Travelling on horseback was cheaper than by coach. The “chapman” or trader could hire a horse from the hackneyman at from 6s. to 12s. per week. John Cressel estimates that a man could come from “York, Exeter or Chester to London, and stay twelve days for business (which is the most that country chapmen usually do stay), for £1 16s., horse hire and horse meat 1s. 2d. per day.” From Northampton it cost 16s. to come to London on horseback, from Bristol 25s., Bath 20s., Salisbury 20s. or 25s., and from Reading 7s. If men would not ride, John Cressel urged them to travel in the long waggons which moved “easily without jolting men’s bodies or hurrying them along as the running coaches do.” The long waggon was drawn by four or five horses and carried from twenty to twenty-five passengers. He proposed that there should be one stage per week from London to each shire town in England; that these should use the same team of horses for the whole journey, that their speed should not exceed thirty miles a day in summer and 25 in winter, and that they should halt at different inns on each journey to support the innkeeping business. If these proposals were carried out, the writer thought stage coaches would “do little or no harm.” John Cressel’s pamphlet was answered by another from the pen of a barrister, who showed up the futility of his arguments and deductions, but did not find great fault with his facts and figures. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HIGH ROADS. It is commonly believed that the introduction of stage coaches produced the first legislative endeavour to improve the country roads; this is not the case: nor had the sufferings of travellers by “long waggon” any influence upon legislators if comparison of dates be a reliable test; for it was not until 1622 that any attempt was made to save the roads. In that year James I. issued a Proclamation in which it was stated that inasmuch as the highways were ploughed up by “unreasonable carriages,” and the bridges shaken, the use of four-wheeled carts for carrying goods and agricultural produce was forbidden, carts with two wheels only being allowed. In 1629 Charles I. issued a Proclamation confirming that of his father, and furthermore forbidding common carriers and others to convey more than twenty hundredweight in the two-wheeled vehicles which were lawful, and also forbidding the use of more than five horses at once; the avowed object being to prevent destruction of the road. We may fairly reason from the terms of this Proclamation that it was recognised that on occasion five horses might be required to draw one ton along the roads; and from this we can form our own idea of the condition to which traffic and rains might reduce the highways.