Surely he must have been an ancestor, or at the least some early relative, of the notorious Mr Wightman who, just before the first London and Brighton railway was laid down, wrote a book in which he “proved” beyond refutation that no locomotive steam engine could by any possibility be propelled at a speed greater than about half the speed of the fastest of the coaches then on the road! We smile indulgently at all this now, yet, when all is said, have we changed so very greatly since those dark and peculiar ages—since the epoch that we now refer to so complacently as “the good old times”? (_sic_). The narratives of the remarkable experiences of many of the travellers in those early coaches would make up almost enough letterpress to fill a volume. For from the very outset the public stages became the unlawful prey of half the rascals with which a vast tract of the whole of England at that time teemed. Coaches were plundered almost daily, and while sometimes blood was spilt intentionally, often this happened rather by accident. Charles II., who used his influence to help on the development of the stage coach, appears at times to have become frankly impatient with the ultra-conservatism of the bulk of his nobility and of the aristocracy who strove hard to check the progress of the new form of locomotion. Whatever Charles's shortcomings may have been—and we know that he had many—he had enough of _nous_ to be able to foresee the enormous advantages that would be derived from the general adoption of the public stage. Consequently he encouraged the importation of stallions and the breeding of animals of the stamp best adapted for coach work. Himself a finished whip, most likely, he desired that all his nobles should emulate his example by learning to drive well, though driving in those days was a form of amusement comparatively seldom indulged in by the well-to-do, who, as we are told, preferred being driven by postillions. Before Prince Charles's proclamation, however, the ten years of the Commonwealth's sway had to intervene, during which time the horse's progress in this country suffered a set-back from the effects of which it did not immediately recover. The beginning of the horse's decline in public favour may be said to have dated from 4th January 1651, on which day a report was drawn up—to be soon afterwards presented to Parliament—demanding that horse races, hunting, hawking matches and football playing be at once suppressed, the plea in favour of this radical reform being that frequently political meetings were convened by enemies of the Commonwealth under the veil of race meetings and similar social gatherings. CHAPTER III