The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📖

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plunderers. At one time it was announced in the Gazette, that

several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen,

but against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be

paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses would also be

shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to

inspect this singular exhibition. On another occasion a pardon

was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough

diamonds, of immense value, which he had taken when he stopped

the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another

proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the

government was upon them. Their criminal connivance, it was

affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity.

That these suspicions were not without foundation, is proved by

the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who

appear to have received from the innkeepers services much

resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to Gibbet.151


It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the

highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful rider, and that

his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of

a fine horse. He therefore held an aristocratical position in the

community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and

gaming houses, and betted with men of quality on the race

ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good family and

education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps

still attaches, to the names of freebooters of this class. The

vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of

their occasional acts of generosity and good nature, of their

amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate

struggles, and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart.

Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber of

Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern

drovers, and, in return, not only spared them himself, but

protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses

in the most courteous manner; that he gave largely to the poor

what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by

the royal clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at

length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was related

how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took

to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the

honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against

notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a

lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;

how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to

ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how

his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how

his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men;

how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by

wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with

tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a

pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of

highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law

were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the

corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights,

black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had

intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the

obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is doubtless a large

mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of

being recorded; for it is both an authentic and an important fact

that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our

ancestors with eagerness and faith.


All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were

greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore commonly desirous

of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such

shelter it was not difficult to obtain. From a very early period

the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had

described the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the

pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty persons, with

their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the

Tabard in Southwark. The food was of the best, and the wines such

as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,

under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively

description of the plenty and comfort of the great hostelries.

The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them.

There were some in which two or three hundred people, with their

horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding,

the tapestry, above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen

was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the tables.

Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In

the seventeenth century England abounded with excellent inns of

every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted

on a public house such as Walton has described, where the brick

floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round with

ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing

fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of trouts fresh from the

neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the

larger houses of entertainment were to be found beds hung with

silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was

drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not

like other innkeepers. On the Continent the landlord was the

tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a

servant. Never was an Englishman more at home than when he took

his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their own

mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of

passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house

of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort

and freedom could in no other place be enjoyed with equal

perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to be

a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long

furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists. Johnson

declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity;

and Shenstone gently complained that no private roof, however

friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was

to be found at an inn.


Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and

Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in all modern hotels.

Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses

of public entertainment has by no means kept pace with the

improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this

strange; for it is evident that, all other circumstances being

supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of

locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the

less important is it that there should be numerous agreeable

resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a

person who came up to the capital from a remote county generally

required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for

five or six nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals

and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At present we

fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single

winter's day. At present, therefore, a traveller seldom

interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and

refreshment. The consequence is that hundreds of excellent inns

have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of

that description will be found, except at places where strangers

are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.


The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant

places may excite the scorn of the present generation; yet it was

such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished

nations of antiquity, or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and

Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the

conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and

had been swept away by the civil war. Under the Commonwealth the

design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post

Office, after all expenses had been paid, were settled on the

Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and came

in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of

Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of Cumberland,

letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a

daily post was despatched from the capital to the place where the

court sojourned. There was also daily communication between

London and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes

extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons when those

places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on

horseback day and night at the rate of about five miles an

hour.156


The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the

charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was

entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which

this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found

profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour

without being supplied he might hire a horse wherever he could.


To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and

another was not originally one of the objects of the Post Office.

But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen

of London, William Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny

post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a

day in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four

times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This improvement

was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that

their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards in

which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement

caused by Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's

papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised that

the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates,

it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion that the Jesuits were at

the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would

be found full of treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was,

however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved

fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would

be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of it as an