Palmer's plan, once introduced, made rapid progress. Mail-coaches began to run through Norfolk and Suffolk in March 1785; and on the cross-road between Bristol and Portsmouth in the following May. On the 25th of July the plan was extended to Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool, and during the next two months to Gloucester and Swansea; to Hereford, Carmarthen, and Milford Haven; to Worcester and Ludlow; to Birmingham and Shrewsbury; to Chester and Holyhead; to Exeter; to Portsmouth; to Dover and other places. The Great North Road was reserved to the last, and here the plan was carried into effect in the summer of 1786. It may be convenient here to say a few words on the subject of nomenclature. Post-coach, a term in vogue about this time,[60] might not unnaturally be supposed to denote a coach in use by the Post Office. Such, however, was not the case. The term post-coach, like the kindred term post-chaise, was introduced probably early in the last century, and, so far as we are aware, was never employed in the sense of mail-coach. It should further be noticed that the term mail-coach, although we have employed it to make our meaning clear, did not come into use until after 1784. In that year, and for some little time afterwards, coaches which carried the mails were called diligences or machines, and the coachmen were called machine-drivers. [60] Thus, the Act 20 Geo. III. cap. li. sec. 2--an Act passed four years before the mails were carried by coach:-- "That every person who shall keep any four-wheeled chaise or other machine commonly called a diligence or post-coach, or by what name soever such carriages now are or hereafter shall be called or known...." That the term post-coach, as distinguished from mail-coach, was in vogue as late as 1827 appears from evidence taken in that year before the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry--"(Q.) Are you acquainted with the post-coaches? (A.) Not any very great deal. (Q.) Comparing them with mail-coaches, which do you think are the best formed? (A.) Decidedly the mail-coaches, I think."--Appendix to Eighteenth Report, p. 443.