Hounds, then called "_Lady Salisbury's_."

One of the strangest incidents connected with the old highway traffic
of sixty years ago, was the mishap which occurred to an old stage wagon
with three horses abreast, a team of eight, at Royston about 1835 or
1836, on a Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in November. The
incident was cleverly described by a versifier in the columns of the
_Herts. and Cambs. Reporter_ some years ago, but it is only necessary
here to say that the wagon was travelling up to London, and reached
Melbourn all right. Here, however, the sleepy teamster got his
ponderous team too near a huge sign-post in the village, when

The ornamental sign by tricks,
Amongst the ropes came firmly fixed.

The sign-post was torn up and fixed immovably between the wheels and
the wagon, and in that position was carried aloft, as "slowly the eight
big Lincoln steeds" continued their wonted course towards Royston.
Before day-light that town was reached, the driver still unconscious of
the curious appendage to his load. "Rounding the {185} corner at the
Cross" the strange projection crashed into the windows of the shops to
the consternation of the inhabitants, as

House after house was ripp'd and torn.
* * * *
Plant-pots and plants alike were strown,
And gilded names in swaths were mown.

Some thought it was an earthquake, and others that the end of all
things had come. Amongst the terrified shopkeepers, George Rivers, the
witty thespian, is credited with exclaiming:--

"The windows and the frames are gone,
And all the house is tumbling down"!

Not till the wagon reached the Warren did that and the old sign-post
part company, and even then the sleepy driver wended his ponderous way
towards Buntingford in blissful ignorance of the devastation he had
wrought upon the shop windows! "Nor did he learn the strange affray
till he returned another day."

1836. The great snowstorm of 1836 was even more memorable than the two
preceding storms of 1799 and 1814, for its suddenness, its extent, and
the greatly increased number of stage-coaches "on the road" at that
time, which suffered from the interruption of traffic. It commenced to
snow on the night of Christmas Eve (Saturday) and snowed all day on
Sunday, and the next day. No snowstorm in Great Britain for the
previous hundred years equalled it in violence and extent. On the
evening of the 26th, after it had been