and Design of the other Flying Machine to Lewes and Brighthelmstone in lowering his prices, whether ’tis thro’ conscience or an endeavour to suppress me. If the former is the case, think how you have been used for a great number of years, when he engrossed the whole to himself, and kept you two days upon the road, going fifty miles. If the latter, and he should be lucky enough to succeed in it, judge whether he won’t return to his old prices when you cannot help yourselves, and use you as formerly.” To this Batchelor rejoined with an appeal “to the calm consideration of the Gentlemen, Ladies, and other Passengers, of what Degree soever.” This appeal was chiefly the time-honoured one, that his coach was the original, and therefore deserved support: “Our Family first set up the Stage Coach from London to Lewes, and have continued it for a long Series of Years, from Father to Son and other Branches of the Same Race. Even before the Turnpikes on the Lewes Road were erected, they drove their Stage, in the Summer Season, in one day, and have continued to do over since, and now in the Winter Season twice in the week.” The Lewes and Brighton Road seems, however, to have been long enough and broad enough for both Tubb and Batchelor, for they both continued until four years later, when Batchelor died, and his business was sold to Tubb, who took a partner, and himself in due course experienced the bitterness of a rival on the road, prepared with better machines, a speedier journey, and lower fares. About this time, when hatreds and rivalries were seething in the south on this then comparatively unimportant road, the Shrewsbury and London road, on its several routes, by way of Birmingham and Coventry, or by Oxford and Banbury, was, as befitted so important a highway, the scene of a much keener and more protracted strife between opposing confederations of coach-proprietors, and in consequence coach nomenclature grew with the rapidity of melons under a glass frame. It should be noted here that coaching did not progress evenly all over the kingdom, but was more advanced on some roads than others. Thus, although the era of “Machines” and “Flying Machines” did not properly dawn until after 1750, yet on the Bath Road we already find a “Flying Machine” in 1667. Just as, nowadays, those people who happen to reside on a branch line of some great railway are commonly fobbed off with the secondhand rolling-stock and other offscourings of the main line, so the inhabitants along the lesser roads had to be content with a mere “stage-coach,” while the great trunk roads were thronged with “machines” and “post-coaches.”