On the Road with Professor Wilson
I AM grateful to Prof. Wilson for the opportunity to clarify certain points in my article which, on the evidence of his comments, are the source of some confusion. Apart from pointing to one or two proof-reading errors, for which I happily apologize to readers of the Review, his criticisms fall into six categories: my sketch of the historiography of the subject; my emphasis on traffic rather than road surfaces; the interpretation of the figures in my tables; the reality of the published carrying schedules; the selection of some literary evidences against others; and, finally, my apparent confusion over stage-coaches. I propose to deal with these points in the same order. The historiographical issues are probably the most interesting, since they involve the conflict between established views and proposed revisions. I may have been unduly severe on some of "the most widely read historians" cited by Prof. Wilson: all were more circumspect on the subject than he was himself. G. N. Clark commented on the great growth of road traffic in the later seventeenth century, though without citing any authorities.' J. U. Nef, too, acknowledged the importance of road carriage: by the end of the seventeenth century "the population of at least a fifth of all the territory of Great Britain was in a position to receive coal by land carriage at a lower-generally at a very much lower-price than that paid for water-borne coal at London". But this comment does not reflect the overall balance of Nef's assessment of transport, which quite properly stressed the importance of water carriage in the coal trade. Fay's comments on the subject related principally to the second half of the eighteenth century, but, where they can be identified with our period, tended to accept the existence of road carriage, while stressing its inefficiency.3 In so far as Prof. Wilson's authorities support his views, they do so only in showing that his use of them was somewhat incautious. Of the several shades of meaning attached by the dictionary to the word "myth", the purest definition, "a purely fictitious narrative", is undoubtedly harsh on such views and was not intended.4 I employed the word figuratively to characterize historical interpretations which had been based on a partial use of a narrow range of materials and which had gained currency as beliefs about this historical phenomenon. Used in this sense, the word adequately suggests the teaching of the many historians who, while not denying the existence of road traffic, do nowhere acknowledge that road carriage was often faster, cheaper (in real terms), and safer than water carriage, and was frequently preferred to it. 1 G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts, i660-I714 (2nd edn. Oxford, 1955), pp. 51-2. 2J. U. Nef, The Rise of the British Coal Industry (I932), I, 104. 3 C. R. Fay, Great Britain from Adam Smith to the Present Day: An Economic and Social Survey (I 928), pp. I 74-6. 4 The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (3rd edn. Oxford, repr. I 966), p. 1306.