Although the body of a coach enjoyed a wide range of motion sideways, it had not by any means the same freedom back and forth. A severe strain, in the continual plunging and jolting, was therefore thrown upon the supporting uprights, so that they not infrequently gave way under the ordeal, and suddenly threw passengers and coachman in one common heap of ruin. To aid him in making such roadside repairs as these and other early defects of construction often rendered necessary, the coachman carried with him a box of tools placed under his seat, and it is from this circumstance that the name of “hammercloth”--the hangings decorating the coachman’s seat on many a State carriage--was derived. Bad as was the situation of the passengers, that of the coachman was infinitely worse. His was a seat of torture, for it was placed immediately over the front pair of wheels, and, totally unprovided with springs, transmitted to his body the full force of every shock with which those wheels descended into holes or encountered stones. In 1667 a London and Oxford coach is found, performing the fifty-four miles in two days, halting for the intervening night at Beaconsfield; and in the same year the original Bath coach appears, in this portentous announcement:-- “FLYING MACHINE. “All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on their Road, let them repair to the ‘Bell Savage’ on Ludgate Hill in London, and the ‘White Lion’ at Bath, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets forth at five o’clock in the morning. “Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to carry fourteen Pounds Weight--for all above to pay three-halfpence per Pound.” This is the first appearance of the epithet “Flying” in the literature of coaches. Possibly it was used in this first instance in order to distinguish the new conveyance from a stage-waggon that must for many years before have gone the journey, as well as to justify the higher fare charged by the new vehicle. The waggon would have conveyed passengers at anything from a halfpenny to a penny a mile; by “Flying Machine” it came to threepence. The term “Flying,” for a coach that consumed three days in performing a journey of 109 miles, raises a smile; but it was only relative, and in contrast with the pace of the waggons of that period, which would probably have made it a six-days’ trip.