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42
the rougher sports of cock-fighting and bull-baiting were
popular, as were also the periodical debaucheries of various
fairs. The playhouses had, to quote the strong expression
of Burnet in his history, become "nests of prostitution."
Skating had but recently been introduced from Holland, and
cricket was still to be invented. Horse-racing was already in
fashion, although the breeding of racehorses in England had
not yet commenced. Steeplechasing was as yet unknown.
The means of communication between distant parts of the
country were most defective. Neither canals nor Macadam
roads had yet been devised, and many modes of conveyance
which have long since become obsolete were unused.
Until the reign of Elizabeth, coaches were unknown in
England, and prior to their introduction in the year 1580,
the Queen made her progress through her realm on horseback,
riding on her pillion behind her Chamberlain. Since that
time, however, together with changes making a greater stir,
a quiet revolution had been going on with regard to the mode
of travelling, and equestrianism was gradually making way
for vehicles. The mails of those times were, indeed, still
conveyed on horseback, and the packhorse, in a troop of from
forty to fifty, was still to be frequently met with, although
the carriers' wagons were beginning to supplant them within
a radius of a couple of hundred miles from London. Great
personages, on their occasional pilgrimages to the Metropolis,
almost resembled a caravan in the number of servants and
animals employed on the journey. Public Coaches do not
appear to have been used in England to any extent until the
Restoration, and their increase was by no means hailed with
general satisfaction. "A lover of his country," writing in
1673, deplores the loss which would result from the economies
effected by the new mode of travelling, and although he does
not so thoroughly object to the long wagon of the carrier,
which had been introduced some eighty years, and had