In 1617, an author named Fynes Morryson relates, that “there were post horses in England, at stations about ten miles apart, that could be hired by travellers on horseback at the charge of 2½d. per mile to 3d.,” but, he adds, “most travellers ride their own horses. In some counties a horse can be hired at 3d. per day, finding the food. Likewise carriers let horses from city to city bargaining that the passengers put up at their inns. They will lend a horse for five or six days thus, and provide its food at these inns for about 20s. Lastly, these carriers have long covered waggons in which they carry passengers to and fro; but this kind of journeying is very tedious; so that none but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort. Coaches are not to be hired anywhere (this was in 1617) but in London. For a day’s journey a coach with two horses is let for about 10s. a day, or 15s. with three horses, the coachman finding the horses’ feed.” Yet in 1610 a native of Stralsund, in Pomerania, obtained in Scotland a Royal patent giving him the exclusive privilege of running coaches and waggons between Edinburgh and Leith. The horses that were hired for travellers were called in France “hacqueneè,” and in Wales “hacknai,” which term extended into England, and after was applied to hired coaches, thence named Hackney Coaches. Samuel Pepys, in his Diary of 1662, speaks of riding his hacqueneè to Woolwich, at a period when he did not keep any horse of his own. I have already mentioned that long waggons were the first stages; their use commenced before the year 1600, but for the poorer classes there was no other conveyance for many years, and it was late in the eighteenth century before stage coaches were able to give any accommodation to persons with a small purse. The Stage Coach began to be used in 1640, the same description of vehicle as that in use for private or hackney work, but of a larger size. The body would hold eight persons at times, but generally only six; the passengers were screened from the weather by leather curtains. It was not until the year 1680 that plate glass was sufficiently cheap to be used for windows. The coachman sat on a bar between the two standard posts from which the body was slung, with his feet upon the footboard fixed to the top of the perch. Behind, between the great wheels, was the basket for luggage, in which the outside passengers also sat up to their knees in straw. The body swung about upon heavy leather straps through the rough country roads.