Up to 1821 there had been comparatively little coaching competition along the Manchester Road. In that year there ran along the Coventry, Atherstone, Lichfield, and Congleton route to Manchester (which is not the Manchester Road as considered in these pages) the “Prince Cobourg” coach, which set out from the “Swan with Two Necks,” and was at Manchester in exactly twenty-six hours; but the “Defiance” was in the first flight upon the route adopted here. It was not very swift, for it set out at half-past two every afternoon from the “Swan with Two Necks,” Lad Lane, and did not arrive at the “Bridgewater Arms,” Manchester, until 5.30 the next afternoon: twenty-seven hours. That was just before the era of the great Chaplin, and at that time the “Swan with Two Necks” was still kept by one Kingsford, while the Coach Office in its yard remained in the hands of William Waterhouse, who had carried on business there as a mail contractor and coach proprietor since 1792, and was well content with the old leisurely ways. Such as it was, the “Defiance” was only equalled in that year by the “Regulator,” which, running from the same establishment, was no competitor, having a slightly different route, taking it through Buxton. It also performed the journey in twenty-seven hours. The “Manchester Telegraph” at that time took thirty hours. But in 1822, probably nerved to great deeds by the establishment of a smart rival, the “Independent,” which worked on alternate days from Nelson’s “Bull” inn, Whitechapel, and the “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch Street, and leaving London every evening at 6 p.m. reached Manchester in twenty-four hours, he did manage to expedite the “Defiance” by two hours and a half. In that year it made the journey in twenty-four and half hours. In 1826 it had become the “Royal Defiance,” and, starting at 6.30 p.m., was at Manchester in twenty-four hours. These successive accelerations were probably due to William Chaplin, who seems to have become interested by degrees in the business so long carried on by Waterhouse, and to have finally succeeded him about 1825.