“The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity.”—Pennant, 1739.

Long before wheeled conveyances of any kind were to be hired in this country, travellers were accustomed to ride post. To do so argued no connection with that great department we now call the Post Office, although that letter-carrying agency and the custom of riding post obtain their name from a common origin. The earliest provision for travelling post seems to have been in the reign of Henry VIII., when the office of “Master of the Postes” was established. Sir Brian Tuke then held that appointment, and to him were entrusted the arrangements for securing relays of horses on the four great post roads then recognised: the road from London to Dover, on which the carriers came from and went to foreign parts; the road to Plymouth, where the King’s dockyard was situated; and the great roads to Scotland and Chester, and on to Conway and Holyhead. These relays of horses were established exclusively for use of the despatch-riders who went on affairs of State; but by the time of Elizabeth these messengers were, as a favour, already accustomed to carry any letters that might be given into their charge and could be delivered without going out of their way; while travellers constantly called at the country post-houses, and on pretence of going on the Queen’s business, obtained the use of horses, which they rode to exhaustion, or overloaded, or even rode away with altogether.

These abuses were promptly suppressed when James I. came to the English throne. In 1603, the year of his accession, a proclamation was issued under which no person claiming to be on Government business was to be supplied with horses by the postmasters unless his application was supported by a document signed by one of the officers of State. The hire of horses for public business was fixed at twopence-halfpenny a mile, and in addition there was a small charge for the guide. A very arbitrary order was made that if the post-houses had not sufficient horses, the constables and the magistrates were to seize those of private owners and impress them into the service. Post-masters, who were salaried officials, were paid at the very meagre rate of from sixpence to three shillings a day. They were generally innkeepers on the main roads; otherwise it is difficult to see how they could have existed on these rates of pay. Evidently these were considered merely as retaining fees, and so, in order to give them a chance of earning a more living wage, they were permitted to let out horses to “others riding poste with horse and guide about their private business.” Those private and unofficial travellers could not demand to be supplied with horses at the official rate: what they were to pay was to be a matter between the post-masters and themselves. In practice, however, the tariff for Government riders ruled that for all horsemen, as made clear in Fynes Morison’s Itinerary, 1617, where he says that in the south and west of England and on the Great North Road as far as Berwick, post-horses were established at every ten miles or so at a charge of twopence-halfpenny a mile. It was necessary to have a guide to each stage, and it was customary to charge for baiting both the guide’s and the traveller’s horses, and to give the guide himself a few pence—usually a four-penny-piece, called “the guide’s groat”—on parting. It was cheaper and safer for several travellers to go together, for one guide would serve the whole company on each stage, and it was not prudent to travel alone. Morison says that, although hiring came expensive in one way, yet the speed it was possible to maintain saved time and consequent charges at the inns. The chief requisite, however, was strength of body and ability to endure the fatigue.

As to that, the horsemen of the period were, equally with those of over a hundred years later, mentioned by Pennant, “a hardy race.” In March, 1603, for example, Robert Cary, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, eager to be first in acclaiming James VI. of Scotland as James I. of England, left London so soon as the last breath had left the body of Queen Elizabeth, and rode the 401 miles to Edinburgh in three days. He reached Doncaster, 158 miles, the first night, Widdrington, 137 miles, the second, and gained Edinburgh, 106 miles, the third day, in spite of a severe fall by the way. About the same time a person named Coles rode from London to Shrewsbury in fourteen hours.

When Thomas Witherings was appointed Master of the Post, in 1635, the Post Office, as an institution for carrying the correspondence of the public, may be said to have started business, although as early as 1603 private persons were forbidden to make the carrying of letters a business. Like all such ordinances, this seemed made only to be broken every day. It was particularly unreasonable because, before Witherings came upon the scene in 1635 and reorganised the posts, there existed no means by which letters could be sent generally into the country. Only the post-riders on business of State on the four great roads were in the habit of taking letters, and their doing so was a matter of private arrangement.

The postmasters now, on the appointment of Witherings, first officially made acquaintance with letters, and their name began to take on something of its modern meaning. They still supplied horses to the King’s messengers and the King’s liege subjects, and held a monopoly in these businesses.

In 1657 the so-called “Post Office of England” was established by Act of Parliament, and the office of Postmaster-General created, in succession to that of Master of the Posts. His business was defined as “the exclusive right of carrying letters and the furnishing of post-horses,” and these two functions—the overlordship of what were officially known for generations afterwards as the “letter post” and the “travelling post”—the long line of Postmasters-General continued to exercise for a hundred and twenty-three years.

In 1658 the mileage the country postmasters were entitled to charge was, according to an advertisement of July 1st in that year, increased from twopence-halfpenny to threepence, and on the Chester Road, at least, there was no longer any obligation to take a guide:—

“The postmasters on the Chester Road, petitioning, have received order, and do accordingly publish the following advertisement: All gentlemen, merchants, and others who have occasion to travel between London and West Chester, Manchester, and Warrington, or any other town upon that road, for the accommodation of trade, dispatch of business, and ease of purse, upon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, between six and ten of the clock, at the house of Mr. Christopher Charteris, at the sign of the Hart’s Horns, in West Smithfield, and postmaster there, and at the postmaster of Chester, and at the postmaster of Warrington, may have a good and able horse or mare, furnished at threepence the mile, without the charge of a guide; and so likewise at the house of Mr. Thomas Challoner, postmaster at Stone in Staffordshire, upon every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, to go to London; and so likewise at all the several postmasters upon the road, who will have such set days, so many horses, with furniture, in readiness to furnish the riders, without any stay, to carry them to and from any of the places aforesaid in four days, as well to London as from thence, and to places nearer in less time, according as their occasions shall require, they engaging, at the first stage where they take horse, for the safe delivery of the same to the next immediate stage, and not to ride that horse any farther without consent of the postmaster, by whom he rides, and so from stage to stage to their journey’s end. All those who intend to ride this way are desired to give a little notice beforehand, if conveniently they can, to the several postmasters where they first take horse, whereby they may be furnished with as many horses as the riders shall require, with expedition. This undertaking began the 28th of June 1658, at all the places aforesaid, and so continues by the several postmasters.”

The Chester Road—the road to Ireland—was of great moment at that age. Indeed, it had been of importance for centuries past. It was in a lonely hollow near Flint, on his landing from Ireland, that Richard II. was waylaid in 1399 by Henry Bolingbroke, and his progress to London barred; and from Chester as well as from Milford Haven English expeditions were wont to sail—some carrying fire and sword across St. George’s Channel, and later ones taking English colonists to occupy and cultivate the lands from which the shiftless Irish had been driven. But it was not until the close of Elizabeth’s reign, when Ireland was subjugated, that this road began to be constantly travelled.

Under James I. the Irish chieftains came to these shores to swear fealty, and in the wild and whirling series of events that filled the years from 1641 to 1692 with horror, a continual flux and reflux of military travellers and trembling refugees came and went along these storied miles.

Already, in the year before the announcement of post-horses on the Chester Road, the first stage-coach of which we have any particulars had been established on this very route. It did not continue to Holyhead, for the individually sufficient reasons that no practicable road to that port existed for anything going on wheels, and that Chester itself, and Parkgate, a few miles down the estuary of the Dee, were the most convenient ports of embarkation for Ireland. No direct road to Holyhead existed until 1783, when coaches began to run to that port. Before that time, those who wished to cross from Holyhead generally rode horseback. Few ventured across country by Llangollen and Bettws-y-Coed; most, like Swift, leaving civilisation behind at Chester, took horse and guide, and going by Rhuddlan and Conway, dared the precipitous heights of that great headland called Penmaenmawr, or, even more greatly daring, crept round by the rocks underneath at ebb tide. Swift wrote two couplets for the inn that then stood beside the track on Penmaenmawr. As the traveller approached he read, on the swinging sign:—

while the returning wayfarer was cheered by:—

One personage, greatly daring, did in 1685 succeed in passing his carriage over this height. This was the Viceroy, Henry, Earl of Clarendon, who, ill enough advised to try for Holyhead, embarked his baggage at Chester, and essayed this perilous undertaking. “If the weather be good,” he wrote, before setting out, “we go under the rocks in our coaches.” But it was December, the weather was not good, and so they had to take to the hill-top. His Excellency had ample cause to regret the venture, for he was five hours travelling the fourteen miles between St. Asaph and Conway, and on the crossing of Penmaenmawr the “great heavy coach” had to be drawn by the horses in single trace, while three or four sturdy Welsh peasants, hired for the job, pushed behind, so that it should not slip back. His Excellency walked all the way across, from Conway to Bangor, and Lady Clarendon was carried in a litter. How the Menai Straits were crossed does not appear, but there is evidence in the tone of his letters that he was astonished at last to find himself safely come to Holyhead.

In 1660, on the Restoration, the law of 1657, constituting the Post Office and regulating the letting of post-horses, was re-enacted. By some new provisions and amendments of old ones, travellers might now hire horses wherever they could if the postmasters could not supply them within half an hour. This concession, together with that which repealed the power given by the earlier Act for horses to be seized, was evidently made in deference to the indignation of travellers delayed by lack of horses in the hands of the only persons who could legally hire them out, and by the fury of private individuals who had seen their own choice animals not infrequently requisitioned in the King’s name and hack-ridden unconscionable distances by travellers or King’s messengers whose first and last thoughts were for speed, and who had not the consideration of an owner for the steeds that carried them. The term “postage,” occurring in the Act of 1660, shows that a widely different meaning was then attached to the word: “Each horse’s hire or postage” is a phrase that sufficiently explains itself.

Such were the methods and costs of riding horseback when stage-coaching began. The Government monopoly, however, was infringed with increasing impunity as time went on, and as the letter-carrying business of the Post Office developed, so was the “travelling post” allowed to decay. The growing number and increasing convenience of the coaches, too, helped to make the monopoly less valuable, for when travellers could be conveyed without exertion by coach at from twopence to threepence a mile, they were not likely to pay threepence a mile and a guide’s groat at every ten miles for the privilege of bumping in the saddle all day long. Those who mostly continued in the saddle were the gentlemen who owned horses of their own, or those others to whom the chance company of a coach was objectionable.

The Post Office monopoly in post-horses was, accordingly, not worth preserving when it was abolished by the Act of 1780. From that time the Postmasters-General ceased to have anything to do with horse-hire, and anything lost by their relinquishing it was amply returned to the State by the new license duties levied upon horse-keepers or postmasters, and coaches. A penny a mile was fixed as the Government duty upon horses let out for hire, whether saddle-horses or to be used in post-chaises. All persons who made that a business—generally, of course, innkeepers—were to take out an annual five-shilling license, and were under obligation to paint in some conspicuous place on their houses “Licensed to let Post-Horses.” In default of so doing the penalty was £5. As a check upon the business done, travellers hiring post-horses were to be given a ticket, on which the number of horses so hired, and the distance, were to be specified. These tickets were to be delivered to the turnpike-keeper at the first gate, and the vigilance of these officials was made a matter of self-interest by the allowance to them of threepence in the pound on all tickets thus collected. At certain periods the tickets were delivered to the Stamp Office, and the innkeepers and postmasters themselves were visited by revenue officers, who required to see the books and the counterfoils from which these tickets had come.

But the Government did not for any length of time directly collect these duties. They were farmed out by the Inland Revenue Department, just as the turnpike tolls were farmed by the Turnpike Trustees, and men grew rich by buying these tolls and duties at annual auctions, relying for their profit on the increased vigilance they would cause to be exercised. The Jews were early in this field. In the golden era of coaching a man named Levy farmed tolls and duties to the annual value of half a million sterling.

But to return to our horsemen. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the country gentlemen, the members of Parliament, the judges on circuit, every hale and able-bodied man of means sufficient, rode his horse, or hired one on his journeys, for the reason that carriages could only slowly and with great difficulty and expense be made to move along the distant roads. The passage from Pennant’s recollections, quoted at the head of this chapter, shows the miseries made light of by the single gentlemen, and endured by those married ones whose wives rode behind them on a pillion and clutched them convulsively round the waist as the horse stumbled along.

Nor did stage-coaches immediately change this time-honoured way of getting about the country, for there existed an aristocratic prejudice against using public vehicles. Offensive persons who never owned carriages of their own were used to give themselves insufferable airs when journeying by coach, and hint, for the admiration or envy of their fellow-passengers, that an accident had happened to their own private equipage. Satirists of the time soon seized upon this contemptible resort of the snob, and used it to advantage in contemporary literature. Thus we find the committeeman’s wife in Sir Robert Howard’s comedy explaining her presence in the Reading coach to be owing to her own carriage being disordered, adding that if her husband knew she had been obliged to ride in the stage he would “make the house too hot to hold some.”

Here and there we find exceptions to this general rule. In the coach passing through Preston in 1662, one Parker was fellow-traveller with “persons of great qualitie, such as knightes and ladyes”; and on one occasion in 1682 the winter coach on its four days’ journey between Nottingham and London had for passenger Sir Ralph Knight, of Langold, Yorks; but the single gentlemen in good health continued for years after the introduction of stage-coaches to go on horseback, and when their families came to town they usually took the family chariot, and either contracted with stable-keepers for horses on the way, or else, taking their most powerful horses from the plough, harnessed four or six of them to their private vehicle, and so, with the driving of their best ploughman, came to the capital in state, much to the amusement of the fashionables of Piccadilly and St. James’s.

We must, however, suppose, from the fury of Cresset’s Reasons for Suppressing Stage Coaches, of 1662, that some of the less energetic among the country gentlemen had already succumbed to the discreditable practice of travelling in them. In his pages we learn something of what a horseman’s life on the road was like, and what he escaped by taking to the coach. The hardy race became soft and grievously enervated by the unwonted luxury; their muscles slackened, and they developed an infirmity of purpose that rendered them no longer able to “endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields”—trifling inconveniences and incidents of travel which, it appears, they had previously been accustomed to support with that cheerfulness or resignation with which one faces the inevitable and incurable.

But Cresset had other indictments, throwing a flood of light upon what the horseman endured in wear and tear of body, mind, and wearing apparel: “Most gentlemen, before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts, pistols, holsters, portmanteaus and hat-cases, which in these coaches they have little or no use for; for, when they rode on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear when they came to their journey’s end, or lay by the way; but in coaches a silk hat and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk stockings, and beaver hats, men ride in, and carry no other with them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they cannot avoid; whereas, in two or three journeys on horseback these clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were forced to have new ones very often, and that increased the consumption of the manufactures and the employment of the manufacturers; which travelling in coaches doth in no way do.”

Fortunately, the biographical literature of our country is rich in records of the horsemen who, still relying upon their own exertions and those of their willing steeds, rode long distances and left the toiling stage leagues behind them at the close of each day’s journey. Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, a pious and God-fearing antiquary who flourished at this time, gives us, on the other hand, the spectacle of one who generally rode horseback trying the coach by way of a change. He had occasion to visit London in February 1683, and as there was at that time no coach service between Leeds and London, he rode from Leeds to York to catch the stage, which seems to have kept the road in this particular winter. He rose at five one Saturday morning, and was at York by night, ready for the coach leaving for London on the Monday. Four years earlier he had scorned the coach, and did not now take it for sake of speed, for he commonly rode from Leeds to London in four days, and the York stage at this period of its career took six; so, including the two days expended in coming to York, he was clearly twice as long over the business. He looked forward to the coach journey with misgivings, “fearful of being confined to a coach for so many days with unsuitable persons and not one I know of.”

On other occasions, when he rode horseback, his diary is rich with picturesque incident. He finds the waters out on the road between Ware and Cheshunt, and waits until he and a party of other horsemen can be guided across by a safe way, and so avoid the pitiful fate of a poor higgler, who blundered into the raging torrent where the road should have been, and was swept away and drowned. He loses his way frequently on the high-road; shudders with apprehension when crossing Witham Common, near Stamford, “the place where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the highwayman”; and, with a companion, has a terrible fright at an inn at Topcliffe, where they miss their pistols for a while and suspect the innkeeper of sinister designs against them. Hence, at the safe conclusion of every journey, with humble and heartfelt thanks he inscribes: “God be thanked for his mercies to me and my poor family!”

In 1715, when John Gay wrote his entertaining poem, A Journey to Exeter, describing the adventures of a party of horsemen who rode down from London, things were, we may suppose, much better, for the travellers found amusement as well as toil on their way.

They took five days to ride to Exeter. The first night they slept at Hartley Row, 36 miles. The second day they left the modern route of the Exeter Road at Basingstoke, and, like some of the coaches about that time, struck out along the Winchester road as far as Popham Lane, where they branched off across the downs to Sutton and Stockbridge, at which town they halted the night, after a day’s journey of 30 miles. The third morning saw them making for Salisbury. Midway between Stockbridge and that city their road falls into the main road to Exeter. That night they were at Blandford. The fourth day took them to Axminster, and the fifth to Exeter:—

Dean Swift, too, was a frequent traveller on horseback, particularly on the Chester and Holyhead road. He seems once to have tried the Chester stage, and ever after to have taken to the saddle. Riding thus in 1710 from Chester to London in five days, he describes himself as “weary the first, almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest,” but “glad enough of the fatigue, which has served for exercise.” After making the journey from London to Holyhead and Dublin in 1726, he wrote to Pope, describing “the quick change” he had made in seven days from London to Dublin, “through many nations and languages unknown to the civilised world.” He had expected the enterprise, “with moderate fortune,” to take ten or eleven days. “I have often reflected,” he adds, “in how few hours, with a swift horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the Antipodes.” Swift was by no means indulging in playful banter when he wrote this. He felt a genuine cause for wonder in such expedition; and certainly if the rustic speech of rural England was like a strange and uncivilised tongue, how much more strange and uncivilised the languages of Wales and Ireland must have sounded!

The Dean’s last recorded journey was made in September 1727. The little memorandum-book, tattered and discoloured, in which he noted down many of its incidents is still in existence, and is not only a valuable document in the story of Swift’s life, but is equally precious and interesting as an intimate record of the daily trials and troubles of a traveller in those times, set down while he was still on his journey and thus echoing every passing feeling. Swift was in bad health and worse spirits when he wrote this diary at Holyhead, where he was detained for seven days by contrary winds. It was written for lack of employment afforded to a cultivated mind in the dreary little seaport, and under the influence of a great sorrow. “Stella” lay dying over in Ireland, and he, raging with impatience at Holyhead, filled his notebook with aimless scribbling. “All this to divert thinking,” he writes, sadly, in the midst of it.

The original notebook is still in existence, and is carefully preserved at the South Kensington Museum, to which it was bequeathed by John Forster. Inside its cover the handwriting of successive owners gives the relic an authentic pedigree, and Swift himself humorously declares how he came into possession of the blank book: “This book I stole from the Right Honourable George Dodington, Esq., one of the Lords of the Treasury, but the scribblings are all my own.” This George Dodington was George Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe.

On the first page are hastily-scribbled memoranda for appointments: “In Fleet Street, about a clerk of St. Patrick’s Cathedral”; “Spectacles for seventy years old”; “Godfrey in Southampton Street”; “Hungary waters and palsy drops.”

Then the Dean left London, riding horseback, with his servant, Watt, for company on another nag, and carrying his master’s travelling valise. The heavy luggage had been sent on by waggon to Chester. Watt, as we shall presently see, was a veritable Handy Andy, always doing the wrong thing, or the right thing in a wrong way. Swift carried the notebook in his pocket, without writing anything of his journey in it until Holyhead was reached.

A few unfinished lines on an old cassock, out at elbows, preface the diary, which begins abruptly: “Friday at 11 in the morning I left Chester. It was Sept. 22, 1727. I baited at a blind ale house 7 miles from Chester. I thence rode to Ridland (Rhuddlan), in all 22 miles. I lay there: bred, bed, meat and tolerable wine. I left Ridland a quarter after 4 morn on Saturday, slept, on Penmanmaur (Penmaenmawr), examined about my sign verses the Inn is to be on t’other side, therefore the verses to be changed.”A

Here, on the verge of the wild Welsh coast, the way was so uncertain and dangerous that travellers had of necessity to employ guides, who conducted them thence to Bangor, and across Anglesey to Holyhead. The roads in Anglesey were unworthy of the name, and only a little better than horse-tracks; while the inhabitants of the isle spoke only Welsh, and understood not a word of English. Nearly two hundred years have passed, but although the roads have been made good, the folks of Anglesey speak English no more than they did then, when the guides acted the part of interpreters as well.

Swift, therefore, is found at Conway, mentioning the guide who had already brought him safely over Penmaenmawr: “I baited at Conway, the guide going to another Inn; the maid of the old Inn saw me in the street and said that was my horse, she knew me. There I dined, and sent for Ned Holland, a Squire famous for being mentioned in Mr. Lyndsay’s verses to Day Morice. I there again saw Hook’s tomb, who was the 41st child of his mother, and had himself 27 children, he dyed about 1638. There is a note here that one of his posterity new furbished up the inscription. I had read in Abp. Williams’ Life that he was buryed in an obscure Church in North Wales. I enquired, and heard that it was atB ... Church, within a mile of Bangor, whither I was going. I went to the Church, the guide grumbling. I saw the Tomb with his Statue kneeling (in marble). It began thus (Hospes lege et relege quod in hoc obscuro sacello non expectares. Hic jacet omnium Praesulum celeberrimus). I came to Bangor and crossed the Ferry, a mile from it, where there is an Inn, which, if it be well kept, will break Bangor. There I lay; it was 22 miles from Holyhead.”

This was the “George” at Menai Straits, a house that until the building of Telford’s suspension bridge in 1825, flourished greatly on the traffic of the ferry that then plied between it and the opposite shore. Large additions have been made to the hotel, but the original wing that Swift knew is still in existence, and is a characteristic specimen of the architecture in vogue about the time of Queen Anne.

Swift unfortunately tells us nothing of the actual crossing of the Straits. He must have been up at an unconscionable hour, for he was already on the Anglesey side by four o’clock the next morning, Sunday: “I was on horseback at 4 in the morning resolving to be at Church at Holyhead, but we then lost Owain Tudor’s tomb at Penmarry.” This was Penmynydd, a very steep and craggy place, whence came those Tudors who through the fortunate marriage of Owain Tudor came at last to the throne of England.

“We passed the place,” says Swift, “being a little out of the way, by the Guide’s knavery, who had no mind to stay. I was now so weary with riding that I was forced to stop at Langueveny (Llangefni), 7 miles from the Ferry, and rest two hours. Then I went on very weary, but in a few miles more Watt’s horse lost his two fore-shoes. So the Horse was forced to limp after us. The Guide was less concerned than I. In a few miles more my Horse lost a fore-shoe and could not go on the rocky ways. I walked above two miles, to spare him. It was Sunday, and no Smith to be got. At last there was a Smith in the way: we left the Guide to shoe the horses and walked to a hedge Inn 3 miles from Holyhead. There I stayed an hour with no ale to be drunk. A boat offered, and I went by sea and sayled in it to Holyhead. The Guide came about the same time. I dined with an old Innkeeper, Mrs. Welch, about 3, on a Loyne of mutton very good, but the worst ale in the world, and no wine, for the day before I came here a vast number went to Ireland after having drunk out all the wine. There was stale beer, and I tryed a receit of Oyster shells which I got powdered on purpose; but it was good for nothing. I walked on the rocks in the evening, and then went to bed and dreamt I had got 20 falls from my Horse.

“Monday, Sept. 25.—The Captain talks of sailing at 12. The talk goes off, the wind is fair, but he says it is too fierce. I believe he wants more Company. I had a raw Chicken for dinner and Brandy with water for my drink. I walked morning and afternoon among the rocks. This evening Watt tells me that my landady whispered him that the Grafton packet-boat just come in had brought her 18 bottles of Irish Claret. I secured one, and supped on part of a neat’s tongue which a friend at London had given Watt to put up for me, and drank a pint of the wine, which was bad enough. Not a soul is yet come to Holyhead, except a young fellow who smiles when he meets me and would fain be my companion, but it has not come to that yet. I writ abundance of verses this day; and several useful hints, tho’ I say it. I went to bed at ten and dreamt abundance of nonsense.

“Tuesday 26th.—I am forced to wear a shirt 3 days for fear of being lowsy. I was sparing of them all the way. It was a mercy there were 6 clean when I left London;—otherwise Watt (whose blunders would bear an history) would have got them all in the great Box of goods which went by the Carrier to Chester. He brought but one crevat, and the reason he gave was because the rest were foul and he thought he should not get foul linen into the Portmanteau. For he never dreamt it might be washed on the way. My shirts are all foul now, and by his reasoning I fear he will leave them at Holyhead when we go. I got a small Loyn of mutton but so tough I could not chew it, and drank my second pint of wine. I walked this morning a good way among the rocks, and to a hole in one of them from whence at certain periods the water spurted up several feet high. It rained all night and hath rained since dinner. But now the sun shines and I will take my afternoon walk. It was fiercer and wilder weather than yesterday, yet the Captain now dreams of sailing. To say the truth Michaelmas is the worst season in the year. Is this strange stuff? Why, what would you have me do? I have writ verses and put down hints till I am weary. I see no creature. I cannot read by candle-light. Sleeping will make me sick. I reckon myself fixed here, and have a mind like Marshall Tallard to take a house and garden. I wish you a Merry Christmas and expect to see you by Candlemas. I have walked this morning about 3 miles on the rocks; my giddiness, God be thanked, is almost gone and my hearing continues. I am now retired to my chamber to scribble or sit humdrum. The night is fair and they pretend to have some hopes of going to-morrow.

“September 26th.—Thoughts upon being confined at Holyhead. If this were to be my settlement during life I could content myself a while by forming new conveniences to be easy, and should not be frightened either by the solitude or the meanness of lodging, eating or drinking. I shall say nothing about the suspense I am in about my dearest friend because that is a case extraordinary, and therefore by way of comfort. I will speak as if it were not in my thoughts, and only as a passenger who is in a scurvy, unprovided comfortless place without one companion, and who therefore wants to be at home where he hath all conveniences proper for a gentleman of quality. I cannot read at night, and I have no books to read in the day. I have no subject at present in my head to write upon. I dare not send my linen to be washed for fear of being called away at half an hour’s warning, and then I must leave them behind, which is a serious Point. I live at great expense without one comfortable bit or sup. I am afraid of joyning with passengers for fear of getting acquaintance with Irish. The days are short and I have five hours a night to spend by myself before I go to Bed. I should be glad to converse with Farmers or shopkeepers, but none of them speak English. A Dog is better company than the Vicar, for I remember him of old. What can I do but write everything that comes into my head? Watt is a booby of that species which I dare not suffer to be familiar with me, for he would ramp on my shoulders in half an hour. But the worst part is in my half-hourly longing, and hopes and vain expectations of a wind, so that I live in suspense which is the worst circumstance of human nature. I am a little wrung from two scurvy disorders, and if I should relapse there is not a Welsh house-cur that would not have more care taken of him than I, and whose loss would not be more lamented. I confine myself to my narrow chamber in all unwalkable hours. The Master of the pacquet-boat, one Jones, hath not treated me with the least civility, although Watt gave him my name. In short I come from being used like an Emperor to be used worse than a Dog at Holyhead. Yet my hat is worn to pieces by answering the civilities of the poor inhabitants as they pass by. The women might be safe enough who all wear hats yet never pull them off, and if the dirty streets did not foul their petticoats by courtesying so low. Look you; be not impatient, for I only wait till my watch makes 10 and then I will give you ease and myself sleep, if I can. O’ my conscience you may know a Welsh dog as well as a Welsh man or woman, by its peevish passionate way of barking. This paper shall serve to answer all your questions about my journey, and I will have it printed to satisfy the kingdom. Forsan et haec olim is a damned lye, for I shall always fret at the remembrance of this imprisonment. Pray pity your Watt for he is called dunce, puppy and lyar 500 times an hour, and yet he means not ill for he means nothing. Oh for a dozen bottles of Deanery wine and a slice of bread and butter! The wine you sent us yesterday is a little upon the sour. I wish you had chosen a better. I am going to bed at ten o’clock because I am weary of being up.

“Wednesday.—To-day we were certainly to sayl: the morning was calm. Watt and I walked up the mountain Marucia, properly called Holyhead or Sacrum Promontorium by Ptolemy, 2 miles from this town. I took breath 59 times. I looked from the top to see the Wicklow hills, but the day was too hazy, which I felt to my sorrow; for returning we were overtaken by a furious shower. I got into a Welsh cabin almost as bad as an Irish one. There were only an old Welsh woman sifting flour who understood no English, and a boy who fell a roaring for fear of me. Watt (otherwise called unfortunate Jack) ran home for my coat, but stayed so long that I came home in worse rain without him, and he was so lucky to miss me, but took good care to convey the key of my room where a fire was ready for me. So I cooled my heels in the Parlour till he came, but called for a glass of Brandy. I have been cooking myself dry, and am now in my night gown.... And so I wait for dinner. I shall dine like a King all alone, as I have done these six days. As it happened, if I had gone straight from Chester to Park-gate 8 miles I should have been in Dublin on Sunday last. Now Michaelmas approaches, the worst time in the year for the sea, and this rain has made these parts unwalkable, so I must either write or doze. Bite, when we were in the wild cabin I order Watt to take a cloth and wipe my wet gown and cassock: it happened to be a meal-bag, and as my gown dryed it was all daubed with flour well cemented with the rain. What do I but see the gown and cassock well dryed in my room, and while Watt was at dinner I was an hour rubbing the meal out of them, and did it exactly. He is just come up, and I have gravely bid him take them down to rub them, and I wait whether he will find out what I have been doing. The Rogue is come up in six minutes, and says there were but few specks (tho’ he saw a thousand at first), but neither wondered at it, nor seemed to suspect me who laboured like a horse to rub them out. The 3 packet boats are now all on their side, and the weather grown worse, and so much rain that there is an end of my walking. I wish you would send me word how I shall dispose of my time. I am as insignificant a person here as parson Brooke is in Dublin; by my conscience I believe Cæsar would be the same without his army at his back. Well, the longer I stay here the more you will murmur for want of packets. Whoever would wish to live long should live here, for a day is longer than a week, and if the weather be foul, as long as a fortnight. Yet here I could live with two or three friends in a warm house and good wine; much better than being a slave in Ireland. But my misery is that I am in the very worst part of Wales under the very worst circumstances, afraid of a relapse, in utmost solitude, impatient for the condition of our friend, not a soul to converse with, hindered from exercise by rain, caged up in a room not half so large as one of the Deanery closets; my Room smokes into the bargain, but the weather is too cold and moist to be without a fire. There is or should be a proverb here: When Mrs. Welch’s chimney smokes, ’Tis a sign she’ll keep her folks, But when of smoke the room is clear, It is a sign we shan’t stay here. All this to divert thinking. Tell me, am not I a comfortable wag? The Yatcht is to leave for Lord Carteret on the 14th of October. I fancy he and I shall come over together. I have opened my door to let in the wind that it may drive out the smoke. I asked the wind why he is so cross; he assures me ’tis not his fault, but his cursed Master, Eolus’s. Here is a young Jackanapes in the Inn waiting for a wind who would fain be my companion, and if I stay here much longer I am afraid all my pride and grandeur will truckle to comply with him, especially if I finish these leaves that remain; but I will write close and do as the Devil did at mass, pull the paper with my teeth to make it hold out.

“Thursday.—’Tis allowed that we learn patience by suffering. I have not spirit enough now left me to fret. I was so cunning these three last days that whenever I began to rage and storm at the weather I took special care to turn my face towards Ireland, in hope by my breath to push the wind forward. But now I give up.... Well, it is now three in the afternoon. I have dined and revisited the master; the wind and tide serve, and I am just taking boat to go to the ship. So adieu till I see you at the Deanery.

“Friday, Michaelmas Day.—You will now know something of what it is to be at sea. We had not been half an hour in the ship till a fierce wind rose directly against us; we tryed a good while, but the storm still continued; so we turned back, and it was 8 at night dark and rainy before the ship got back, and at anchor. The other passengers went back in a boat to Holyhead; but to prevent accidents and broken shins I lay all night on board, and came back this morning at 8. Am now in my chamber, where I must stay and get a fresh stock of patience.”