n brows of the massacre of
their people in London at Richard I.'s coronation, six weeks after it was
perpetrated; and the churches of the Orkneys put up prayers for King
James three months after the abdicated monarch had fled to St. Germain's.
There was in nearly all rural districts the king of London and the king
of the immediate neighbourhood. The Walpoles and Townshends in their own
domains were far more formidable personages than George I.; and at a time
when the King of Prussia's picture was commonly hung out at ale-house
doors as an incitement to try the ale, {72} an ancient dame near
Doncaster exclaimed, on being informed of his majesty's decease, "Lord a'
mercy, is he! and, pray, who is to be the new Lord Mayor?"

A considerable improvement in the roads of Great Britain took place in
the latter half of the preceding century. This change was partly owing
to the advancing civilization of the larger towns and cities, and partly
to the march of the Highlanders into England under Prince Charles Edward,
in 1745. At that period communication was so imperfect that the
Pretender had advanced a hundred miles from Edinburgh without exciting
any peculiar alarm in the midland or southern counties, while in the
metropolis itself no certain information could be obtained of the
movements of the rebel army for some days after their departure
southward. The Duke of Cumberland's march northward was much impeded by
the difficulty of transporting his park of artillery. But after the
decisive day of Culloden, the erection of Fort William, and the
establishment of military posts at the foot of the Grampians, the
expediency of readier communication between the capitals of South and
North Britain was universally felt. Scotland could henceforward be held
in permanent subordination only by means of good military highways.
Accordingly in the year 1782 we find a German traveller (Moritz) speaking
of the roads in the neighbourhood of London as "incomparable." He is
astonished "how they got them so firm and solid;" and he thus describes
his stage of sixteen miles from Dartford, the place of his
disembarkation, to the metropolis:--

"Our little party now separated and got into two post-chaises, each
of which held three persons, though it must be owned that three
cannot sit quite so commodiously in these chaises as two; the hire of
a post-chaise is a shilling for every English mile. They may be
compared to our extra