In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, a shining light of the road in those days, began that connection with the Brighton Road which afterwards produced the “Duke of Beaufort” coach, made famous by the coloured prints after Lambert and Shayer. He was passionately fond of driving, and was so very often allowed by the complaisant professional coachmen to “take the ribbons” that he at last fell into the habit of taking them almost as a matter of right. Of course, the jarveys who had relinquished the reins to him were always well remembered for their so doing; but there were those to whom money was not everything, and in whose minds the sporting instinct was less developed than a wholesome and ever-present fear of the penalties to which coachmen were liable if they permitted other persons to drive. There could have been no objection on the score of coachmanship, for the Marquis was an able whip; but the fact remained that he could not get the reins when he wanted them, and so in revenge set up two coaches on the Brighton Road, in alliance with a Jew named Israel Alexander. A paltry fellow, this Marquis, afterwards seventh Duke of Beaufort, to enter into competition with professional coachmen in order to satisfy a childish spite; not, at any rate, the high-souled sportsman that toadies would have one believe. [Illustration: THE “BEAUFORT” BRIGHTON COACH. _After W. J. Shayer._ ] The coaches put on the road by this alliance were the “Wonder” and the “Quicksilver,” both with intent to run Goodman, the proprietor of the “Times” coaches, off the route. The coachmen who tooled these new conveyances were, of course, always to give up the reins when my lord thought proper to drive, and so the revenge was complete. But the “Quicksilver,” a fast coach timed to do the 52 miles in 4¾ hours, had not been long on the road before it met with a very serious accident, being overturned when leaving Brighton on the evening of July 15th. A booking-clerk, one John Snow, the son of a coachman, and himself a sucking Jehu, was driving, and upset the coach by the New Steyne, with the result that the passengers were thrown into the gardens of the Steyne, or hung upon the spikes of the railings in very painful and ridiculous postures. Goodman had the satisfaction of presently learning that the bad-blooded sportsman and his partner lost some very heavy sums in compensation awards.