“The Comptroller-General,” he wrote to one contractor, “has to complain not only of the quality of the horses employed on the Bristol Mail, but as well of their harness and the accoutrements in use, whose defects have several times delayed the Bath and Bristol and London letters, and have even led to the conveyance being overset, to the imminent peril of the passengers. Instructions have been issued by the Comptroller for new sets of harness to be supplied to the several coaches in use on this road, for which accounts will be sent you by the harness-makers. Mr. Palmer has also under consideration, for the contractors’ use, a new-invented coach.” This was a truly imperial way of remedying gross dereliction on the contractors’ part, but it had its effect in this and other instances, for it may be presumed that the harness-makers thus officially selected to replace the contractors’ ancient assortments of worm-eaten leather and cord were not the cheapest in the trade, and that those contractors very soon awoke to the fact that it would be more economical in future to provide new harness of their own free will, and from their own harness-makers, than under compulsion. In respect of the type of coaches, as well as of their equipment in minor details, Palmer sternly resolved to impose thorough efficiency. As he was very well assured that their defects arose from the cheese-paring policy of the contractors themselves, he decided that the Post Office must have a voice in the selection of the coaches, and, having discovered what he considered a suitable build, made it a condition of the service that it should be used. This officially-approved new type was a “patent coach” by one Besant. The contractors had no choice in the matter. Palmer, the autocrat, had seen that Besant’s coaches were good, and willed it that they should use none others, and so to that fortunate patentee they were obliged to resort. He entered into partnership with Vidler, a practical coachbuilder; and thus at Millbank, Westminster, was established that mail-coach manufactory which for forty years supplied the mail-coaches to the mail-contractors. Besant and Vidler’s terms were twopence-halfpenny a double mile. For this price the coaches were hired out to the contractors and kept in repair. The practice was for Vidler’s men to take over the mail-coaches after they had entered the General Post Office in the morning, on the completion of their up journeys, and to drive them to Millbank, where they were cleaned and greased, and delivered to the various contractors’ coach-yards in the afternoon. On December 2nd, 1791, Besant died. He was, we are told, “an honest, worthy man, and the mechanical world sustains a great loss by his death. His ingenuity was in various instances sanctioned by the Society of Arts, many of whose premiums were awarded to him.”