it for two years without missing a journey the whole of that time, clearly deserved his patronymic, in thus handling the reins along a hundred and twelve miles of road for seven hundred and thirty consecutive days.

It was to the "Blue Boar" that little David Copperfield came, on his miserable journey from Yarmouth:—"We approached London by degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn, in the Whitechapel district, I forget whether it was the 'Blue Bull' or the 'Blue Boar,' but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted upon the back of the coach." The sculptured effigy of a boar, with gilded tusks and hoofs, built into the wall of a tobacco factory, marks the site of the inn.

Among other noted inns, the "Three Nuns" must be named. From it set out the short stages to Ilford, Epping, Romford and Woodford, together with coaches for several of the Essex by-roads. The house owes its name to the Minoresses, or nuns, of St Clare, from whose religious establishment the Minories obtains its title. The inn was rebuilt in 1877, and is now nothing more than a huge public-house.

Many other inns of consequence in their day have left nothing but their yards behind them to show where they stood:—George Yard, Spread Eagle Yard, Black Horse Yard, Boar's Head Yard, White Swan Yard, Half Moon Passage, and Kent and Essex Yard are such relics, bordering High Street, Whitechapel, where one curious sign survives, that of an inn called the "Horse and Leaping Bar."

VI

One decided advantage the Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich route to Norwich possessed in old times over that by way of Newmarket and Thetford. Neither could have been considered safe in the bad old days, but while the traveller across the wild heaths of Newmarket and Thetford was almost certain to be "held up" on his lonely course, the other way, through Essex, passed by few such wildernesses, and had more towns and villages along its course, to give a sense of security. Briefly, robbery on one route was a probability, and on the other was regarded as certain. Margaret Paston, writing from Norfolk to her husband in London, so long ago as the fifteenth century, certainly gives even the way through Essex a bad name, for she asks him to pay a debt for one of their friends, because it was not safe, "on account of the robbers," to send money up from the country; but at the very same time the Thetford route had a much more sinister reputation, and travellers versed in the gossip of the road avoided it if possible, or went in company and well armed, for in that era a certain William Cratfield, Rector of Wrotham, "a common and notorious thief and lurker on the roads, and murderer and slayer," lurked and robbed and slew on Newmarket Heath, in company with a certain "Thomas Tapyrtone, hosyer." He was at last laid by the heels, in 1416, and charged with robbing a Londoner of £12. This distinguished ornament of the Church died in Newgate, but of the villainous hosier we hear no more. Perhaps he had realised a fortune in the business and retired to enjoy the fruits of his industry. With the disappearance of this worthy couple, travellers breathed more freely, but for surety's sake continued to patronise the Essex route, and so by way of Ipswich to come to the City of Orchards, as Norwich was called of old.

As time went on, a certain degree of security was found in the coaches that began to make an appearance with the second half of the seventeenth century. They travelled at first no more quickly than a man could walk, but they provided company, which was, under the circumstances, highly desirable. Soon, however, they found it possible to do the journey in two days. Strype, we have already seen mentions the "Saracen's Head" in Aldgate as the centre of a considerable trade, and to it in 1681 a Norwich coach was running; an innovation which aroused the indignation of innkeepers on the way to almost as great a height as that of their descendants when, two hundred and forty years later, railways were depopulating the roads. When travellers began to go by coach instead of on horseback, and to reach London or Norwich in two days instead of three or four, those antique tapsters thought they saw their living going, and, strange to say, there were not wanting men who raised their voices against the innovation of being carried on a journey, instead of riding; although, for the most part, their outcry was the result only of innate conservatism.

"Travelling in these coaches," said an anonymous pamphleteer, "can neither prove advantageous to men's health or business. For what advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into these coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night; insomuch that after sitting all day in the summer time stifled with heat, and choked with the dust, or the winter time starving and freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men's health or business? to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, ancient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are poisoned with their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of the boxes and bundles."

Yet "these coaches" (one can almost hear the intonation of contempt in that phrase) were from the first a success. The greater that success the louder for a time was the outcry against them. Taylor, the Water Poet, was one of those who wrote vehemently against the new methods of travel. To him a coach was "a close hypocrite; for it hath a cover for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness. Besides, like a perpetual cheater, it wears two bootes, and no spurs, sometimes having two pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature) it makes faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kind of carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered."

The boot of which he speaks so contemptuously, was a method of packing the "outsides," of which we still find a survival in the Irish jaunting-car. There are those who trace the origin of the term from the French "boîte," a box. Even now the coachman's seat is "the box," and the modern fore-boot is under it.

Writers of that time seem almost unanimously to have taken sides against coaching; with, however, no effect; for, somewhat later than Taylor, that doughty Conservative, John Cresset, is found exclaiming furiously against the multitude of them. He favoured the suppression of all, or, at least—counsels of moderation prevailing—of most. They were, he said, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade and prejudicial to the land. Not only did they injure the breed of horses, but also that of watermen; which last objection goes further than the complaints of Taylor himself, who, writing at the same time, does not speak of his breed being debased, but only of his trade being crippled. Cresset thought the stage-coaches tempted the country gentry to London too often, and he accordingly proposed that these conveyances should be limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and forwards once a week.

Vain hope! Coaches of sorts must already have appeared on the road to Norwich by the middle of the seventeenth century, for in a proclamation of July 20th in the plague year, 1665, when all places were dreading infected London, it is ordained, that "from this daie all ye passage coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London and come from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons." Already, in 1696, the "Confatharrat" coach was a well-known conveyance between London and Norwich, and the name of Suggate, the London and East Anglian carrier, a household word. Unhappily, nothing can be gathered as to when Suggate first began to jog along the road, or when the "Confatharrat" started to ply between Norwich and the "Four Swans," Bishopsgate Street. All particulars are lost. The odd name of that coach was probably a seventeenth-century way of spelling the word "confederate," and the selection of such a name proves both that it was carried on by an alliance or co-partnership, and that "confederate" had not then acquired its sinister modern connotation. Besides these aids to travel, a stage-waggon began to ply from the "Popinjay," Tombland, Norwich, at an early date; and another from the "Angel," in the Market Place, to the "Blossoms" Inn, Laurence Lane, London, was advertised in the Norwich Mercury, of March 29th, 1729, to "now go regularly every Thursday night," setting out on the following Wednesday from London, on the return journey. It will thus be seen that it was a five or six days' journey for those primitive affairs, and that they apparently did not run at regular intervals until that year.

A London and Beccles coach was running in 1707, but the first regular Norwich coach of which particulars remain was the "Norwich Machine," which in 1762 set out for London three times a week from the "Maid's Head," according to the advertisement still extant. There is nothing in that old coaching bill to show that 1762 was the first season of the "Norwich Machine." It may have been established some years before that date.

Norwich, March 26, 1762.

SUSAN NASMITH and JAMES KEITH,
Proprietors of the
NORWICH MACHINE,
Give Notice

that their Machine will set out from the Maid's Head Inn, in St Simon's Parish, in Norwich, on Monday, the 5th day of April next, at half-past eleven in the forenoon, and on the Wednesday and Friday in the same week, at the same time; and to be continued in like Manner, on those Days weekly, for the carrying four inside Passengers, at Twenty-five Shillings each, and outside at Twelve Shillings and Sixpence each. The inside Passengers to be allowed twenty pound Weight, and all above to be paid for at three half-pence per pound; and to be in London on the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday Evenings weekly.

N.B.—A Machine will set out on the same days, at the same time, from the Green Dragon, in Bishopsgate Street, London, for Norwich.

In the following year, the "Widow Nasmith" and James Keith advertised that they had built large and commodious machines, to carry six inside, and reduced the fares to twenty shillings and ten shillings respectively; but they had apparently not succeeded in performing the journey in less time than a day and a half, for no mention is made of speed being accelerated. But a remarkable feature in that announcement is the extraordinary cheapness of the fares, little over twopence and a penny a mile for inside and outside passengers, at a time when prices on other roads ruled from twenty-five to fifty per cent. higher. This tells a tale of competition; but Time, the thief, has robbed us of all knowledge of those competitors.

A year later the London and Ipswich Post Coaches were advertised to set out every week-day, and to perform the 69¼ miles in ten hours, an average pace of almost 7 miles an hour; a marvellous turn of speed for that age. As to whether those Post Coaches ever did cover that distance in ten hours, we may reasonably express a doubt; but there was the promise, and 011 the strength of it the proprietors charged threepence a mile. As will be seen by the advertisement, these coaches carried no outside passengers:—

Ipswich, August 17th, 1764.

THE LONDON AND IPSWICH POST COACHES

Set out on Monday, the 27th of August, at seven o'clock in the morning from the Black Bull, in Bishopsgate, London, and at the same time from the Great White Horse, in Ipswich, and continue every day (Sunday excepted), to be at the above places the same evening at five o'clock; each passenger to pay threepence per mile, and to be allowed eighteen pounds luggage; all above to pay one penny per pound, and so in proportion. The coaches, hung upon steel springs, are very easy, large and commodious, carry six inside but no outside passengers whatever; but have great conveniences for parcels or game (to keep them from the weather), which will be delivered at London and Ipswich the same night.

As these coaches are sent out for the ease and expedition of gentlemen and ladies travelling, the proprietors humbly hope for their encouragement, and are determined to spare no pains to render it as agreeable as they can.

Performed (if God permits) by—

Pet. Sheldon, at the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, London.
Thomas Archer, at the White Hart, Brentwood.
Charles Kerry, at the Black Boy, Chelmsford.
Geo. Reynolds, at the Three Cups, Colchester; and
Chas. Harris, at the Great White Horse, Ipswich.

N.B.—The proprietors will not be answerable for any money, plate, jewels, or writings, unless entered and paid for as such.

The reader will perhaps have observed that this advertisement especially mentions a convenience for carrying game, and, as a matter of fact, game and oysters were prominent from an early period in the history of Norwich Road conveyances, and, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Norfolk and Suffolk coaches had already earned quite a distinctive character in two seasons of the year, Michaelmas and Christmas. East Anglia has always abounded in game, and its broad heaths and extensive commons have been the breeding-grounds of innumerable geese and turkeys whose careers have ended on London dinner-tables. In those two seasons it was often difficult to secure a seat on or in any of the "up" coaches from Norwich or Ipswich, for while every available inch of space on the mails was occupied by festoons of dead birds consigned by country cousins to friends in town, the whole of a stage-coach was frequently chartered for the purpose of despatching heavy consignments of these noble poultry to the London market. Christmas provided extraordinary sights along the Norfolk Road, in the swaying coaches, with parcels and geese and turkeys mountains high on the roof; with barrels of Colchester natives in the boot, and hampers swinging heavily between the axle-trees on a shelf called "the cellar"; while from every rail or projection to which they could be either safely or hazardously tied depended other turkeys or braces of fowls, booked at the last moment before starting. It was something in those days to be a turkey or a goose, before whose importance the claims of human passengers faded; but it was a fleeting elevation which the philosophic did not envy, thinking that here indeed the poet was justified in his sounding line—

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

THE NORWICH COACH AT CHRISTMAS TIDE. After Robert Seymour, 1835.

That unfortunate genius, Robert Seymour, has left us a picture of the Norwich coach nearing London at Christmas time, with its feathered load. The drawing was made in 1835, at the very height of the Coaching Age, and shows from his own observation with what ingenuity every rail and projection was used to hang the birds from.

Another highly specialised branch of traffic, which only left the road on the opening of the railway, was the constant service of fish waggons running between Harwich, Colchester and London, at the then express speed of 8 miles an hour.

VII

Between the early days of coaching and the end of that period, many changes took place on the Norwich Road. So late as 1798, the Mail, the "Expedition," and the "Post Coach" were the only coaches to Norwich, supplemented by three road waggons; two of them doing the journey twice a week, the third setting out weekly. Later came the "Norwich Times," "Gurney's Original Day Coach," the "Phænomenon," as it was originally spelt; the "Magnet," the Ipswich "Shannon," and the Ipswich "Blue." With the object of serving as many places as possible, and, incidentally, securing heavier bookings, the "Times" and Gurney's coaches took a somewhat circuitous route, leaving the direct road at Chelmsford, and going through Braintree, Halstead, Sudbury, Long Melford and Bury St Edmunds, rejoining the Norwich Road at Scole.

But the lord of the road was the Mail Coach, beside which the stages were very commonplace affairs.

The first mail-coach that ever ran the road between London and Norwich started in March 1785, and the service was from the beginning continued daily. Before that time the mails had been carried by post-boys, who began in 1741 to go six days a week instead of three, as they formerly had done.

Mail-coaches are entirely things of the past, for the modern coaching revival has only brought back the smart stages and drags of the last years of the Coaching Age. The mails were expensive and exclusive affairs, constructed to carry only nine persons; four inside and five out, including coachman and guard. For the higher fares passengers paid they had not always the satisfaction of travelling faster than on the stages; but perhaps there was some dignity attaching to a seat on the mail which was lacking on ordinary coaches. And certainly they were surrounded by pomp and circumstance. The guard wore a scarlet coat and went armed with pistol, sword and blunderbuss; not, of course, for the protection of the passengers, but for the safe-guarding of His Majesty's mails. And everything gave place, as a matter of right and not merely courtesy, to the mail. Surly pikemen swung open their gates and asked no toll, for it was one of the privileges of the mail to go toll-free, and the highwaymen, if they walked in the ways of caution, left the gorgeous conveyance severely alone, reserving their best attentions for the plebeian stages. It was a much more serious thing to rob the mail than an ordinary coach, for a conviction was more certain to end in death, judges having hints from the Government how undesirable it was that mails should be ransacked and the robbers live. The rewards usually offered by the Post-office, too, were tempting to those who could inform if they would. £200 was the sum generally to be had for this service, together with the £40 reward by Act of Parliament for the apprehension of a highwayman; and if the mail was robbed within five miles of London, another £100. Courage, recklessness, and desperation—whichever we like to call it—often nerved the night-hawks to brave even so heavy a handicap as this, as this very road bears witness, in the daring robbery of the Ipswich Mail in 1822, when notes to the value of no less than £31,198 were stolen. In addition to the usual rewards, a sum of £1000 was offered by the losing firms of bankers, as shown in the accompanying old handbill, but without avail. This sum was afterwards increased to £5000, and a notification given that, in order to prevent the notes being changed, the ink on all new ones had been altered from black to red. But the robbers had the impudence to ask £6000 for the return of the notes. They had already passed £3000 worth, and naively said, in the negotiations they opened up, that the trouble they had taken and the risks they had run did not make it worth while to accept a smaller "reward." The bankers, however, would not spring another thousand, for by that time everyone was too shy of an "Ipswich black note," and it was extremely unlikely that any more could be passed. Negotiations were broken off; but a month later notes to the value of £28,000 were returned. The thieves were never traced, and although the bulk of their booty was useless to them, made the very substantial haul of over £3000 by their lawless enterprise.

£1000 Reward.

STOLEN

FROM THE IPSWICH MAIL

On its way from London, on the Night
of the 11th Sept. Inst. the following

COUNTRY BANK NOTES:

Ipswich Bank, 5, & 10l. Notes.

ALEXANDERS & Co. on HOARE & Co.

Woodbridge Bank, 1, 5, & 10l. Notes.

ALEXANDERS & Co. on FRYS & Co.

Manningtree Bank, 1, 5, & 10l. Notes.
ALEXANDER & Co. on FRYS & Co.

Hadleigh Bank, 1, 5, & 10l. Notes.
ALEXANDER & Co. on FRYS & Co.

Particulars of which will be furnished at the different Bankers.

Whoever will give Information, either at ALEXANDERS and Co.
or at FRYS and Co., St Mildred's Court, Poultry, so that the
Parties may be apprehended, shall on his or their Conviction,
and the Recovery of the Property, receive the above REWARD.

We have said that mail-coaches were gorgeous. They were painted in black and red. Not a shy, unassuming red, but the familiar and traditional Post-office hue. Also they bore the Royal coat-of-arms emblazoned upon the door panels, and the insignia of the four principal orders of knighthood on the quarters. There was no mistaking a mail-coach.

The Norwich Mail, which took fifteen and a half hours to do the journey so late as 1821, was greatly improved in later years; and finally, in the early forties, when the railway reached Norwich and superseded the roads, performed the journey in eleven hours, thirty-eight minutes, at the very respectable average speed of 9½ miles an hour. It was not the only mail on the road, but shared the way so far as Ipswich with the Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail. This coach was unfortunate on two occasions between 1835 and 1839. On September 28th in the first year, when the coachman was climbing on to his box in the yard of the "Swan with Two Necks," the horses started away on their own accord, tumbling the coachman off and knocking down the helper who had been holding their heads. Dashing into Cheapside, they flung themselves against the back of the Poole Mail with such force that the coachman of that mail was also thrown off. He was taken unconscious to the hospital. Continuing their furious rush, the horses of the Ipswich Mail at length ran the pole of the coach between the iron railings of a house, and so were stopped.

The second happening, in 1839, was somewhat similar. The mail had arrived at Colchester, and the coachman, throwing down the reins, got off the box. No one was at the horses' heads, and they started away and galloped down the High Street, until the near leader fell and broke his neck, stopping the team.

It was by the Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail that David Copperfield journeyed down to Yarmouth on his second visit to Mr Peggotty. In the ordinary course of things, he would have reached Ipswich at 3·12 a.m. But on this occasion the weather was a potent factor in causing delay. He occupied the box seat, and remarked upon the look of the sky to the coachman while yet on the first stage out of London.

"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" he asked; "I don't remember to have seen one like it."

"Nor I—not equal to it," said the coachman. "That's mist, sir. There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long."

The description of this stormy sky is very fine, and seems to have been drawn from observation; just as true and as effective in its way as Old Crome's billowy cloudscapes, in his Mousehold Heath, or as any of Constable's rain-surcharged Suffolk scenes.

"It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew hard.

"But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee-walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.... We came to Ipswich very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church tower and flung into a bye-street, which they then blocked up."

At Ipswich the Yarmouth coaches left the Norwich Road, and so the further adventures of David Copperfield do not in this place concern us.

VIII

Here, as on the other roads, the early advent of the Motor Car, in 1826, caused much commotion. The steam coaches of that period never achieved any success on this route, but caricatures of what might be expected were plentiful, and pictures of the Colchester "Dreadful Vengeance," the Norwich "Buster," and other fanciful conveyances, in the act of exploding and distributing their passengers in little pieces over a wide stretch of country, were popular. The railway itself came in for much abuse, and misguided and fanatical coach proprietors wasted their substance in pitiful attempts to compete with it. Among these was Israel Alexander, that Jewish hero of the Brighton Road in the early forties, who, although a first-class whip, was perhaps chiefly associated with the many upsettings of the Brighton "Quicksilver." He fell out with his noble friends on that highway, and, coming to the Norwich Road, ran a well-appointed coach to Colchester for a little while, until even the Eastern Counties Railway, then the slowest on earth, made the pace too quick for him. His turn-out was given the extraordinary name of the "Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," and might have continued much longer to carry those who were prejudiced against railways, had it not met with so many accidents.

One who was contemporary with the coaching age has ingeniously divided coaching accidents into three classes:—1. Accidents to the coach; 2. Accidents to the horses; 3. Accidents to the harness. The most common kind of mishap to the coach was, he says, the breaking of an axle. This was not, as a rule, due to any faulty construction of that most essential feature of a public conveyance, but to the overloading either of passengers or goods, to which coaches were continually subject. The sudden snapping of an axle at a high speed or on a down grade produced a tremendous crash which generally shot coachman, guard and "outsides" in all directions. Happy those who, in such a case, were received into the thorny arms of a quickset hedge or the soft embraces of a mud-heap.

Another kind of mishap, not always accidental, was that of a wheel coming off; an incident often caused in early times, before the introduction of patent axle-boxes, by the mischievous removal of the lynch-pin by some unscrupulous rascal in the employ of the rival coach proprietor.

The sudden snapping of a skid-chain while descending a hill, resulting in the coach running on to the horses and a general overthrow, in which horses' legs and passengers heads came into unwonted contact, was perhaps as uncomfortable a kind of disaster as could be imagined. Overloading, too, sometimes had the effect of rendering a coach top-heavy, when a slight lack of caution in running round curves would upset it.

Accidents to the horses were:—casting a shoe, involving lameness, and perhaps a fall; tripping and stumbling on loose stones and rolling over; slipping up in frosty weather; and kicking over the traces or the splinter-bar.

Accidents to the harness usually happened to the traces, which commonly snapped under an uneven strain. To cobble them up with twine, and so complete a stage, was a common practice. In such cases, the thoughts of passengers during the remaining miles were, like those of the poet, "too deep for words." Most nerve-shaking of all these varied and untoward happenings, however, was the breaking of the reins. Rotted by age, by the sun's heat and the winter's frosts, they would "come away" in the coachman's hands at that worst of moments;—when he was holding in his horses downhill. In that contingency, says our ancient, who, in the modern slang phrase, has "been there," it was the approved thing to say your prayers first and then take a flying leap (result, a broken neck, or fractured leg: the bone protruding over the top of the Blucher).

"Then shrieked the timid and stood"—or, rather, sat—"still the brave;" who had this consolation, that if they fared no better than those who jumped, the odds were that they fared no worse.

To be dragged at hurricane pace by four runaway horses (for in such a case they generally did so run) with the broken reins trailing helplessly after them, was to acquire the knowledge of an inner meaning in the word "terror." In escapades of this kind the "insides" were in the most unenviable situation; for the "outsides," including coachman and guard, took the better, if unheroic, part of crawling over the roof and slipping down the back of the coach into the road. The wisdom of their doing so would, in most cases, be proved a few seconds later by the sound of a distant crash as the coach hurtled against some roadside tree and dissolved into matchwork, while the "insides" were stuck as full of splinters as a "fretful porcupine" of quills.

The "human boy" was as much the terror of the old coachman as he is of the modern cyclist. The sight of a boy with a hoop reduced him to a state of purple indignation or of quivering anxiety, according to temperament. Many an one of our great-grandfathers, attired in the odd costume of boys in that period, and trundling a hoop along the road, has felt the lash of the coachman's whip. The following little story will show us why.

"When a very little boy," says one of our forebears, "I once upset a four-horse coach by losing control over my hoop, which, to my consternation, bowled among the legs of the team. I shall never forget the horror with which I for an instant saw the spirited horses floundering about with that hateful hoop among them, or heard the execrations of the coachman and the shouts of the passengers. Abandoning the wretched plaything to its fate, I took to my heels down a bye-lane, the portentous crash that followed only accelerating my speed."

Coach proprietors were favourite targets for Fate's worst shafts. They were a hard-working, much-enduring class of men; up early and to bed late, retiring in good circumstances and rising perhaps ruined through some unforeseen accident. They were "common carriers" in law, and bound under many Acts of Parliament to deliver goods uninjured at their destination. As carriers of passengers, it is true, they were only required to exercise all "due care and diligence" for the safety of their customers, and were exempt from liability in case of mishaps through the "act of God" or the unforeseen; but the observance of due precautions and a daily inspection of the coach had to be proved in case of injury to passengers, or in default they were held liable for damages.

Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many servants might mean a very serious thing to a coach proprietor. In those days the old Anglo-Saxon Law of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching had practically rescued it from neglect. It was a law which, in cases of fatal injuries, empowered the coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary from sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that caused the mischief.

The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom the personally unoffending coach proprietor was liable to be haled was in itself terrifying. There was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the jury on the criminal side in trials at the Assizes for manslaughter, and the other "twelve good men and true" who assessed damages in the Sheriff's Court.

How even the most well-meaning of men might thus suffer is evident in the case of a proprietor who was cast in damages from excess of caution. For additional security, and in order to protect it from road grit, he had a part of an axle incased in wood. One day this axle broke and a serious accident happened, resulting in an action against him for damages. He lost the day; the judge ruling that, although no proof of a defective axle was adduced, a flaw might have existed which a proper daily examination would have detected had the extra precaution for safety not been adopted.

IX

What Aldgate might now have been had the original intention of the Eastern Counties directorate to place their terminus there been successful, we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal has already been said on the subject of coaches and coaching, it will be of interest to learn what were the views of the projectors of the Eastern Counties Railway. With their original prospectus was issued a map of the proposed railway from London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it appears that, instead of going to the left of the road from London, as far as Seven Kings and Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to construct the line on the right of the road so far. Between Romford and Chelmsford the line has been made practically as first proposed, but onwards, from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on the other side of the highway; and, north of Colchester, goes wide of the original plan all the way to Norwich.

In many ways this document is very much of a curiosity at this time, as also are the hopes and aspirations of the directors at the first General Meeting of the company. The chairman, for instance, confidently anticipated dividends of 22 per cent., upon which one of the confiding shareholders replied that the report was most satisfactory and the prospects held out by no means overcharged. "If this understanding," said he, "fails in producing the dividend of 22 per cent., calculated upon in the report, then, I must say, human calculations and expectation can no longer be depended upon." O! most excellent man. But better is to come.

"Should I live to see the completion of this and similar undertakings," he resumed, "I do believe I shall live to see misery almost banished from the earth. From the love I bear my species, I trust that I may not be too sanguine, and that I may yet witness the happy end that I have pictured to myself." His was, you think, the faith that might have moved mountains; but it did not produce that promised 22 per cent., nor, although we now have many thousands more miles of railway than he ever dreamed of, has the millennium yet arrived. Even the most far-seeing have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach. Let us drop the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of this excellent person, whose love of his species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent. dividends were so beautifully blended, and so cruelly disappointed.

For some years small (very small) dividends were paid. Hudson, the "Railway King," paid them out of capital. "It made things pleasant," he said, when charged with such financially immoral practices. Alas! poor Hudson, you lived before your time, and went to another world before such "dishonest" doings as yours were sanctified in principle by Acts of Parliament which authorise payments of dividends out of capital in the case of railways under construction.

In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in Chancery, and its very locomotives and carriages were seized for debt; while for years afterwards its name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of that period were as busy with the Eastern Counties as those of our own time are with the South-Eastern Railway. Every journey has an end; "even the Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said Thackeray, very charitably.

In 1862 it was amalgamated with several minor undertakings, and re-named the "Great Eastern Railway"; "great in nothing but the name," as the spiteful said.

When matters were at their worst, the Lord Cranborne of that time was invited to accept the position of chairman and to help extricate the company from its difficulties. He accepted the post in January 1868 and held it until December 1871. In April 1868 he had succeeded to the title of Marquis of Salisbury. Thus the statesman and prime minister of later years was once a great figure in the railway world. His financial abilities helped to put the Great Eastern line on a firm basis, and when he left it the railway was already greatly improved in every respect. To-day, instead of being a "shocking example," it is a model to be copied by other lines.

X

Although the last of the old coaches was long ago broken up, and the Norwich Road is no longer lively with mail and stage travellers, it has, in common with several other roads out of London, witnessed a wholly unexpected revival, in the shape of the Parcel Mail service between London and Ipswich. When the Parcel Post came into being on the 1st August 1883, it was speedily discovered by the General Post-office authorities that in paying, according to contract, 55 per cent. of the gross receipts to the railway companies for the mere carriage of parcels, they were paying too much. Accordingly, a system of Parcel Mail coaches was established on several of the old roads, commencing with the London to Brighton Parcel Mail, in June 1887. A London and Chelmsford four-horse mail was soon added, and this was shortly afterwards extended to Colchester, and thence to Ipswich by cart. This curious enterprise of the Post-office was immediately successful, and it has ever since been found to effect a large saving over the railway charges. Nor is time lost in delivery. The down mail leaves London at a quarter to ten o'clock every night and the parcels arrive at Colchester and Ipswich in time for the first delivery the next morning; while the country parcels come up to London by an equally early hour. The way in which the service is worked will be gathered from the accompanying official way-sheet of the down mails.

TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH
PARCEL MAIL.

GENERAL POST OFFICE

The Most Noble the Marquis of Londonderry
Postmaster-General

LONDON, CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER, & IPSWICH ROAD
PARCEL SERVICE.

T. E. SIFTON, Inspector-General of Mails.

The Guard in charge of the Coach must report the cause of any Delay. He must enter all Remarks and Times in the proper Columns. This Bill to be sent, as addressed, by First Post.

TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH
PARCEL MAIL.

The up service, starting with the mail-cart from Ipswich at 7·9 p.m. and continued from Colchester by four-horse van at 9·30 p.m., brings the country parcels to Mount Pleasant at 4·30 a.m., throughout the year. Up and down mails meet at Ingatestone at 1·9 a.m. On this service, as on all others, the vans go through, but the drivers and guards exchange places; the London men changing on to the van from Colchester at Ingatestone, and returning to London; the Colchester men taking over the down van and similarly returning whence they came.

It is a curious and unexpected revival of old methods, but an entirely successful one. No highwayman has ever attempted to "hold up" the Parcel Mail, for the last of that trade has for generations mouldered in his grave; but should any amateurs essay to complete this revival of old coaching days by waylaying the mail, the guards would be found well armed. Their virgin steel and untried pistols have for years been carried without any excuse for using them; but there need be no doubt that, were the occasion to arrive, they would defend their parcels—the pounds of country butter, the eggs, and wild flowers, or the miscellaneous consignment from London—with their hearts' blood. There are more romantic things in the world to die for than postal parcels of eggs, cheese and butter, but the ennobling word Duty might glorify such a sacrifice for the sake of a pound's weight of "best fresh," or a dozen of "new laid."

But although the possibility of attack is remote, a spice of danger and romance savours the conduct of the parcel mails.

The up Colchester Parcel Mail had a mishap on the night of October 11, 1890, when, owing to the prevailing fog, it was driven into a ditch near Margaretting. Happily, both coachman and guard escaped injury, the heavy vehicle resting against the hedge. The coachman, mounting one of his team, and hurrying back to Chelmsford, succeeded in overtaking the down coach, which, returning to the scene of the accident, unloaded and transferred the parcels, and continued to London, leaving the down mail to be forwarded with local help. It eventually arrived at Colchester four hours late.

XI

Coaching days, old and new, having now been disposed of, we might set off down the road at once, were it not that our steps are at once arrested by the sight of the "Red Lion" Inn, at the corner of Whitechapel Road and Leman Street, which, together with the "Old Red Lion," adjoining, stands on a site made historic by Dick Turpin's lurid career.

It was in the yard of the old house that Turpin shot Matthew King in 1737. He had stolen a fine horse belonging to a Mr Major, near the "Green Man," Epping, and had been traced by means of the animal to the inn, where he was found by the Bow Street runners in company with Matthew and Robert King, birds of like feather with himself. The landlord endeavoured to arrest King, who fired at him without effect, calling to Turpin, "Dick! shoot him, or we are taken, by God!"

Turpin had his usual extensive armoury on his person—three brace of pistols and a carbine slung across his back. He fired, and shot Matthew King, whether by accident or design is not known. King first exclaimed, "Dick! you have shot me; make off," but is said afterwards to have cursed him as he went, for a coward. King died a week later of his wounds, Turpin fleeing to a deserted mansion in Essex, and thence to a cave in Epping Forest. It is usually said that it was the more famous Tom King who met so dramatic an end, but original authorities give Matthew; and certainly we find a Tom King, highwayman, decorously executed at Tyburn eighteen years later.

THE "OLD RED LION," WHITECHAPEL, WHERE TURPIN SHOT MATTHEW KING.
From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd, 1854.

We have met Turpin before, notably at York, where he made an end, two years after this exploit. This especial hero of the Penny Dreadful and the romantic imagination of the average errand boy belongs especially to this road, for he was an Essex man, born at Hempstead in 1705. Apprenticed to a Whitechapel butcher in his youth, he commenced his career of low villainy by stealing some cattle from a Plaistow farmer, and then joined a band of smugglers and deer-stealers and housebreakers in Epping Forest, where they set up a storehouse of stolen goods in the cave just mentioned. This band became so notorious that a sum of fifty guineas was soon offered for their arrest; but it was not until the amount had been doubled that two of the ringleaders were caught and hanged. The gang thus broken up, Turpin was reduced to scouring the roads singly, and pursued a solitary career until one dreary February night in 1735, while patrolling the Cambridge Road, he saw a horseman approaching through the mist. At the time-honoured demand, "Your money or your life!" the stranger simply laughed.

"What!" said he, "should dog eat dog? We are of a like trade."

Thus Turpin and Tom King met, and struck up a partnership. If only one quarter of the deeds assigned to Turpin were true, his would be a very gallant, as well as phenomenally busy, figure on the roads of England. Although by no means a mythical person, the stories told of him nearly all belong to the regions of romance, and his true history shows him to have had few redeeming qualities. Many of the old knights of the road were courageous, and hand in hand with their courage went a humour not seldom kindly; but Turpin was a bloodthirsty ruffian whose courage is not an established fact, and whose humour, like the "tender mercies of the wicked," was cruel, not to say ferocious. It is quite hopeless to attempt to finally destroy the great Turpin myth after this lapse of time: Harrison Ainsworth's romance has enjoyed too great and too long a popularity for that; but let the attempt here be made to paint him as the cowardly ruffian he was.

Whitechapel, quite apart from memories of Turpin, owns an unenviable repute, and its very name is a synonym for villainy. Its bad savour, however, goes back no greater distance in time than the first half of the eighteenth century, for until that period it was not built upon, and indeed "Whitechapel Common" was spoken of so late as 1761, maps proving the old church to have been quite rural at that date. Originally a chapel-of-ease to the great mother-parish of Stepney, the district was erected into a separate parish so far back as the fourteenth century and the original "white chapel"—doubtless so called from its mediæval coats of whitewash—made a church. But old names cling, and although it has been a church for over six hundred years, it has not been able to confer its more dignified title upon the parish itself. Thus the name of Whitechapel is doubly misleading nowadays, for it is no longer a chapelry and its stately church is in red brick; so that there is some force in the argument for re-christening the borough and dignifying it by a revival of the old name of Eastminster, owned by that not very fortunate Abbey of St Mary Grace, founded by Edward the Third in 1348, which formerly stood on the site of the Royal Mint.

WHITECHAPEL OLD CHURCH.

St Mary's, Whitechapel, is a beautiful church, built in 1877, burnt August 20, 1880, and since restored. It replaced the ugly old building, which was "taken down for the simple reason that it would not stand up." The ancient wrangling over its full title of St Mary Matfelon is not yet done, and rash would be he who voted for any particular one among the rival derivatives of the name. Matfelon, holds one school, was the name of a forgotten benefactor, whose particular benefactions are not stated. Who, then, would found, since benefits are thus forgot? "Mariæ, matri et filio," an ancient dedication, say others; while yet different parties find its source in a Syriac word meaning "mother of a son" = the Virgin Mary. Perhaps the most entertaining legend, however, is that which tells how it originated in the killing of a murderer, in 1429, by the women of Whitechapel. "Between Estren and Witsontyd, a fals Breton mordred a wydewe in here bed, the which find hym for almasse withought Algate, in the suburbes of London, and bar away alle that sche hadde, and afterwards he toke socour of Holy Chirche in Suthwark; but at the last he took the crosse and forswore the kynge's land; and as he went hys waye, it happyd hym to come be the same place where he had don that cursed dede, and women of the same parysh comen out with stones and canell dong, and ther maden an ende of hym in the hyghe strete." These things seem quite in keeping with Whitechapel's evil fame.

The old church, as it stood until well into the nineteenth century, is shown opposite this page, with one of the old road-waggons crawling past. In another view of the same date the High Street itself is seen, its long perspective fully bearing out the old description of spaciousness. At the same time, it is seen to be empty enough to resemble the street of a provincial town. The houses are exceedingly old, the road paved with knobbly stones, and the shop windows artfully constructed with the apparent object of obstructing instead of admitting the light. Very few of these old shop-fronts are now left, but a good specimen is that of a bell-founding firm at No. 34 Whitechapel Road.

WHITECHAPEL ROAD IN THE COACHING AGE.

This old picture has long ceased to be representative of Whitechapel's everyday aspect. The coach has long ago whirled away into limbo, the elegantly-dressed groups have been gathered to Abraham's, or another's, bosom, and Whitechapel knows their kind no more. Bustle, and a dismal overcrowding of carts, waggons, costermongers' barrows, tram-cars and omnibuses are more characteristic of to-day. Also, the Jewish element is very pronounced; chiefly foreign Jews, inconceivably dirty. Many of the shop-fronts bear the names of Cohen, Abraham, Solomon and the like, and others ending in "baum," or "heim." But on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every week the spacious street regains something of its old rural character, in the open-air hay and straw market held here, the largest in the kingdom. It fills the broad thoroughfare and overflows into the side streets: the countrymen who have come up on the great waggons by road from remote parts of Essex lounging picturesquely against the sweet-smelling hay or straw, attending to their horses, or refreshing in the old taverns. It is Arcady come again. The eyes are gladdened by the long vista of the hay-wains, and the nose gratefully inhales the rustic scent of their heaped-up loads. It is true that Central Londoners also have their so-called Haymarket, but hay is the least likely of articles to be purchased there in these days.

What do they think, those countrymen, of the Whitechapel folks, the "chickaleary blokes," used, as a writer in the middle of the nineteenth century remarked, to "all sorts of high and low villainy," from robbery with violence to "prigging a wipe," and the selling of painted sparrows for canaries? Nor was Whitechapel a desirable place when Mr Pickwick travelled to Ipswich. "Not a wery nice neighbourhood," said Sam, as they rumbled along the crowded and filthy street. "It's a wery remarkable circumstance," he continued, "that poverty and oysters go together.... The poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to be for oysters.... An oyster-stall to every half-dozen houses. The street's lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think that ven a man's wery poor, he rushes out of his lodgings and eats oysters in regular desperation." Sam was a keen observer; but there is now a deeper depth than oysters. Periwinkles and poverty; whelks and villainy foregather in Whitechapel at the dawn of the Twentieth Century.

But the poverty and the villainy of Whitechapel must not be too greatly insisted upon. They may easily be overdone. Loyal hearts and brave lives—all the braver that they are not flaunted in the face of the world—exist in the cheerless and unromantic grey streets that lead off the main road. The domestic virtues flourish here as well as—if not better than—in the West End. The heroes and heroines of everyday life—the greater in their heroism that they do not know of it—live in hundreds of thousands in the dingy and unrelieved dulness of the streets to right and left of Whitechapel Road and of the Mile End Road, that go with so majestic a breadth and purposeful directness to Bow.

XII

Let the Londoner who has never been "down East," and so is given to speaking contemptuously of it, take a journey down the Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, and see with what an astonishing width, both in respect of roadway and foot-pavements, those noble thoroughfares are endowed. The London he has already known owns no streets so wide, save only in the isolated and unimportant instance of Langham Place; while, although it cannot be said that, taken individually, the houses of the great East-End thoroughfares are at all picturesque, yet there is a certain interesting quality in the roads as a whole, lacking elsewhere. This, doubtless, is partly explained by the strangeness of the East-ender's garb, and partly by the many Jewish and other foreigners who throng the pavements.

A strangely-named public-house—the "Grave Maurice"—is one of the landmarks of the Whitechapel Road. Many have set themselves the task of finding the origin of that sign and its meaning; but their efforts have been baulked by the very multiplicity of historic Maurices, grave or otherwise. The sign may originally have been the "Graf Maurice," Prince Maurice of Bohemia, brother of the better-known Prince Rupert, the dashing cavalier, but a difficulty arises from the fact that there was another "Graf Maurice" at the same time, in the person of the equally well-known Prince Maurice of Nassau, who died of grief when the Spanish overran Holland and besieged Breda. Nor does the uncertainty end here, for Dekker uses the expression "grave maurice" in one of his plays, written at least thirty years before the time of those princes, in a passage which reads as though it were the usual nickname at that period for an officer.

Beyond the house owning this perplexing sign we come to the beginning of the Mile End Road, one mile, as its name implies, from Aldgate, and for long the site of a turnpike-gate, only removed with the close of the Coaching Age. Rowlandson has left us an excellent view of Mile End Turnpike as it was in his time; with isolated blocks of houses, groups of rustic cottages and a background of trees, to show how rural were the surroundings towards the close of the eighteenth century; while maps of that period mark the road onwards, bordered by fields, with "Ducking Pond Row" standing solitary and the ducking-pond itself close behind, where the scolds and shrews of that age were soused.

The Ducking-Pond as an institution is as obsolete as the rack, the thumb-screw, and other ingenious devices of the "good old times"; but most towns a hundred years ago still kept a cucking or ducking-stool; while, if they had no official pond for the purpose, any dirty pool would serve, and the dirtier it were the better it was esteemed.

MILE END TURNPIKE, 1813. After Rowlandson.

"The Way of punishing scolding Women is pleasant enough," says an old traveller. "They fasten an Arm Chair to the End of two Beams, twelve or fifteen Foot long, and parallel to each other: so that these two Pieces of Wood, with their two Ends embrace the Chair, which hangs between them on a sort of Axel; by which Means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal Position in which a Chair should be, that a Person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a Post upon the Bank of a Pond or River, and over this Post they lay, almost in Equilibrio, the two Pieces of Wood, at one End of which the Chair hangs just over the Water. They place the Woman in the Chair, and so plunge her into the Water as often as the Sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate Heat."

One has only to go and look at the average rural pond to imagine the horrors of this punishment. The stagnant water, the slimy mud, the clinging green duckwood, common to them, must have made a ducking the event of a lifetime.

The difference here, at Mile End, between those times and these is emphasised by the close-packed streets on either side, and by the crowded tram-cars that ply back and forth.

Yet there are survivals. Here, for instance, in the little old-fashioned weather-boarded "Vine" Inn that stands by itself, in advance of the frontage of the houses, and takes up a goodly portion of the broad pavement, we see a relic of the time when land was not so valuable as now; when local authorities were easy-going, and when anyone who had the impudence to squat down upon the public paths could do so, and, remaining there undisturbed for a period of twenty-one years, could thus derive a legal title to the freehold. Here, then, is an explanation of the existence of the "Vine" in this position.

Close by are the quaint Trinity Almshouses, built in 1695, for the housing of old skippers and shellbacks. Wren designed the queer little houses and the chapel that still faces the grassy quadrangle where the old salts walk and gossip unconcernedly while the curious passers-by linger to gaze at them from the pavement, as though they were some strange kind of animal. Nothing so curious outside the pages of fiction as this quiet haven in midst of the roaring streets, screened from them by walls and gates of curious architecture surmounted by models of the gallant old galleons that have long ceased to rove the raging main. It is a spot alien from its surroundings, frowned down upon by the towering breweries, which indeed would have bought the old place and destroyed it a few years ago, but for the indignation aroused when the proposal of the governing body of the almshouses to sell became known.

There is nothing else to detain the explorer on his way into Essex. The People's Palace, it is true, is a remarkable place, the result of Sir Walter Besant's dream of a resort for those of the East who would get culture and find recreation, but it is a dream realised as an architectural nightmare, and is a very terrible example of what is done to this unhappy quarter in the names of Art and Philanthropy.

XIII

At last, by this broadest of broad roads, we come to Stratford-le-Bow and its parish church. In these hurried times, and for some centuries past, the old hyphenated place-name has been dropped, and as "Bow" alone it is familiar to all East-enders. The place is nowadays chiefly associated with Bryant & May and matches, but there yet remain many old Queen Anne, and even earlier, mansions by the roadside, telling of days long before "patent safeties" were thought of, and when flint and steel and timber were the sole means of obtaining a light.

"Bow," says the Ambulator of 1774, "is a village a little to the east of Mile End, inhabited by many whitsters and scarlet dyers. Here has been set up a large manufactory of porcelain, little inferior to that of Chelsea." That description is now somewhat out of date. The manufactory of porcelain has long disappeared and Bow china is scarce, and treasured accordingly. Whitsters—that is to say, bleachers of linen—and scarlet dyers, also, are to seek.

Bow Church confronts the eastward-bound traveller in bold and rugged fashion; its time-worn tower standing midway of the road and challenging, as it were, the crossing of the little River Lea, just beyond, to Stratford and into Essex. Church and churchyard split the road up into two channels and thus destroy its width, which it never afterwards regains until the suburbs are passed and the open country reached. A modern touch here is the bronze statue of Gladstone, in advance of the church, facing westwards in declamatory attitude from its granite pedestal, and erected in his lifetime; recalling the fervent hero-worshipping days of the "People's William." The outstretched hand is oddly crooked. Few be them that see statues raised to themselves, unless indeed they be made of finer clay than most mortals, kings and princes, and the like. Of recent years this bronze Gladstone has, in our vulgar way, been made to preside, as it were, over an underground public convenience, from whose too obtrusive midst he rises, absurdly eloquent.

BOW.

Just how Stratford-le-Bow received its name is an interesting piece of history. Both here and at the neighbouring Old Ford the Lea was anciently crossed by a paved stone ford of Roman construction, continuing the highway into Essex; but when that river's many channels, swollen by winter's rains, rolled in freshets toward the Thames, the low-lying lands of what we now call Hackney and West Ham marshes were for long distances converted into a sluggish lake. For months together the approaches to the Lea were lost in floods, and the real channels of the river became so deep that those who valued their lives and goods dared not attempt the passage. To the aid of poor travellers thus waterlogged came the good and pious Queen Matilda, consort of Henry the First. "Having herself been well washed in the water," as old Leland says, she fully appreciated the necessity for bridges, and accordingly directed the raising of a causeway on either side of the Lea and the building of two stone structures, of which one was the original "Bow" Bridge; "a rare piece of work, for before that time the like had never been seen in England." It seems to have been the stone arch that gave its name of "Bow," and if an arched stone bridge was so remarkable in those times that it should thus derive a name for its semi-circular, or "bow" shape, it must have been either the first, or among the earliest, of stone bridges built, in times when others were constructed of timber.

The original name of the village that afterwards sprang up here, on the hither or Middlesex shore, was thus singularly contradictory; meaning "the street ford at the arched bridge." The Stratford on the Essex side was in those days known as Stratford Langthorne.

The good queen not only built the bridges and causeways, but endowed them with land and a water-mill, conveying those properties to the Abbess of Barking, burdened with a perpetual charge for the maintenance of the works. Having done all this, she died. Some years afterwards a Cistercian monastery was founded close by, where the Abbey Mills now stand, and the then Abbess of Barking, of opinion that the Abbot of that house, being near, would find it easier to look after the bridges than herself, reconveyed the property, together with its obligations, to him. The trust was kept for a time and then delegated to a certain Godfrey Pratt, who had a house built for him on the causeway and enjoyed an annual grant, in consideration of keeping the works in repair. Pratt did so well with his annual stipend and the alms given him by wayfarers that the Abbot at length discontinued the grant. Accordingly, the wily Pratt set up a quite unauthorised toll-bar and levied "pontage" on all except the rich, of whom he was afraid. This went on for many years, until the scandal grew too great, and, in consequence of an inquisition held, the Abbot dispossessed Godfrey Pratt of his toll-bar and resumed the control himself.

Meanwhile, no repairs had been effected, and the road had been so greatly worn down that the feet of travellers and those of the horses often went through the arches. Bow Bridge had, consequently, to undergo an extensive cobbling process; a treatment, by the way, continued through the centuries until 1835, when it was finally pulled down.

In its last state it was a nondescript patchwork of all ages. The property for its maintenance had, of course, been lost in the confiscation of monastic estates under Henry the Eighth, and its repair afterwards fell upon the local authorities, who always preferred to patch and tinker it so long as such a course was possible. On February 14, 1839, the existing bridge was opened, crossing the Lea in one seventy-foot span, in place of the old three arches.

XIV

"Farewell, Bowe, have over the bridge, where, I heard say, honest Conscience was once drowned."

Thus says Will Kemp, in his Nine Days' Wonder, the account of a dance he jigged from London to Norwich in so many days, in 1600. It is hopeless to recover the meaning hidden in that old joke about the drowning of conscience here, and so we will also without delay "have over" the modern bridge of Bow and into Essex, past dingy flour mills, and crossing another branch of the Lea by Channelsea Bridge, come to Stratford.

Here, then, begins the county of calves, according to the popular jest that to be a native of Essex is to be an "Essex Calf." It is not generally regarded as a complimentary title, for of all young animals the calf is probably the clumsiest and most awkward. To this day in rural England the contemptuous exclamation "you great calf!" is used of an awkward, overgrown boy tied to his mother's apron-strings. Yet, if we may believe a seventeenth-century writer on this subject, the nickname had a complimentary origin, "for," said he, "this county produceth calves of the fattest, fairest and finest flesh in England."

We have already seen that the French spoken at Stratford-le-Bow in Chaucer's time was a scoff and a derision. To-day, neither on the Middlesex nor the Essex shores of the Lea is the teaching of languages either a matter for praise or contempt. Mills of every kind, the making of matches that strike only on the box, the varied work of the Stratford and West Ham factories, fully occupy the vast populations close at hand; while the business of covering the potato-fields, the celery-beds and the grounds of the old suburban mansions with endless rows of suburban dwellings is engrossing attention down the road. Stratford and Maryland Point are now strictly urban, and Ilford far greater in these days than it ever was when its "great" prefix was never pretermitted. London, indeed, stretches far out along this road, and the country is reached only after many miles of that debatable land which belongs neither to country nor town. Heralds of the great metropolis appear to the London-bound traveller while he is yet far away, and even so far distant as Chelmsford "the dim presentiment of some vast capital," as De Quincey remarks, "reaches you obscurely like a misgiving."

Stratford has not improved since coaches left the road. It has grown greatly, and grown dirty, squalid and extremely trying to noses that have not been acclimatised to bone-boiling works, manure factories and other odoriferous industries. But it is a place of great enterprises and great and useful markets, and when its introductory mean streets are passed, the Broadway, where the Leytonstone Road branches off to the left, looks by contrast quite noble. This brings one to Upton Park, Forest Gate, Woodgrange and Manor Park in succession, past a building which, whether as an institution or an example of beautiful architecture, would well grace the West. The West Ham Public Library and Technical Institute is here referred to. "Irish Row," on the way, marked on old maps, is a reference to old wayside cottages inhabited until recent years by a turbulent colony of London-Irish market-gardening labourers, subsidised by Mrs Nelson in times of coaching competition to impede hated rivals as they came past the "Rising Sun" at what is now the suburb of Manor Park; a house which, like the "Coach and Horses" at Upton, has declined from a legitimate coaching trade to something more in the gin-palace sort. This is not to say that the staid and decorous Mrs Nelson entered into direct negotiations with the Mikes and Patseys of Irish Row, but when the rival Ipswich "Umpire" or the "New Colchester" coaches developed much sporting competition and their coachmen evinced a dogged determination to be first over Bow Bridge on the way up to London, and, by consequence, the first to arrive at their destination, why, an obscure hint or two on the part of one of her numerous staff, accompanied by the wherewithal for a drink, produced wonders in the way of highway obstruction. But such recollections are become unsubstantial as the fabric of which dreams are made, and fade before the apparitions of tramways and interminable rows of suburban shops that conduct to Ilford Bridge.

Great Ilford lies on the other side of the sullen Roding, that rolls a muddy tide in aimless loops to lazily join the Thames at Barking Reach. The townlet has from time immemorial been approached by a bridge replacing the "eald," or old, ford, whence its name derives and not from that crossing of the stream being an "ill" ford, as imaginative, but uninstructed, historians would have us believe; although the slimy black mud of the river-bed would nowadays make the exercise of fording an ill enough enterprise. Ilford is now in the throes of development and is fast losing all individuality and becoming a mere suburb. Let us leave it for places less sophisticated.

The morris-dancing Will Kemp of 1600, leaving Ilford by moonshine, set forward "dauncing within a quarter of a mile of Romford, where two strong Jades were beating and byting either of other." We take this to mean two women fighting on the road, until the context is reached, where he says that their hooves formed an arch over him and that he narrowly escaped being kicked on the head. It then becomes evident that he is talking of horses.

Leaving the centre of Great Ilford behind, and in more decorous fashion than that of Will Kemp, we come, past an inn oddly named the "Cauliflower"—probably as a subtle compliment to the abounding market-gardens of the neighbourhood—to the long, straight perspective of the road across Chadwell Heath. Unnumbered acres of new suburban "villa" streets now cover the waste on either side, so that the beginnings of the plain are not so much heath as modern suburb, created by the Great Eastern Railway's suburban stations and by the far-reaching enterprises of land corporations, which here carry on the usual speculations of the speculative builder on a gigantic scale. In acre upon acre of closely-packed streets, each one with a horrible similarity to its neighbour, thousands of the weekly wage-earning clerks, mechanics and artisans of mighty London live and lose their individuality, and pay rent to limited companies. Where the highwayman of a century ago waited impatiently behind the ragged thickets and storm-tossed thorn trees of Chadwell Heath for the traveller, there now rises the modern township of Seven Kings, and midway between Ilford station and that of Chadwell Heath, the recent enormous growth of population on this sometime waste has led to the erection of the new stations of "Seven Kings" and "Goodmayes," while widened lines have been provided for the increased train services. "Seven Kings" is a romantic name, but who those monarchs were, and what they were ever doing on the Heath, which of old was a place more remarkable for cracked skulls than for crowned heads, is impossible to say. Many wits have been at work on the problem, but have been baffled. The natural assumption is that at this spot, marked on old maps as "Seven Kings Watering," the seven monarchs of the Heptarchy met. History, unhappily records no such meeting, but there was no Court Circular in those times, and so many royal foregatherings must have gone unremarked, except locally and in some fashion similar to this. So let us assume the kings met here and watered their horses at the "watering," which was a place where a little stream crossed the road in a watersplash. The stream still crosses the highway, but civilisation has put it in a pipe and tucked it away underground.

SEVEN KINGS.

A lane running across the Great Eastern Railway at this point, known as Stoup Lane ("stoup" meaning a boundary-post) marks the boundary of the Ilford and Chadwell wards of Barking parish. Here it was, in 1794, on a night of December, that a King's messenger, James Martin by name, was shot by five footpads. The register of St Edmund's, Romford, records the burial of this unfortunate man on the 14th of that month.

Let us not, however, in view of the more or less grisly dangers that still await belated wayfarers on this road, enlarge too greatly on the lawlessness of old times; for the homeward-bound resident making for his domestic hearth in these new-risen suburbs towards the stroke of ten o'clock is not infrequently startled by the sinister figure of a footpad springing from the ragged hedges of Chadwell Heath and demanding—not his money or his life, as in the old formula, but—a halfpenny! This invariable demand of the nocturnal Chadwell Heath footpads, which argues a pitiful lack of invention on their part, is for half the price of a drink.

"You haven't got a ha'p'ny about you, guv'nor?" asks the threatening tramp.

"No," says the peaceful citizen, anxiously scanning the long perspective of the road for the policeman who ought to be within sight—but is not; "w-what do you want a halfpenny for?"

"I've walked all the way from Romford and only got half the price of a glass o' beer," says the rascal.

The citizen is astonished and incredulous, and his astonishment gets the better of his fear. "Oh, come now," he rejoins, "no one walks three miles from Romford for a glass of beer; besides, all the houses here close at ten o'clock."

"Oh, they do, do they?" replies the tramp, offensively. "'Ere, my mate Bill'll talk to you," and, whistling, the ominous bulk of Bill emerges aggressively from the darkling hedge, and together they proceed to wipe the road with that respectable ratepayer, and, rifling his pockets, leave him, bruised and bleeding, to reflect on the blessings of civilisation and to be thankful that he was not born a hundred years ago, when he might have been shot dead instead of being felled to the ground by the half-brick in a handkerchief which he finds beside him and takes home as a trophy.

Chadwell Street, a wayside hamlet, conducts past Beacontree Heath, on the right, to an open country of disconsolate-looking contorted elms and battered windmills, telling even in the noontide heats and still airs of summer of the winter winds that race across the watery flats of Rippleside and Dagenham Marshes, out of the shivering east. Lonely, until quite recent times, stood "Whalebone House," beside the road, the two whalebones that even yet surmount its garden entrance the wonderment for more than two hundred years of chance travellers. Legends tell that they are relics of a whale stranded in the Thames in the year of Oliver Cromwell's death, and set up here in memory of him. However that may be, they certainly were here in 1698, when Ogilby's Britannia was published, for the house is marked on his map as "Ye Whalebone."

These "rude ribs," it may shrewdly be suspected, have little longer yet to remain, for though apparently proof against decay, the house and grounds are, like those of the surrounding properties, for sale to the builders.

WHALEBONE HOUSE.

The sole historic or other vestige remaining of the "Whalebone" turnpike-gate, once standing here, is an account to be found in the newspapers of the time of an attack made upon George Smith, the toll-keeper, on a night in 1829. He was roused in the darkness by a voice calling "Gate!" and, going to open it, was instantly knocked down, in a manner somewhat similar to the treatment accorded the hero of that touching nursery rhyme, who tells how:—

"Last night and the night before,
Three tom-cats came knocking at my door.
I went down to let them in,
And they knocked me down with a rolling-pin."

The two men who felled the unfortunate George Smith, alarmed by his cries of "Murder!" threatened to shoot him if he were not quiet, and, going over his pockets, were rewarded by a find of twenty-five shillings. While they were thus engaged in sorting him over, a third confederate, ransacking the house, discovered three pounds. With this booty and a parting kick, they left their victim, and disappeared as silently as they came.

XV

Romford, now approached, is but twelve miles from London, and has frankly given up the impossible and ceased all pretence of being provincial. At the same time, building-land having only just (in the speculator's phrase) become "ripe for development," the townlet has not yet lost all individuality in suburban extension.

The place, say some antiquaries, derives its name from the "Roman ford" on the Rom brook, but it is a great deal more likely that the origin is identical with that of the first syllable in the names of Ramsgate, Ramsey and Romney, and comes from the Anglo-Saxon "ruim" = a marsh. Time was when the town was celebrated for its manufacture of breeches; an industry which gave rise to a saying still current in the less polished nooks and corners of Essex—"Go to Romford and get your backsides new bottomed." Breeches have long ceased to be a noted product of the town, which for many years past has bulked large in the annals of Beer. Barricades, avenues, mountains and Alpine ranges of barrels, hogsheads, firkins and kilderkins of Romford ale and stout proclaim that the Englishman's preference for his "national drink" has not abated, and that

"Damn his eyes, whoever tries
To rob a poor man of his beer"

is still a popular sentiment; as both the brewers of arsenical compounds and the more rabid among teetotallers are some day likely to discover.

ENTRANCE TO ROMFORD.

A French traveller in England some two hundred years ago wrote that "there are a hundred sorts of Beer made in England, and some are not bad: Art has well supplied Nature in this particular. Be that as it will, beer is Art and wine is Nature; I am for Nature against the world." That old fellow did not know how artful beer could be, and if he could re-visit his native France might discover that even wine is no longer the simple child of nature it once was.

But although John Barleycorn is the tutelary deity of Romford, it is quite conceivable that the stranger bound for Norwich, and turning neither to right nor to left, might pass through the town without so much as a glimpse obtained of those Alpine ranges aforesaid. True, on entering Romford, he could scarce fail to observe certain weird structures ahead: odd towers like first cousins to lighthouses, springing into the sky line, with ranges of perpendicular pipes, like the disjointed fragments of some mammoth organ, beside them, the characteristic signs and portents of a great brewery; but the barrels are secluded, nor even are Romford's streets blocked, as might have been suspected, with brewers' drays. Romford, indeed, spells to the uninstructed stranger rather bullocks than beer; for the cattle-pens are the chief feature of its market-place, and sheep and hay and straw bulk more in the eye of the road-farer than the products of Ind, Coope & Co., which are to be seen in all their vastness beside the railway station and on the sidings constructed especially for the trade in ale and stout.

ROMFORD.

The town in its most characteristic aspect is seen in the accompanying illustration taken from the doorway of that old inn, the "Windmill and Bells," the broad road margined with granite setts and the pavements fenced with posts and rails; the re-built parish church prominent across the market-place.

OLD TOLL-HOUSE, PUTTELS BRIDGE.

Beyond Romford the road grows rural, and, by the same token, hilly. This, gentle reader, let it not be forgotten, is Essex, and we all know with what persistence that county is spoken of, and written of, as flat. If you would know what flatness is, try the Great North Road and its long levels between Baldock, Biggleswade and Alconbury, or search Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire or Hunts. There is flatness, beside which that of Essex is the merest superstition, started probably by some tired traveller of inconstant purpose, who, essaying to explore the county, gave up the enterprise when he had reached Wanstead Flats. Surveying that not highly romantic expanse, he took it as an exemplar of the rest of the shire, and so returned home to start this immortal myth on its career. Certainly no cyclist who knows his Essex will subscribe to its flatness as an article of faith, and as such an one cycles from Romford, through the hamlet of Hare Street, over Puttels Bridge, where stands an old toll-house, to the other hamlet of Brook Street, the fact that he will actually have to walk his machine up the steep hill that conducts into the town of Brentwood will cause him to think hard things of myth-makers.

THE "FLEECE," BROOK STREET.

Brook Street Hill is the name of this eminence. Beside it stands a cemetery, convenient for brakeless cyclists who recklessly descend, and at its foot is a fine old inn, the "Fleece," a house of call for the fish-waggons that were once so great a feature of this road so far as Colchester and Harwich.

THE MARTYR'S TREE, BRENTWOOD.

Brentwood, on the crest of this hill, occupies an elevated table-land, with sharp descents from it on every side. The "burnt wood" town, destroyed in some forgotten conflagration, is now a long-streeted, old-fashioned place, apparently in no haste to bid good-bye to the past. It keeps the old Assize House of Queen Elizabeth's time in repair, and carefully sees to it that the Martyr's Tree, decayed though the old elm stump be and hollow, is saved from perishing altogether. It was in 1555 that William Hunter, in his twentieth year, suffered in this place for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. That staunch upholder of the Protestant faith scarce needed the modern memorial, close by, while this shattered trunk remained, its gaping rents carefully bricked up by pious hands; but let the venerable relic be doubly safe-guarded in these times, when that candle lit by Latimer and Ridley, close upon three centuries and a half ago, burns dim, and lawless and forsworn clergy within the Church of England are working towards Rome and the return of the famous days of fire and stake; when the blood of the martyrs has ceased to inspire a generation which demands to be shown some tangible object before it can realise the significance of that sacrifice. Here, then, is something that can be seen and touched, to bring the least imaginative back in fancy to those terrible days, when brave hearts of every class gave up their lives in fire and smoke rather than abjure their faith. The Romanising clergy of to-day are made of coarser fabric than the martyrs. They are not actuated by honesty, but take oaths they have no intention of observing to a Church whose bread they eat and whose trust they betray.

Would you know something of that martyrdom at Brentwood? Then scan the inscription on the modern granite obelisk, and control, if you can, a righteous indignation when you perceive a modern Roman Catholic chapel standing, impudent in these days of an exaggerated tolerance, over against the Martyr's Tree itself, typifying the Scarlet Woman in midst of her blasphemies, exultant over the blood of the saints. "He being dead yet speaketh," quotes that inscription; but what avails it to speak in the ears of the deaf, or to talk of honour to the perjured? "Learn from his example," continue those momentous words, "to value the privilege of an open Bible, and be careful to maintain it"; but the world goes by unheeding, and only when the danger again becomes acute and liberty of conscience is passing away will indifference be conquered and the folly of it revealed.

XVI

Brentwood still keeps a notable relic of coaching days in the old "White Hart" Inn, a curious specimen of the timbered and galleried type of hostelry familiar to our great-grandfathers. It turns a long plastered front to the street, but the great carved and panelled doorway leading into the coach-yard confirms the proud legend, "Established 1480." Full forty coaches passed through Brentwood in every twenty-four hours at the close of the Coaching Age, but the earlier days of coaching brought the "White Hart" more custom than came to it at the close of that era, when, in consequence of the roads being improved, travelling was quicker, and places once halted at were left behind without stopping. Innkeepers were considerable losers by this constant acceleration of coaches, and saw the smart, long-distance stages go dashing by where, years before, the old slow coaches stayed the night, or, at the very least, halted for meals.

The "White Hart" remains typical of the earlier times, and still keeps the old-world comfort regretted in other places by De Quincey, who lived long enough to witness the beginnings of the great changes that have come over the hotels of town and country since coaches gave place to railways.

YARD OF THE "WHITE HART," BRENTWOOD.