dice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in
their turn. [149]

In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still usual
for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not encumbered by
much baggage, to perform long journeys on horseback. If the traveller
wished to move expeditiously he rode post. Fresh saddle horses and
guides were to be procured at convenient distances along all the great
lines of road. The charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and
fourpence a stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were
good, it was possible to travel, for a considerable time, as rapidly
as by any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by
steam. There were as yet no post chaises; nor could those who rode
in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses. The King,
however, and the great officers of state were able to command relays.
Thus Charles commonly went in one day from Whitehall to New-market, a
distance of about fifty-five miles through a level country; and this was
thought by his subjects a proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the
same journey in company with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was
drawn by six horses, which were changed at Bishop Stortford and again at
Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a mode of
conveyance seems to have been considered as a rare luxury confined to
princes and ministers. [150]

Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, the
travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran considerable
risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted highwayman, a marauder
known to our generation only from books, was to be found on every main
road. The waste tracts which lay on the great routes near London were
especially haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on the
Great Western Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road,
were perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge scholars
trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight.
Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelled
to deliver their purses on Gadshill, celebrated near a hundred years
earlier by the greatest of poets as the scene of the depredations of
Falstaff. The public authorities seem to have been often at a loss
how to deal with the plunderers. At one time it was announced in the
Gazette, that several persons, who were strongl