_Between_ _Hours_ London and Yarmouth From 29 to 32 Plymouth 50 58 York 39 42 Chester 30 56 Bristol 25 30 Gloucester 20 26 Portsmouth 15 23 Edinburgh 73 103* Newcastle 57 81 Manchester 32 48 Preston 47 58 Dover 19 22 Southampton 18 23 (_Cal. S. P. D._, 1667-68, pp. 117, 118, 120, 121; 1666-67, pp. 388, 389.) * Reproved for slowness. It was often difficult to tell the relative position of places in England from the post towns. The Post Office had for its own use a table of places along the great roads,[391] and from the middle of the seventeenth century, private individuals began to publish road maps. On these maps, the post towns are marked by a castle with a flag flying from it. Some of them are quite artistically done and represent on a large scale every important road in England with the places where branch roads leave them. One map has each road outlined on a long scroll, and it gives the rivers, brooks, bridges, elevations, villages, post towns, forests, and branch roads throughout the whole distance.[392] In 1668, Hicks, in writing to Arlington's secretary, advised him not to have a new map of the post roads printed, fearing the great changes that might thereby be produced in the Post Office. He says: "When Parliament sees how all the branches lie and most of them carried on at the charge of those in the country concerned, they will try to have them carried through by the Postmaster-General, which will be very chargeable."[393] [391] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1673-75, p. 494. [392] John Ogilby, _Itinerarium Angliae_, 1675. [393] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1667-68, p. 543. At the close of the seventeenth century, the five great roads to Edinburgh, Holyhead, Bristol, Plymouth, and Dover remained practically unchanged. The Plymouth road had been continued to Falmouth and the Northern Road now passed through York. The greatest changes noticeable are in the Southern and Eastern counties. In the South, nearly all the coast towns were now connected with the Falmouth road, and the post ran to the extreme southwest of Cornwall. Portsmouth had a direct service from London through Arundel and Chichester. There were branches from the Falmouth road to several towns in Dorset and Somerset, but as a rule the country between the two great roads to the West was poorly supplied. A new road of considerable importance ran from Maidenhead on the Bristol road through Abingdon, Gloucester, Cardiff, and Swansea to Milford, where there was a packet boat for Ireland. From this road there were a few unimportant branches to the North.