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CHAPTER XX.

THE FLEET CHAPLAINS AND THE FLEET WEDDINGS.

History of the Fleet registers-Origin of the Fleet marriages-The
shameful practices of parsons and plyers-Description of the cere-
mony attendant upon a Fleet wedding-Extracts from the registers
-Other localities besides the Fleet prison used for purposes of
clandestine matrimony-Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act-Passing
of the Act-Evasion of its provisions Opposition-Sir William
Blackstone's comments on the measure-Attempts at its repeal—Its
defect-Fled borough and Gretna Green-Concluding observations
on the eighteenth century

PAGE

378

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER XI.

ROADS AND TRAVELLING.

Deplorable condition of the roads both in town and country-Evidence of various authorities cited-Turnpike Acts-Opposition to the erection of turnpikes-Young's experiences on his southern tour - Stagecoaches and those who travelled by them-Flying coaches-Dangers and inconveniences of stage-coach travelling-Footpads and highwaymen-Inns and alehouses-The post-Establishment of the mailcoach system.

To the civilisation of a nation nothing is so absolutely essential as a system of good roads. It is that which constitutes the foundation of its prosperity and greatness. Destitute of such a system, the energies and resources of a country must inevitably lie in almost their sum total unknown, untouched, and altogether useless. The same purpose that is served by the veins and arteries in the promotion of the circulation of the social body is served by roads in the promotion of the circulation of the body politic; consequently where they do not exist, no community can, strictly speaking, be said to exist. The people possess nothing in common, nor are they a people in anything except the name. Neither commerce nor any kind of intercourse fuses them together into one commonwealth. In a land devoid of a system of roads, the people would of necessity

VOL. II.

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be savages. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially.' So it does, and the point is too evident to require it to be enlarged upon. Places remote from each other are virtually brought near; there is a diffusion of intelligence and an impetus given to commerce, and by all these advantages the condition of the people is most powerfully affected. It is to be regretted, however, that the generality of English people in the last century could never be prevailed upon to see the force of this. Infinitely better for them would it have been if they had. We have already seen that the principal thoroughfares of the capital at the accession of George III. were in a condition very far removed from that in which they should have been, and that matters did not begin to mend in this respect until the century was drawing to a close. If the art of paving the streets was but very imperfectly understood, the science of roadmaking was even less so; and for years after the establishment of the mail-coach system, more than one half of the roads by which the greater part of England was intersected were such as to be scarcely deserving of the name.

Down to the commencement of the eighteenth century, the duty of repairing the highways had been one that had devolved either upon the parishes which lay adjacent to them or upon those through which they ran. This burden was removed in 1700. During the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne, several Turnpike Acts were passed, but for all the good they did, they might just as well have never been passed. Strange as it may seem, even the most eminent engineers of the age continued to regard the art of constructing roads as altogether unworthy of their attention, until their minds were disabused of so inveterate an idea, once and for all, by the famous Smeaton, who to their surprise dared in 1768 to construct a road across the valley of the river Trent between Markham and Newark. How people managed to move about, at least with any ease, in the age which immediately preceded the construction of macada

mised roads, it is really difficult to conceive. The usual way in which goods were conveyed from one place to another was either by waggons or by packhorses. The nobility travelled in their private carriages, the gentry on horseback, women on the side-saddle, and sometimes upon pillions, seated behind the servants.

In the year of the accession of Queen Anne to the throne of England, Charles III. of Spain decided to visit these shores. After repeated delays the King and his suite succeeded in reaching Portsmouth, and thence contrived to get as far as Petworth, in Sussex, where they awaited the coming of Prince George of Denmark from Windsor Castle. Their experiences on the road between Portsmouth and Petworth are thus related in the words of one of the attendants ::

We set out at six in the morning by torchlight to go to Petworth and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the Prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways I ever saw in my life. We were thrown but once, indeed, in going, but our coach (which was the leading one) and his Highness's body coach would have suffered very much if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently poised it or supported it with their shoulders from Godalming almost to Petworth; and the nearer we approached the Duke of Somerset's house the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours to conquer them; and indeed we had never done it if our good master had not several times lent us a pair of horses out of his own coaching, whereby we were enabled to trace out the road for him.

From Windsor to Petworth, the length of way was only forty miles, but fourteen hours were consumed in traversing it, while almost every stage was signalised by the overturn of a carriage or its temporary swamping in the mire. Even the royal chariot would have fared no better than the rest had it not been for the relays of peasants who poised and kept it erect by strength of arm, and shouldered it forward the last nine miles, in which tedious operation six good hours were consumed.' This was a specimen of travelling in 1703 along the Sussex roads, and is characteristic of what our slow-going, longsuffering forefathers endured more or less, with the patience of

Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 27, 828.

a very Job, even at a short distance from the capital, till the closing years of the century. The Turnpike Act of the 3rd George I. c. 4 recited that the roads about Islington, Highgate, &c., were very ruinous and almost impassable for the space of five months in the year. So late as 1756 a shrewd, sharp-witted Scotch lady, Mrs. Calderwood, says in one of her letters descriptive of a tour to London, that the road from Barnet to Kensington Green was 'a very lonely and wild' one, 'and nothing like the repair would one expect so near a great town,'' while in traversing the eight miles which lay between London and Mitcham, she noted that they had 'a good part of the road pretty wild; what they call downs and we call moor.'2 A country gentleman when travelling alone at this time usually adopted the plan called 'riding post '-that is to say, he hired at each stage for the sum of eightpence two horses, with a post-boy, who carried the portmanteau behind him, and rode back with the horses when fresh ones were required. Pillions were the usual modes of conveyance for women among farmers and gentry.

In the month of February 1709 the celebrated topographer of Leeds, Ralph Thoresby, of pious memory, who had been sojourning in London, started homewards in company with a dear friend, an alderman, and some Hull gentlemen. On the third day after leaving town, the worthy Thoresby notes in his 'Diary' that he

found the roads very bad in some places, the ice being broke by the coaches that it bore not, and rougher than a ploughed field in others, yet hard as iron, that it battered the horses' feet; the servant's was downright lame, that when we baited he was sent before to make the best he could of the way. . . . The ice breaking, we were often forced to alight, and had none to assist in any matter but the alderman himself, who acted the part of a most kind friend, but had more trouble than I was pleased with, yet could not avoid but it pleased God to bring us in safety and good time to Carlton by Newark, where we lodged.

;

On the following day, Thoresby records that he found the roads dangerous as well as troublesome at the Eel-pie-house, by Tuxford, and afterwards tedious by snows lately fallen in Yorkshire. The day afterwards the road was

Letters and Journals, ed. Fergusson, pp. 8, 9.

2 Ibid. p. 40.

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