3-011-759 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Queen's Highway in the Sixteenth Century", by J. Hayllar, in the Winter Exhibition at the gallery of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours, 1864. Engraving of a painting. ' "The journey was marvellous for ease and expedition, for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway, her Highnes left the coach only once, whilst the hinds and folk of a base sort lifted it on with their poles." So, then, to have the extremely rare luxury of vehicular conveyance - if, indeed, it were such before the invention of steel carriage springs, and some two centuries before Mr. M'Adam made, at Bristol, the first solid road since the time of the Romans - to have, we say, locomotive aid in the form of a coach and to become firmly embedded to the axletrees in mud "only once" on a short journey, was considered in the "merrie England" of the days of "good Queen Bess" something so wonderful that the solitary mishap here represented seems to have been regarded rather as an agrément de voyage...The Queen has, we see, sprung over the ruts, and now trips forward, under a lowering, watery sky, no-wise disconcerted, surprised, or angry, followed by her laughing maids of honour, and leaving footmen, hinds, and mounted attendants to extricate the coach'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.