The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
Page 25
Foreign men visiting England have fewer qualms about travelling by coach. Some German and Swiss tourists find English saddles uncomfortable, so they hire coaches. Thomas Platter and his fellow travellers are so sick of riding hired horses by the time they reach Canterbury in September 1599 that they swap their steeds for a two-wheeled long cart and a team of five horses (a medieval arrangement, in which the horses are all tethered in a long line). Platter and his companions travel through the night in that vehicle, arriving at Rochester at four in the morning. More comfortable, four-wheeled coaches are available for hire in London, at a rate of 16s per day plus food for the coachman and feed for the horses. Bear in mind that, if you stop at an inn and your driver hears that the road ahead is very boggy, he may refuse to take his coach that way. Coaches are very easily damaged on the rough roads, and repairs are cripplingly expensive for the coachman.
This expansion of wheeled traffic causes a hostile reaction in some quarters, especially in London, where fulminations against speeding coaches are just as vehement as those against motor cars three centuries later. Inevitably there are accidents. In 1562 twelve-year-old Bridget Serten is killed when a cart crushes her against the wall of Aldgate.17 In his Survay of London, John Stow writes:
The number of cars, drays, carts and coaches more than hath been accustomed, the streets and lanes being straightened, must needs be dangerous, as daily experience proveth. The coachman rides behind the horse tails, lasheth them and looketh not behind him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse lead him home. I know that by the good laws and customs of this city shod carts [carts with iron tires on their wheels] are forbidden to enter the same, except upon reasonable causes … also that the forehorse of every carriage should be led by hand – but these good orders are not observed … Now of late years the use of coaches brought out of Germany is taken up and made so common as there is neither distinction of time nor difference of persons observed; for the world runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.18
John Taylor, a waterman on the Thames and a poet in his spare time, echoes this complaint; but his main concern is the loss of business. ‘This is the rattling, rowling, rumbling age, and the world runs on wheels,’ he writes. ‘The hackneymen who were wont to have furnished travellers in all places with fitting and serviceable horses for any journey (by the multitude of coaches) are undone by the dozen …’ Elsewhere he puts his complaint into verse:
Caroches, coaches, jades and Flanders mares
Do rob us of our shares, our wares and fares;
Against the ground we stand and knock our heels
While all our profit runs away on wheels.19
For such reasons a Bill is presented to Parliament in 1601 proposing the limitation of the use of coaches. It is read twice and then rejected.20
THE STATE OF THE ROADS
The driver who refuses to drive his cart along a certain road is not just being precious. Roman and medieval roads were intended for people and animals on foot, not for coaches with iron-tired wheels. According to William Harrison, ‘in the clay or cledgy soil [the roads] are very deep and troublesome in the winter half …’ In towns too the vast majority of roads are not paved. Gravel is put down at the worst-affected junctions to soak up the mud, but otherwise carts must pass over deep ruts of dry mud or soft wet soil. Any extant stones of Roman paved roads near the surface are likely to be more of a hindrance than a help for a coachman. Landowners and tenants of land bordering on the highways are meant to maintain the ditches that drain the roads, but they do not always do so. Once soaked by a blocked drain, the road quickly turns into a quagmire.
Driving a coach or cart through a town is just as hazardous. Many people have nowhere to stack firewood other than in the street, sometimes under the eaves of their houses, but sometimes partly blocking the way. Many towns have bye-laws forbidding this; nevertheless it is a perennial problem. Crates, branches and trunks of trees, broken wagons awaiting repairs, split timber, barrels and troughs are all likely to be found in the streets. People dig in the roads for sand or clay to daub their wattle buildings and leave great holes. Sawpits, often more than six feet deep, are no less dangerous, especially where dug directly beside the road so that large trunks can be easily offloaded. People are fined for digging wells in or just beside the highway; in 1573 a servant girl of Rettendon falls into a roadside well and drowns.21
Some modern historians claim that nothing is done to improve the state of communications in Elizabeth’s reign.22 But that is not true. Several Acts of Parliament to remedy the poor state of the roads are passed, the most important of which just pre-dates Elizabeth’s accession. The Act of 1555 establishes the process whereby the churchwardens in every parish appoint two surveyors of the highways at Easter. These surveyors announce four days in the year on which all parishioners will repair the roads. Every farmer must send a cart with two of his men and every cottager has to give his own labour, or else be fined heavily. This legislation is greatly extended in scope by a second Act in 1563, which purposefully envisages a reform of communications in England. It restricts the size of gravel and sand pits, enforces the digging and scouring of ditches and drains beside the main roads, allows surveyors to take small stones freely from quarries to mend the roads, increases the number of days to be devoted to road works to six in each year, and raises the fines that have to be paid by defaulters. In 1576 a third Act amplifies and extends the existing legislation. In addition, Acts are passed for the repair of particular stretches of road, such as the highways in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, in 1585 and 1597.23 If you travel in the summer you can see the law being obeyed – at least in part. In 1581 in Great Easton, Essex, two dozen farmers and cottagers send their carts or offer their labour to help with highway maintenance; twenty-seven others pay fines of 10s for not providing a cart or 12d a day for not working, and these fines are spent on further work on the highways.24 William Harrison confirms that, in general, the wealthy prefer to pay the fines, so that on average only two of the six days are worked by everyone.25
The fundamental problem with the whole approach is that the people who are expected to do all the work do not significantly benefit from it. Most of them travel on foot or on horseback: they have little need or inclination to rebuild the roads for the benefit of wealthy coach passengers – rich women and ‘effeminate’ men – or royal messengers. The majority of country folk simply walk round the quagmires in winter and step over the hardened ruts in summer; they can live with these obstacles. Not until the burden is placed on the road user does it become economically feasible to maintain the highways properly – and that will not happen for another century.
BRIDGES
Chapter 1 began with the observation that ‘different societies see landscapes differently’. It won’t take you long to realise that different societies think of the landscape differently too. Whereas most modern people think of England in terms of a road network, most Elizabethans think in terms of a network of rivers. John Leland, writing in the late 1530s, describes the rivers in every county he visits. The River Alre in Hampshire, for example, rises a good mile above Alresford and flows into Alresford Pond, ‘then it commeth into a narrow bottom and runneth through a stone bridge at the end of Alresford Town, leaving it on the left hand or ripe [bank]’. He continues to describe the flow of the river downstream to Itchen Stoke village, ‘where there is a little bridge for horses and footmen’, and then beyond that to Eston, ‘where there is a wooden bridge for carts’. It flows on through Worthy to the East Bridge at Winchester, ‘having two arches of stone’; further downstream he notes another wooden bridge, called Black Bridge. Similarly he lists the bridges on the River Teign in Devon, starting at Chagford ‘four or five miles from the head’ of the river, and progressing down to the next one, four miles downstream, at Clifford Bridge; then another at Bridford four miles further on, and another at Chudleigh, five miles beyond that. Leland is mapping the country by its rivers and bri
dges. This, in fact, remains a common way of thinking about the country well into the next century.26
There are many different types of bridge. London Bridge has already been described, as has Hugh Clopton’s fourteen-arch bridge at Stratford-upon-Avon. You will see other impressive medieval bridges elsewhere: the eleven-arch stone bridge over the Medway at Rochester, the eighteen-arch stone bridge over the Exe at Exeter and the bridge over the Thames at Wallingford, which has twenty-two arches. Most are more modest, however, and often made of timber. Leland records several wooden bridges over the River Kennet near the important town of Reading. There are even still timber bridges over the Thames, at Caversham and Sonning. Note that just because a bridge is built of stone does not mean that it is better than a wooden one. Some old stone bridges are very narrow – four to five feet is not unusual in rural areas. Like the bridges over the Alre, many have been designed to carry nothing wider than a man and a packhorse or a small cart; they cannot accommodate wide coaches, especially if the coachman tethers his horses in pairs rather than in the old way, all in a line. Improving the highways seems pointless if vehicles cannot traverse the rivers.
Not all bridges are in good repair. You will take one look at some of them and fear that you are taking your life in your hands. In winter the heavy water flow disturbs the piers, even if they are made of stone, and this in turn weakens the superstructure; wooden bridges often tumble into the fury of a river in full spate. The Bridges Act of 1530 empowers magistrates to determine those responsible for the upkeep of a bridge and to levy a charge if they fail in their duty. But this does not always solve the problem. Bridges cross rivers which normally mark the ancient boundaries between two landholdings; and where there are two landowners, frequently neither one wants to take responsibility for a dilapidated bridge. Do the people want to pay for the bridge instead? No. So you have a case like that at Ingatestone in 1567: the bridge is ruinous and the magistrates determine that it is the responsibility of the landowners to repair it. Lord of the land on one side is Sir William Petre. Can the magistrates force Sir William to pay? They try – and try again the next year, and again the next. They are still trying to get the bridge repaired five years after it was first reported to be in a bad state.27 Nor is the queen any better at repairing rotten bridges. Although she is happy to endorse parliamentary Bills for bridges and roads to be mended at other people’s cost, she does little to repair the broken bridges on her own manors.28 Here too there seems to be a mismatch of liability and benefit. Only where an important bridge clearly benefits the local community are you likely to find it well cared for at municipal expense. When the floods of 1588 break both ends of the bridge at Stratford-upon-Avon, for example, the town authorities quickly see to its repair.29
HORSES
You will need a horse if you intend to travel along the roads of England. It is all very well saying that you don’t mind walking and would quite like the exercise – many people do walk the length and breadth of the country – but you will soon see the reason for having a mount. It has less to do with energy expenditure than status and keeping clean. Gentlemen and ladies do not walk along the highways: they either ride or are carried in a coach. The only other option is a litter. This is a compartment or carriage supported on two long poles. In towns it might be carried by servants: some women use them for shopping in preference to a coach, being easier to manoeuvre in the streets of a city. Travelling any distance, however, will require you to have a horse harness for the litter. Although old-fashioned in comparison to coaches, they are still in use among the aristocracy. In 1589 Sir Francis Willoughby asks the countess of Shrewsbury if his wife may borrow her horse litter.30 In some large towns you can hire them: in 1577 Lord North pays £1 16s 9d to hire one to take his sister to London from Kirtling in Cambridgeshire, and in 1599 Thomas Dier falls gravely ill in London and pays £1 2s for a horse litter to take him home to Sutton Courtenay, in Berkshire.31
Various types of horse are available. A palfrey is a good-quality riding horse, ideal for long distances. A courser is high and fast, excellent for hunting. English carthorses are famous for their strength: William Harrison claims that five or six of them will draw three thousandweight on a long journey, or four hundredweight if alone. Sumpter horses or packhorses are not for riding but for carrying bundles of goods. Harrison adds that horses bred for riding in England tend to be gelded; this makes them calmer in temperament than a stallion and suitable for female riders. (Remember that gentlewomen are expected to ride side-saddle, and that includes the wives of self-respecting yeomen too.) He also notes that many ‘outlandish horses’ have started to be imported, including Spanish jennets and Neapolitan coursers. Thomas Blundeville lists eleven types in The fower chiefyst offices belonging to horsemanshippe (1566), namely Turkish, Barbary, Sardinian/Corsican, Neapolitan courser, Spanish jennet, Hungarian, High Almain (German), Irish hobby, Flemish, Friesland and Swiss. They all have their distinct qualities. A Turkish horse will stop at nothing, bravely leaping over every obstacle. Barbary horses can gallop on the flat for ages. Flanders horses are huge and can draw massive weights, like modern shire horses. Spanish jennets are swift and prized by noblemen. ‘The Irish hobby’, Blundeville writes, ‘is a pretty fine horse, having a good head and a body indifferently well proportioned, saving that many of them be slender and pin-buttocked. They be tender mouthed, nimble, light, pleasant and apt to be taught, and for the most part they be amblers and therefore very mete for the saddle.’ His favourite, however, is the Neapolitan courser:
a trim horse being both comely and strongly made, and of so much goodness, of so gentle a nature and of so high a courage as any horse is … In my opinion their gentle nature and docility, their comely shape, their strength, their courage, their sure footmanship, their well-reining, their lofty pace, their clean trotting, their strong galloping and their swift running well considered … they excel numbers of other races.
When it comes to buying your own steed, you would be well advised to go straight to the most famous breeder in the country, Sir Nicholas Arnold. Alternatively, you might head to a horse fair, such as those at Ripon, Stourbridge and Smithfield (London). Qualities valued by contemporaries tend to include colour, shape of limbs and whether they have an easy ambling pace. Colour is not as obvious as you might think: it carries with it a mass of superstitions. Blundeville states that a white forefoot on the far side is a good sign, as is a white rear foot on the near side; but the opposite of these are indicators of an evil disposition. Any white rising high up the leg is a bad sign too. Prices vary hugely: expect to pay well in excess of £3 at a fair for a good riding horse – more for a really fine beast – but you might be able to pick up an adequate older horse for much less. Ask around in a village: someone will have a horse for sale privately, in the same way that people sell second-hand cars privately in the modern world. The average second-hand price is between £1 and £2 (the price increasing slowly over the course of the reign).32 However, you can find old horses going for 5s or less in the 1580s, and an untrained yearling colt can be picked up for 6s 8d.33
An alternative to buying a horse is to hire one. You can do this at many inns, where they are lent out to trustworthy clients. Or you might hire a post-horse. Early in the sixteenth century three post routes from London are established. One goes north to Berwick, on the Scottish border. Another goes to Dover – by way of Dartford, Rochester, Sittingbourne and Canterbury – and a third to Plymouth. Each ‘post’ is a series of stations, approximately twenty miles apart, where you can hire horses at the standard rate of 3d per mile (2½d if you are on government business), dropping off the horse at a another post house or station, and paying an extra 6d for the ‘post-boy’ to return it. In each place at least two horses have to be kept by law constantly ready day and night, fully harnessed, with two bags for any state packets that need to be carried. If you are travelling, you can ‘ride with the post’ on the other horse, the official messenger bringing it back. In some places more horses ar
e kept at the town’s expense (Leicester, for instance, keeps four).34 Sir Thomas Randolph is appointed chief postmaster in 1571 and briefly introduces a fourth post, to Beaumaris in Wales and across to Ireland; but this falters after five months and is not revived until 1598.35 Anyone can make use of the post in Elizabeth’s reign, but private packets have to go as ‘bye-letters’ – they can only be taken with the state packets, not separately. If you want to send a package privately, use a carrier: someone who regularly rides between towns transporting goods.
How fast will you be able to travel? This depends on several factors: the season, the weather, the cost of changing horses on a long-distance ride, and how long you can stay in the saddle. On dry roads in midsummer, presuming you have a strong backside and thighs, you should be able to keep going for the post’s minimum speed of seven miles per hour. People riding their own horses in a hurry to get to London from Exeter are able to do the 170-mile journey in three days. Riding back with the post to Dover in late October 1599, Thomas Platter manages to do the forty-four miles from Gravesend in five hours (nine miles an hour), which he calls ‘great speed’.36 In summer you should be able to cover a hundred miles in a day – if your thighs can withstand the strain. In winter, however, with the roads muddy and only eight hours of light, and with no change of horses, you will be very lucky to do much more than two or three miles an hour – twenty rain-soaked miserable miles in a day. The most impressive record is that set by Sir Robert Carey, who is given the task of riding from London to Scotland to announce to King James VI of Scotland that Queen Elizabeth is dead. He sets out between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of 25 March 1603 and reaches Doncaster that night, having covered 162 miles in one day. The following day he rides another 136 miles to his own house at Widdrington. Due to a bad fall on the afternoon of the third day, which leaves him with a bleeding head, he has to ride more slowly; but still he manages to complete the last ninety-nine miles to Edinburgh by nightfall. He rides the whole journey of 397 miles in three days, covering the first 347 miles in two days and three hours.37