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‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrow-bridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other Monday morning and to go to Burrow-bridge on Saturday night; and to set out thence on Monday morning and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,

‘Hosea Eastgate.

‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’

Before the end of the century the frequency, comfort, and speed of the coaches had been considerably increased. Palmer, of the Bath Theatre, led the way in this reform, and in the year 1788 organised a service from London to Glasgow, which accomplished the distance of rather more than 400 miles in sixty-five hours. Ten years later, Lord Chancellor Campbell travelled by the same system of coaches between Edinburgh and London, and he states that in 1798 he ‘performed the journey in three nights and two days, Mr. Palmer’s mail-coaches being then established; but this swift travelling was considered dangerous as well as wonderful,—and I was gravely advised to stop a day at York, “as several passengers who had gone through without stopping had died of apoplexy from the rapidity of the motion.” The whole distance may now (1847) be accomplished with ease and safety in fourteen hours.’2