About 1564 the early parent of the stage coach made its appearance. Stow says: “And about that time began long waggons to come in use, such as now come to London from Canterbury, Norwich, Ipswich, Gloucester, &c., with passengers and commodities.” These were called “stages”: they were roomy vehicles with very broad wheels which prevented them sinking too deeply into the mud: they travelled very slowly, but writers of the period make frequent allusions to the convenience they provided. Until the “long waggon” came into use the saddle and pack horse were the only means of travelling and carrying goods: this conveyance was largely used by people of small means until late in the eighteenth century, when stage coaches began to offer seats at fares within the reach of the comparatively poor. Some confusion is likely to arise when searching old records from the fact that words now in current use have lost their original meaning. Thus in an Act passed in the year 1555 for “The amending of High Ways,” the preamble states that certain highways are “now both very noisome and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and ‘cariages.’” We might read this to mean vehicles for the conveyance of passengers; but the text (which empowers local authorities to make parishioners give four days’ work annually on the roads where needed) shows us that the “cariage” or “caryage” is identical with the “wayne” or “cart” used in husbandry. “Carriage” is used in the same sense in a similar Act of Elizabeth dated 1571, which requires the local authority to repair certain streets near Aldgate which “become so miry and foul in the winter time” that it is hard for foot-passengers and “caryages” to pass along them. THE INTRODUCTION OF SPRINGS. It is impossible to discover when builders of passenger vehicles first endeavoured to counteract the jolting inseparable from the passage of a primitive conveyance over rough roads by means of springs. Homer tells us that Juno’s car was slung upon cords to lessen the jolting: and the ancient Roman carriages were so built that the body rested on the centre of a pole which connected the front and rear axles, thus reducing the jolt by whatever degree of spring or elasticity the pole possessed.