And Now I Am Speaking Of Hired Horses, I
Cannot Avoid Taking Notice Of The Vast Number Of Coach-Horses
That
are kept to be let out to noblemen or gentlemen, to carry or bring
them to and from the
Distant parts of the kingdom, or to supply the
undertakers of funerals with horses for their coaches and hearses.
There are some of these men that keep several hundreds of horses,
with coaches, coachmen, and a complete equipage, that will be ready
at a day's warning to attend a gentleman to any part of England.
These people also are great jockeys. They go to all the fairs in
the country and buy up horses, with which they furnish most of the
nobility and gentry about town. And if a nobleman does not care to
run any hazard, or have the trouble of keeping horses in town, they
will agree to furnish him with a set all the year round.
The principal taverns are large handsome edifices, made as
commodious for the entertaining a variety of company as can be
contrived, with some spacious rooms for the accommodation of
numerous assemblies. Here a stranger may be furnished with wines,
and excellent food of all kinds, dressed after the best manner:-
each company, and every particular man, if he pleases, has a room to
himself, and a good fire if it be winter time, for which he pays
nothing, and is not to be disturbed or turned out of his room by any
other man of what quality soever, till he thinks fit to leave it.
And as many people meet here upon business, at least an equal-number
resort hither purely for pleasure, or to refresh themselves in an
evening after a day's fatigue.
And though the taverns are very numerous, yet ale-houses are much
more so, being visited by the inferior tradesmen, mechanics,
journeymen, porters, coachmen, carmen, servants, and others whose
pockets will not reach a glass of wine. Here they sit promiscuously
in common dirty rooms, with large fires, and clouds of tobacco,
where one that is not used to them can scarce breathe or see; but as
they are a busy sort of people, they seldom stay long, returning to
their several employments, and are succeeded by fresh sets of the
same rank of men, at their leisure hours, all day long.
Of eating-houses and cook-shops there are not many, considering the
largeness of the town, unless it be about the Inns of Court and
Chancery, Smithfield, and the Royal Exchange, and some other places,
to which the country-people and strangers resort when they come to
town. Here is good butcher's meat of all kinds, and in the best of
them fowls, pigs, geese, &c., the last of which are pretty dear; but
one that can make a meal of butcher's meat, may have as much as he
cares to eat for sixpence; he must be content indeed to sit in a
public room, and use the same linen that forty people have done
before him.
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