The roads at this time were incredibly bad, no matter the route, and indeed these several ways had their differences originated and continually multiplied by certain lengths of road being impassable at one season, and others equally so on some other occasion. When they were _all_ impassable at one and the same time—a not unusual occurrence—the traveller was indeed in evil case, and the highwayman suffered from great depression of trade. The chief fount of information for travellers at that time was Ogilby’s _Britannia_, first printed in 1675; a work of which much more will presently be said. This was a thick folio volume containing engraved plates and descriptions of every road in England. Every considerable inn kept a copy of “Ogilby” in those days, for the information of travellers; just as in the modern hotel one finds railway time-tables and county directories as a matter of course. Ogilby was in great request as a work of reference; so greatly indeed, that the early road travellers who thumbed his pages at meal-times and upset their wine over him, or now and again stole a particularly useful map, have rendered clean and perfect copies of early editions not a little difficult to come by. He was much too bulky for carrying about, and so the careful traveller made notes and extracts for use from day to day. Such an excerpt is the yellow and tattered sheet before the present writer, giving manuscript details of how to reach Coventry. But besides copied matter there is a good deal else drawn doubtless from first-hand observation. Coming for instance, to “ffinchley Comon, att y^e galowes keep to y^e right hande” is the direction, and the whole distance is punctuated with the remarks “bad waye,” “a slowe,” and other signs indicating depths of mud and ruggedness of road. “Galowes,” too, recurs with dreadful frequency, probably not because the person who wrote this wanted (like the Fat Boy in _Pickwick_) to “make yer flesh creep,” or because he was morbidly minded, but for the commonplace reason that gallows made excellent landmarks, and were as common objects of the road then as sign-posts are now.