Land Travel and Communications in Tudor and Stuart England

Very little attention in the existing literature focuses specifically on England's road network and systems of communications in the early modern period. Although authors frequently mention improved travel and transportation as central to the processes of economic, political and cultural development that characterised the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, few provide substantial evidence regarding the precise nature of communications that existed in that period. It is not known, for example, precisely how fast (on average) an official letter could be carried from London to Edinburgh or from London to Calais, and how much it would cost. Authors often condemn the quality and state of repair of England's roads yet argue that better levels of 'contact' were a vital means of 'managing' the emerging nation state. Such contradictions and paradoxes are addressed in this book which explores in detail developments in road travel and communication in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The author's research, carried out during the past twenty or more years, is brought together and related to the wider context of political, economic and cultural changes that occurred in the early modern period. Evidence is introduced to reinforce the notion that easier, swifter and more efficient communications were gradually developed in the Tudor and Stuart period, and that roads (though far from ideal) were, on the whole, quite serviceable and certainly well used. The book is a wide-ranging study of all aspects of travel and communication and thereby fills a gap in the scholarly literature. Moreover, it places on record the advances made in recent years as a result of research on these twin themes.