winter, and withal ride long journeys. But there is no place in the world where passengers may so freely command as in the English inns, and are attended for themselves and their horses as well as if they were at home, and perhaps better, each servant being ready at call, in hope of a small reward in the morning. Neither did I ever see inns so well furnished with household stuff.

Coaches and hackneys

Coaches are not to be hired anywhere but only at London; and howsoever England is for the most part plain, or consisting of pleasant hills, yet the ways far from London are so dirty as hired coachmen do not ordinarily take any long journeys, but only for one or two days any way from London, the ways so far being sandy and very fair and continually kept so by labour of hands. And for a day's journey, a coach with two horses used to be let for some ten shillings the day (or the way being short for some eight shillings, so as the passengers paid for the horses' meat) or some fifteen shillings a day for three horses, the coachman paying for his horses' meat. Sixty or seventy years ago coaches were very rare in England, but at this day pride is so far increased, as there be few gentlemen of any account (I mean elder brothers) who have not their coaches, so as the streets of London are almost stopped up with them. Yea, they who only respect comeliness and profit, and are thought free from pride, yet have coaches; because they find the keeping thereof more commodious and profitable than of horses, since two or three coach-horses will draw four or five persons, besides the commodity of carrying many necessaries in a coach. For the most part Englishmen, especially in long journeys, use to ride upon their own horses. But if any will hire a horse, at London they use to pay two shillings the first day, and twelve or perhaps eighteen pence a day for as many days as they keep him, till the horse be brought home to the owner, and the passenger must either bring him back, or pay for the sending of him, and find him meat both going and coming. In other parts of England a man may hire a horse for twelve pence a day, finding him meat and bringing or sending him back; and if the journey be long, he may hire him at a convenient rate for a month or two.

Carriers

Likewise carriers let horses from city to city, with caution that the passenger must lodge in their inn, that they may look to the feeding of their horses, and so they will for some five or six days' journey let him a horse, and find the horse meat themselves for some twenty shillings. Lastly, these carriers have long covered waggons, in which they carry passengers from city to city: but this kind of journeying is so tedious, by reason they must take waggon very early, and come very late to their inns, as none but women and people of inferior condition, or strangers (as Flemings with their wives and servants) use to travel in this sort.

FYNES MORYSON, Itinerary 1617

A carrier is his own hackneyman, for he lets himself out to travel as well as his horses. He is the ordinary ambassador between friend and friend, the father and the son, and brings rich presents to the one, but never returns any back again. He is no unlettered man, though in shew simple, for questionless he has much in his budget which he can utter too in fit time and place. He is like the vault in Gloucester church, that conveys whispers at a distance; for he takes the sound out of your mouth at York, and makes it be heard as far as London. He is the young students' joy and expectation, and the most accepted guest, to whom they lend a willing hand to discharge him of his burden. His first greeting is, "Your friends are well"; then in a piece of gold delivers their blessing. You would think him a churlish blunt fellow, but they find in him many tokens of humanity. He is a great afflicter of the highways, and beats them out of measure; which injury is sometimes revenged by the purse-taker, and then the voyage miscarries. No man domineers more in his inn, nor calls his host unreverently with more presumption, and this arrogance proceeds out of the strength of his horses. He forgets not his load where he takes his ease, for he is drunk commonly before he goes to bed. He is like the prodigal child still packing away, and still returning again. But let him pass.

JOHN EARLE, Micro-cosmographie 1628

English Inns

Servants in league with highwaymen

Chamberlain. Good morrow, Master Gadshill.

It holds current that I told you yesternight : there's a franklin in the wild of Kent hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold: I heard him tell it to one of his company last night at supper; a kind of auditor; one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are up already and call for eggs and butter: they will away presently.

*

Gadshill. Give me thy hand: thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as I am a true man.

Chamberlain. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief. 1 Henry IV., 11. i. 58—103

Those towns that we call thoroughfares have great and sumptuous inns builded in them for the receiving of such travellers and strangers as pass to and fro. The manner of harbouring wherein is not like to that of some other countries in which the host or goodman of the house doth challenge a lordly authority over his guests, but clean otherwise, sith every man may use his inn as his own house in England and have for his money how great or little variety of victuals, and what other service himself shall think expedient to call for. Our inns are also very well furnished with napery, bedding and tapestry, especially with napery: for beside the linen used at the tables, which is commonly washed daily, is such and so much as belongeth unto the estate and calling of the guest. Each comer is sure to lie in clean sheets, wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the laundress or out of the water wherein they were last washed. If the traveller have an horse, his bed doth cost him nothing, but if he go on foot he is sure to pay a penny for the same: but whether he be horseman or footman if his chamber be once appointed he may carry the key with him, as of his own house, so long as he lodgeth there. If he lose ought whilst he abideth in the inn, the host is bound by a general custom to restore the damage, so that there is no greater security anywhere for travellers than in the greatest inns of England. Their horses in like sort are walked, dressed and looked unto by certain hostlers or hired servants, appointed at the charges of the goodman of the house, who in

hope of extraordinary reward will deal very diligently, after outward appearance, in this their function and calling. Herein nevertheless are many of them blameworthy, in that they do not only deceive the beast oftentimes of his allowance by sundry means, except their owners look well to them; but also make such packs with slipper merchants which hunt after prey (for what place is sure from evil and wicked persons?) that many an honest man is spoiled of his goods as he travelleth to and fro, in which feat also the counsel of the tapsters or drawers of drink, and chamberlains is not seldom behind or wanting. Certes I believe that not a chapman or traveller in England is robbed by the way without the knowledge of some of them; for when he cometh into the inn, and alighteth from his horse, the hostler forthwith is very busy to take down his budget or capcase in the yard from his saddle-bow, which he peiseth slyly in his hand to feel the weight thereof or if he miss of this pitch, when the guest hath taken up his chamber, the chamberlain that looketh to the making of the beds will be sure to remove it from the place where the owner hath set it, as if it were to set it more conveniently somewhere else, whereby he getteth an inkling whether it be money or other sort wares, and thereof giveth warning to such odd guests as haunt the house and are of his confederacy, to the utter undoing of many an honest yeoman as he journeyeth by the way. The tapster in like sort for his part doth mark his behaviour, and what plenty of money he draweth when he payeth the shot, to the like end: so that it shall be an hard matter to escape all their subtle practices. Some think it a gay matter to commit their budgets at their coming to the goodman of the house: but thereby they oft bewray themselves. For albeit their money be safe for the time that it is in his hands (for you shall not hear that a man is robbed in his inn) yet after their departure the host can make no warrantise of the same, sith his protection extendeth no further than the gate of his own house: and there cannot be a surer token unto such as pry and watch for those booties, than to see any guest deliver his capcase in such

manner.

In all our inns we have plenty of ale, beer and sundry kinds of wine, and such is the capacity of some of them that they are able to lodge two hundred or three hundred persons and their

horses at ease, and thereto with a very short warning make such provision for their diet, as to him that is unacquainted withal may seem to be incredible. Howbeit of all in England there are no worse inns than in London, and yet many are there far better than the best that I have heard of in any foreign country, if all circumstances be duly considered...And it is a world to see how each owner of them contendeth with other for goodness of entertainment of their guests, as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink, variety of wines, or well using of horses. Finally there is not so much omitted among them as the gorgeousness of their very signs at their doors, wherein some do consume thirty or forty pounds, a mere vanity in mine opinion; but so vain will they needs be, and that not only to give some outward token of the inn-keeper's wealth, but also to procure good guests to the frequenting of their houses in hope there to be well used.

WILLIAM HARRISON, Description of England 1587 (2nd ed.)

Highwaymen on Gadshill

First Traveller. Come, neighbour; the boy shall lead our horses down the hill; we'll walk afoot awhile, and ease our legs.

Thieves. Stand!

Travellers. Jesu bless us !

Falstaff. Strike; down with them; cut the villains' throats: ah! whoreson caterpillars! bacon-fed knaves! they hate us youth: down with them; fleece them. 1 Henry IV., II. ii. 86—95

Afterwards his Highness rode back again [from Rochester] to Gravesend, the night being as dark as pitch and the wind high and boisterous; he slept there that night. On the road, however, an Englishman, with a drawn sword in his hand, came upon us unawares and ran after us as fast as he could; perhaps he expected to find other persons, for it is very probable that he had an ambush, as that particular part of the road is not the most safe.

Visit of Frederick, Duke of Würtemberg, 1592 [Rye]