Many coachmen were killed off the box in the exercise of their profession, as, in the chapter on accidents, has already been shown. A considerable number, secure in the affection of the wealthy amateurs, many of whom they had taught the art of driving, entered the service of those noblemen and gentlemen, in some horsy or stable capacity. The eighth Duke of Beaufort, one of the Sir Watkin Williams Wynns, and others, thus found employment for these refugees of the road, and continually aided many more; but something in the long overlordship they had exercised over four horses, and a good deal more perhaps in that hero-worship down the road, of which Washington Irving writes, had spoiled them. Their lives would not run sweetly in fresh grooves. They could not, or would not, take to new employments, and even, subsisting upon charity, were often absurdly haughty, insolent, and insufferable. Like horses, good living, coupled with little exercise, rendered them unmanageable, and they not infrequently quarrelled with the hand that fed them. “What do _you_ know about throat-lashings and head-terrets?” contemptuously asked Harry Simpson, ex-coachman of the Devonport “Quicksilver,” of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, who, before him, had been holding forth to some of his guests upon the respective merits of those harnessing methods in the old coaching days. “Nothing practically,” answered the good-humoured baronet; “my ideas are only ideas. But you know all about the subject: let us have the benefit of a professional view.” At this time Harry Simpson--“Little Harry,” as he was called, undersized and “looking like a tomtit on a round of beef when on the driving-box”--was stud-groom to that Welsh landowner, who, from compassion, had taken him into his employ when coaching failed. “Little Harry,” domineering and wilful as he was, remained in his service for thirty years, and died in 1886. Some of the undoubted veterans of the old order lived to patriarchal ages, and when they died their obituary notices confounded many a writer who had lightly declared, years before, that the last of the coachmen was dead. [Illustration: THE GUARD, 1852. _After H. Alken._ ] Matthew Marsh, who for many years drove the Maidstone “Times,” had been a private soldier in the 14th Foot, and fought and was wounded at Waterloo. He was generally averse from mentioning that fact, but one day, hearing from his box a dispute about the battlefield in which both disputants were in error, he corrected them, simply adding, “I happened to be there.” He died in 1887, aged ninety-four years, aided in his declining days by the Earl of Albemarle, who had fought in the same campaign.