The Norwich Mail, by Newmarket and Bury, had in the meanwhile been abandoned by Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross,” and had been taken over by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage.” It was the only mail he had. He horsed it as far as Hockerill, and it is eminently unlikely that he and his partners down the road did much more than make both ends meet. For Post Office purposes the Mail was bound to go by Bury, which involved seven miles more than by the direct route, and it had to contend with the competition of the “Telegraph” day coach, going direct, and at an hour more convenient for travellers. So this Mail never loaded well, and coachmasters were not eager to contract for running it. The Post Office, accustomed to pay the quite small amounts of 2_d._ and 3_d._ a mile, paid 8_d._, and then 9_d._, per mile for this, to induce any one to work it at all, and it was contemplated to entrust the mail-bags to stage-coaches along this route, when the railway came and cut off stage and mail alike. This Norwich Mail was not without its adventures. It was nearly wrecked in the early morning of June 15th, 1817, when close to Newmarket, by a plough and harrow, placed in the middle of the road by some unknown scoundrels. The horses were pitifully injured. A year or so later it came into collision on the Heath with a waggon laden with straw. A lamp was broken by the force of the impact, and straw and waggon set ablaze and destroyed. Beside the coaches, there were many vans and waggons plying along the road, and some comparatively short-distance coaches. Thus there was the “Old Stortford” coach, daily, between London and Bishop’s Stortford, and the Saffron Walden coach, twice daily, from the “Bull,” Whitechapel; together with the Saffron Walden “Telegraph,” from the “Belle Sauvage,” on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Gilbey & Co.” had a coach plying the twelve miles between Bishop’s Stortford and Saffron Walden, twice daily. Coaching between London and Bishop’s Stortford ended when the “Northern and Eastern Railway”—long since amalgamated with the Great Eastern—was opened to that point, in 1841. All coaches between London and Norwich ceased to run early in 1846. III