Meanwhile, manufacturing England was coming into existence, and the growing necessities of trade had brought about an increase of coaches in other directions. Thus Birmingham, whose first direct communication with London has already been shown in existence in 1679, and again in 1731, had set up a “Flying Coach” in 1742, followed in 1758 by an “Improved Birmingham Coach,” with the legend “Friction Annihilated” prominent on the axle-boxes. This the _Annual Register_ declared to be “perhaps the most useful invention in mechanics this age has produced.” Much virtue lingered in that “perhaps,” for nothing more was heard of that wonderful device.
It was not until 1754 that Manchester and London were in direct communication. The desire of the provinces to get into touch with the metropolis has always been greater than that of London to commune with the country towns, and thus we see that it was an association of Manchester men who set up the “Flying Coach,” just as the citizens of Oxford and the good folks of Shrewsbury’s desire to travel to London established conveyances for that purpose, and just as that early railway, the London and Birmingham, was projected and financed at Birmingham, and should, strictly speaking, have been inversely named. But hear what the Manchester men of 1754 said:--
“However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.” The distance, it may be remarked, was 182 miles.
The ancient rivalry of Manchester and Liverpool was roused by this, and four years later the Liverpool “Flying Machine” was established, to travel the 206½ miles between Liverpool and London in three days. The fare, at £2 2s., thus represents about 2½d. a mile. This was followed by the Leeds “Flying Coach” of 1760, advertised to do the 190 miles in three days, by Barnsley, Wakefield, and Sheffield, but actually taking four.
Another great centre of coaching activity at this was Shrewsbury. Those who know that grand old town, seated majestically on its encircling Severn, that girdles the ancient blood-red walls with a flow as yellow as that of the Tiber, will have observed an ancient metropolitan air, an atmosphere of olden self-sufficiency, subtly characterising the place. It is complete in itself: within the double ceinture of river and hoary defensive walls it comprises something typical of each separate estate of the realm. The monarch and the governing idea are represented within that compass by the Castle and by the Council House, and all around are still to be seen the town houses of the old nobility and county families, neighboured by prosperous shops and smaller residences. Shrewsbury, like York and Edinburgh, is in fact an ancient seat of government, delegated directly from the Crown, once as vitally viceregal as the Viceroyalty of India is now and much more so than that of Ireland for long years past has been. Shrewsbury remained the capital of the Marches of Wales until 1689, and the history of the Council that thence ruled the border-lands is still singularly fresh. Nor did it lose its importance even with the abolition of that body; for, more than elsewhere, the town, until the railways came--suddenly breaking up the old order and centralising everything in London--was a centre of social life for wide surrounding districts. The titled and gentle families of Shropshire, Herefordshire and North Wales who had resorted to the old Court of the Marches continued to adorn Shrewsbury, which had its own fashionable season and its own self-contained interests. The whole social movement of those surrounding districts was centred here, and at a time when the great manufacturing future of England had not dawned, creating vastly populated cities and towns, Shrewsbury was not rivalled as a coaching centre even by Bath. A Shrewsbury coach was in existence in 1681, but the roads between the Salopian capital and London proved too bad, and it did not last long, nor was it succeeded by any other coach until the spring of 1753. Stage-waggons were on the road in the interval between 1737 and that date, but they did not fit the requirements of the gentlefolk, who, when they did not ride horseback or drive in their own chariots to London, posted across country to Ivetsey Bank, where they caught the Chester and London stage.