William James Chaplin--to give him his full baptismal name--was born at Rochester in 1787, the son of William Chaplin, at that time a coachman and proprietor in a small way of business on the Dover Road. Shortly after that date it would appear that the elder Chaplin extended his operations, and became a coach-master on a considerable scale on some of the main roads leading out of London. However that may have been, certain it is that his son was a practical coachman, and thoroughly versed in every detail of driving and stabling, as well as buying horses. To this intimate acquaintance with the conduct of a coach and of a coaching business, as greatly as to his own native shrewdness, he owed the extraordinary success that attended him. His centre of operations was at the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, where he succeeded William Waterhouse, who had been established there as a mail-contractor since 1792. He it was who, perhaps in imitation of the Mail-coach Halfpenny dedicated to Palmer, issued the curious copper token pictured here. It is quite in accord with the general fragmentary character of the records of these not so remote times that nothing survives by which we may state the year when Chaplin succeeded Waterhouse at the “Swan with Two Necks,” but it was probably about 1825. In addition to this yard, he acquired in the course of time those of the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, and the “Spread Eagle” and “Cross Keys,” Gracechurch Street, together with the “Spread Eagle” West End office, in Regent’s Circus, with the proprietorship of several hotels. Unlike most coach-proprietors, who restricted their operations to one or two roads, Chaplin’s coaches went in all directions, and he owned large stables at Purley on the Brighton Road, at Hounslow on the Western roads, and at Whetstone on the great road to the north. The “Swan with Two Necks,” was, when he acquired it, a yard extremely awkward of approach, being situated in a narrow lane, and inside a low-browed entrance that taxed the ingenuity of the coachmen to pass without accident. Once inside, you were in one of those old courtyards without which no old coaching inn was complete. Three tiers of galleries ran round three sides of the enclosed square, which, from the creepers that were trailed round the old carved wooden posts or depended from the balusters, and from the flower-boxes that decorated the windows, was a very rustic-looking place. Chaplin had not long settled himself here before he constructed underground stables beneath this yard, where some two hundred horses were stalled; but the place remained, otherwise unaltered, until about 1856, when all the buildings were demolished, and he set himself to raise on their site the huge pile of buildings that now fronts partly on to Gresham Street and partly to Aldermanbury. It was one of his last works, and was, of course, undertaken long after the coaching age had become a thing of