Cresset was also of opinion that the greater number of the many roadside inns would lose their trade owing to the rapidity of coach-travelling. Here, at least, he exceeded his brief, for coaches by no means attained so speedy a rate of travel as that reached by horsemen. Thoresby, ten years later, is a case in point. He was wont to travel horseback between Leeds and London in four days, but when he journeyed from York to London in the coach, no greater distance than from Leeds, it took six days. Swift, too, in 1710, rode from Chester to London in five days; when the degenerating Chester stage, which had started to perform it in 1657 in four days, had already taken one additional day, and was about to take another. Cresset, summing up such objectionable things as “rotten coaches” and traces, and coachmen “surly, dogged, and ill-natured,” advocated the total suppression of such methods of travelling, or at least--counsels of moderation prevailing--of most of them. In conclusion, he proposed that coaches should be limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and forwards once a week. Unhappily for Cresset’s peace of mind, coaches did not decay. Nor did they wilt and wither before the onslaught of another writer, who, under the pen-name of “A Country Tradesman,” published a pamphlet in 1678, called _The Ancient Trades Decayed, Repaired Again_. According to this writer, if coaches were suppressed, more wine and beer would be drunk at the inns, to the great increase and advantage of the Excise; and the breed of horses would be improved, in consequence of the gentlemen who then rode in coaches being obliged to return to horse-riding. In 1673, in an announcement of stages to York, Chester, and Exeter, the journey to Exeter is put at “eight days in summer, ten in winter.” Here was at least one coach that had already begun to run throughout the year, but its summer performance justified the remarks of those ancients who, seeing the original “four-days” announcement of 1658, had shaken their heads and suspected it would never last.