Under James I. the Irish chieftains came to these shores to swear fealty, and in the wild and whirling series of events that filled the years from 1641 to 1692 with horror, a continual flux and reflux of military travellers and trembling refugees came and went along these storied miles.
Already, in the year before the announcement of post-horses on the Chester Road, the first stage-coach of which we have any particulars had been established on this very route. It did not continue to Holyhead, for the individually sufficient reasons that no practicable road to that port existed for anything going on wheels, and that Chester itself, and Parkgate, a few miles down the estuary of the Dee, were the most convenient ports of embarkation for Ireland. No direct road to Holyhead existed until 1783, when coaches began to run to that port. Before that time, those who wished to cross from Holyhead generally rode horseback. Few ventured across country by Llangollen and Bettws-y-Coed; most, like Swift, leaving civilisation behind at Chester, took horse and guide, and going by Rhuddlan and Conway, dared the precipitous heights of that great headland called Penmaenmawr, or, even more greatly daring, crept round by the rocks underneath at ebb tide. Swift wrote two couplets for the inn that then stood beside the track on Penmaenmawr. As the traveller approached he read, on the swinging sign:--
Before you venture here to pass, Take a good refreshing glass;
while the returning wayfarer was cheered by:--
Now this hill you’re safely over, Drink, your spirits to recover.
One personage, greatly daring, did in 1685 succeed in passing his carriage over this height. This was the Viceroy, Henry, Earl of Clarendon, who, ill enough advised to try for Holyhead, embarked his baggage at Chester, and essayed this perilous undertaking. “If the weather be good,” he wrote, before setting out, “we go under the rocks in our coaches.” But it was December, the weather was _not_ good, and so they had to take to the hill-top. His Excellency had ample cause to regret the venture, for he was five hours travelling the fourteen miles between St. Asaph and Conway, and on the crossing of Penmaenmawr the “great heavy coach” had to be drawn by the horses in single trace, while three or four sturdy Welsh peasants, hired for the job, pushed behind, so that it should not slip back. His Excellency walked all the way across, from Conway to Bangor, and Lady Clarendon was carried in a litter. How the Menai Straits were crossed does not appear, but there is evidence in the tone of his letters that he was astonished at last to find himself safely come to Holyhead.