Meanwhile, “Post Coaches” and “Light Post Coaches” were at the head of the coaching hierarchy. Introduced long before mail-coaches came into being, they were then the most expensive and exclusive, as they were also the speediest, of public conveyances, and ranked next after the post-chaises. They were expensive chiefly because they provided only limited accommodation; originally only three or four inside, and one or two out, with no luggage, except small trunks or parcels. The term “Post” had no reference to the Post Office, but was intended to give at once an idea of speed and an approach to that absolute privacy only obtained by specially hiring a post-horse or a post-chaise. Indeed, the earliest Post Coaches not a little resembled a post-chaise hired by a party of friends for the journey. In securing a seat by post-coach, the traveller, in view of the limited accommodation, mathematically reduced his chances of meeting and journeying with vulgar and objectionable characters; while the higher fare tended to produce the same effect by eliminating all but those who were rich enough to afford the cost, and were therefore, by an easily understood process of reasoning, likely to be cleanly and well-mannered. How highly objectionable the company in a stage-coach might and could be we have the testimony of many travellers to tell, from Dean Swift to John Wesley and Macready, the actor. Their trials and experiences are mostly recorded elsewhere in these pages; but two examples may take their place here to illustrate the reason why Post Coaches flourished so greatly. Let us, then, hear Wesley:-- “I went,” he says, “to Norwich (from London) in the stage-coach with two very disagreeable companions, called a gentleman and gentlewoman, but equally ignorant, insolent, lewd, and profane. “_July 21st, 1779._--(From Coventry) I took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the roof.” The felons, “behind the coach,” would ride in the basket, which was without springs. Their chains would necessarily rattle, and considering the discomfort of ten manacled men, jammed together, without seats, and jolted over bad roads, it is not surprising they “blasphemed.” Macready travelled in 1811 by the Liverpool stage, from Birmingham to London. He says:-- “I got into the coach; its odours were many, various, and unpleasantly mingled, and the passengers, a half-drunken sailor and an old woman, did not impress me with the prospect of a very pleasant journey. The pace at which the vehicle proceeded made me doubt whether it would ever reach London, and its creakings and joltings seemed to augur a certain overturn.” This objectionable conveyance took five hours to accomplish the eighteen miles between Birmingham and Coventry, and only reached London at five o’clock the next evening.