The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

CARRIAGES & COACHES

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

BIOGRAPHICAL
ROBERT DODSLEY: POET, PUBLISHER AND PLAYWRIGHT
JOHN BASKERVILLE: A MEMOIR [with R. K. Dent]

NOVELS
THE PRISON WITHOUT A WALL
THE SCANDALOUS MR. WALDO
THE LITTLE GOD’S DRUM
THE MAN APART
PAMPHLETS
THE DUST WHICH IS GOD
5000 A.D.

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH

The State Coach of Great Britain

To
B. S. S.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

I AM not a coachbuilder. Though such a pronouncement will seem entirely superfluous to any coachbuilder who reads the following pages, it is not perhaps a wholly unnecessary remark. For, with one or two exceptions, such books upon the evolution or structure of vehicles as have been written have been the work of industrious coachbuilders. And I have not the least doubt that they are eminently the fit and proper folk to carry out any such task. It is a melancholy fact, however, that useful though these books may be to coachbuilders, they lack, again with one or two exceptions, any general interest to the layman. The language in which they are written is, to say the least, peculiar, and the authors have obviously had small training in the art of book-making. On the other hand, there is a whole library of books dealing with the old stage and mail coaches, with all the romance and adventure of the roads, packed with delightful anecdotes and personal reminiscences. But such books hardly touch upon the structure of the coaches themselves, and, so far as I know, there is no book entirely devoted to a non-technical description of carriages in general, based upon a chronological arrangement.

The nearest approach to such a book is Mr. G. A. Thrupp’s The History of Coaches, published in 1877, a meritorious undertaking from which I have freely quoted. Here, however, there are numerous gaps which I have endeavoured to fill, and the various lectures from which it was composed do not fit together so aptly as might be. As a whole, it is diffuse. Sir Walter Gilbey’s two books, Early Carriages and Roads and Modern Carriages, have also been of great assistance, but here, too, the ground covered is not so large as in the following pages. Other pamphlets and small books have appeared in this country, but seemingly owe a great deal of their information to Mr. Thrupp’s work. Indeed, I notice that some of the authors have been almost criminally forgetful of their inverted commas. For purely technical details there are, of course, many books and trade papers to consult; but with these I have not been concerned.

In the present book there are, indeed, large gaps, and it is not to be taken either as a manual of the art of coach-building or as a history of locomotion. It is merely a book about carriages, in which particular regard has been paid to chronological sequence, and particular attention to such individual carriages as have at all withstood the test of social history. And it is written by a layman who, until he enquired into the subject, had never looked at a carriage with any particular emotion. The result of his labours, therefore, is not meant for the expert, but for the general reader, who may have pondered over the various vehicles he has seen, and idly wondered how they may have been evolved.

Where possible, I have endeavoured to quote from contemporary authors and documents. Most of such quotations are now included in a carriage book for the first time.

I wish to thank the various publishers and authors who have given me permission to reprint illustrations of carriages in books published or written by them. Also I am obliged to Messrs. Maggs Bros., the well-known booksellers, for permission to photograph a rare print entitled The Carriage Match, in their possession.

RALPH STRAUS.

Badminton Club, August, 1912.

Chapter the First

THE PRIMITIVE VEHICLE

“This is a traveller, sir, knows men and

Manners, and has plough’d up sea so far,

Till both the poles have knock’d; has seen the sun

Take coach, and can distinguish the colour

Of his horses, and their kinds.”

Beaumont and Fletcher.

IT has been suggested that although in a generality of cases nature has forestalled the ingenious mechanician, man for his wheel has had to evolve an apparatus which has no counterpart in his primitive environment—in other words, that there is nothing in nature which corresponds to the wheel. Yet even the most superficial inquiry into the nature of the earliest vehicles must do much to refute such a suggestion. Primitive wheels were simply thick logs cut from a tree-trunk, probably for firewood. At some time or another these logs must have rolled of their own accord from a higher to a lower piece of ground, and from man’s observation of this simple phenomenon must have come the first idea of a wheel. If a round object could roll of its own accord, it could also be made to roll.

Yet it is to be noticed that the earliest methods of locomotion, other than those purely muscular, such as walking and riding, knew nothing of wheels. Such methods depended primarily upon the enormously significant discovery that a man could drag a heavier weight than he could carry, and what applied to a man also applied to a beast. Possibly such discovery followed on the mere observation of objects being carried down the stream of some river, and perhaps a rudely constructed raft should be considered to be the earliest form of vehicle. From the raft proper to a raft to be used upon land was but a step, and the first land vehicle, whenever or wherever it was made, assuredly took a form which to this day is in common use in some countries. This was the sledge. On a sledge heavy loads could be dragged over the ground, and experience sooner or later must have shown what was the best form of apparatus for such work. As so often happens, moreover, in mechanical contrivances, the earliest sledge of which there is record—a sculptured representation in an Egyptian temple—bears a remarkable resemblance to those in use at the present time.[1] Then, as now, men used two long runners with upturned ends in front and cross-pieces to unite them and bear the load. Such sledges were largely used to convey the huge stones with which the Egyptians raised their solemn masses of masonry and, incidentally, also as a hearse. In time, however, it was found that better results were obtained by the use of another and rather more complicated apparatus which had for its chief component—a wheel. This second discovery that to roll a burden proved an easier task than to drag it was fraught with such tremendous consequences as altered the entire history of the world.

It remained to find a better fulcrum than that afforded by the rough turf over which such logs, when burdened, were rolled. What probably followed is well described by Bridges Adams.[2] “The next process,” he thinks, “would naturally be that of cutting a hole through the roller in which to insert the lever. The convenience of several holes in the circumference of the roller would then become apparent, and there would be formed an embryo wheel nave. It could not fail to be remarked also, that the larger the roller, the greater the facility for turning it, and consequently the greater the load that could be borne upon it.” Owing to the difficulty of using such large logs, he goes on to suggest, a time would come when it was found that a roller need not bear upon the ground throughout its length, but only at its extremities. So from the single roller would be evolved two rough wheels joined by a beam, square at first though afterwards rounded, upon which could be fixed a frame for the load.

Such axle and wheels would revolve together and keep the required position by means of pieces of wood which may be compared with the thole-pins of a boat. And it is a remarkable fact that until last century such primitive carts were in use in Portugal and parts of South America. The chief drawback to a vehicle of this kind is its inability to turn in a small space, and the pioneers, whoever they were, finally discovered the principle of the fixed axle-tree, the wheels revolving upon their own centre. So, “instead of fixing the cross-beam or axle in a square hole,” these pioneers “would contrive it to play easily in a round one of a conical form, that being the easiest form of adjustment.” Such a car as this, with solid wheels and a rude frame, was used by the Romans, and is still to be seen in parts of Chili. The next process in the evolution of the wheel doubtless followed upon the necessity of economising with large sections of wood, and there was finally invented a wheel made of three portions—a central pierced part, the nave, an outside circular piece, the rim or felloe, and two or more cross-pieces, joining the two, the spokes. Of these the felloes would tend to wear soonest, and a double set would be applied to the spokes, as was the case until recently in the ox-carts of the Pampas, or barcos de tierra, as they were called by the natives.

And indeed, the first carriages of which we have particular information, the chariots of the Egyptians and their neighbours, differ essentially from such primitive carts only in the delicacy and ornamentation of the carriage body.

Types of Primitive Carts

Various vehicles are mentioned in the Bible, though one must be chary of differentiating between them merely because the translators have given them different names. Both waggons and chariots are mentioned in Genesis. Jacob’s family were sent to him in a waggon. Joseph rode in the second chariot of Pharaoh as a particular mark of favour. At the time of the Exodus, war-chariots formed an important part of the Egyptian army, and indeed, right through the various dynasties, there is an almost continuous mention of their use.[3] “The deft craftsmen of Egypt,” says Breasted,[4] “soon mastered the art of chariot-making, and the stables of the Pharaoh contained thousands of the best horses to be had in Asia.” About 1500 B.C. Thutmose III went forth to battle in “a glittering chariot of electrum.” He slew the enemy’s leader, and took captive their princes and “their chariots, wrought with gold, bound to their horses.” These barbarians also had “chariots of silver,” though this probably means that they were built of wood and strengthened or decorated with silver. At the dissolution of the Empire the Hittites had increased wonderfully in power, and it is told of them that they excelled all other nations in the art of chariotry. The Hittite chariot was larger and more heavily built than that of the Egyptians, as it bore three men, driver, bowman, and shield-bearer, while the Egyptian was satisfied with two. The enormous number of chariots used in warfare is shown by the fact that in the fourteenth century before Christ, when the Egyptians defeated the Syrians at Megiddo, nearly a thousand were captured, and against Ramses II the Hittites put no less than 2500 into the field.

“The Egyptian chariots,” says H. A. White,[5] “were of light and simple construction, the material employed being wood, as is proved by sculptures representing the manufacture of chariots. The axle was set far back, and the bottom of the car, which rested on this and on the pole, was sometimes formed of a frame interlaced with a network of thongs or ropes. The chariot was entirely open behind and for the greater part of the sides, which were formed by a curved rail rising from each side of the back of the base, and resting on a wooden upright above the pole in front. From this rail, which was strengthened by leather thongs, a bow-case of leather, often richly ornamented, hung on the right-hand side, slanting forwards; while the quiver and spear cases inclined in the opposite direction. The wheels, which were fastened on the axle by a linch-pin secured with a short thong, had six spokes in the case of war chariots, but in private vehicles sometimes only four.[6] The pole sloped upwards, and to the end of it a curved yoke was attached. A small saddle at each end of the yoke rested on the withers of the horses, and was secured in its place by breast-band and girth. No traces are to be seen. The bridle was often ornamented; a bearing-rein was fastened to the saddle, and the other reins passed through a ring at the side of this. The number of horses to a chariot seems always to have been two; and in the car, which contained no seat, only rarely are more than two persons depicted, except in triumphal processions.

Assyrian Chariot
(From Smith’s “Concise History of English Carriages”)

“Assyrian chariots did not differ in any essential points from the Egyptian.[7] They were, however, completely panelled at the sides, and a shield was sometimes hung at the back. The wheels had six, or, at a later period, eight spokes; the felloes were broad, and seem to have been formed of three distinct circles of wood, sometimes surrounded by a metal tyre. While only two horses were attached to the yokes, in the older monuments a third horse is generally to be seen, which was probably used as a reserve. The later chariots are square in front, not rounded; the car itself is larger and higher; the cases for the weapons are placed in front, not at the side; and only two horses are used. The harness differs somewhat from the Egyptian. A broad collar passes round the neck, from which hangs a breast ornament, the whole being secured by a triple strap under the belly of the horse. As in Egypt there are no traces visible; two driving-reins are attached to each horse, but the bearing-rein seems to be unknown. In addition to the warrior and the charioteer, we often see a third man who bears a shield; and a fourth occupant of the chariot sometimes appears.

“The Hittite chariots, as represented on Egyptian monuments, regularly contain three warriors. In construction they are plainer and more solid than the Egyptian, and the sides are not open. The chariots on Persian sculptures closely resemble the Assyrian.”

There is still preserved in the Archæological Museum at Florence an Egyptian chariot, a light, simple, two-wheeled affair with a single shaft and four spokes to the wheels. From the number of spokes it may be supposed that this particular chariot was not used in war. In New York, too, there is preserved the wheel of an Egyptian chariot found at Dashour. The particulars of this bear out Mr. White’s description. The wheel itself is three feet high, with a long axle arm, six spokes, tapering towards the felloe, and a double rim. “The six inner felloes do not meet as in modern wheels,” says Thrupp,[8] “but are spliced one over the other, with an overlap of three inches.”

Artificial roads seem to have existed at an early period in Palestine, but the country was hardly suitable for vehicles, and one first hears of waggons in the flatter wastes of Egypt and the level plains of Philistia. Agricultural carts these were, though no doubt early used for passenger traffic. Some of these carts were most probably covered, though no coverings seem to have been fixed to the chariots. The Assyrians, however, occasionally took into their private chariots an attendant, who was provided with a covering shaped somewhat like a modern umbrella. This covering was held over the owner’s head, and was sometimes provided with a curtain which hung down at the back.

Details of the private carriages in use during these Biblical times filter through the chronicles. In Syria the merchants despatched by Solomon to buy chariots had to pay 600 shekels each for them. Solomon in his quest for luxury seems to have been the first man to build a more elaborate car than satisfied his contemporaries. One to be used on state occasions was built of cedar wood and had “pillars of gold.” Probably it was some form of litter. The number of private cars was increasing enormously in all these Eastern cities. The prophet Nahum in lamenting the future woes of Nineveh speaks of “the noise of the whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots,” which will no longer bear witness to the city’s prosperity. The absence of wide roads, however, militated against great changes of form in the carriages, which maintained their simple shape until many centuries later.

The war-chariot (ἄρμα or δίφρος) of the early Greeks was curved in front, and loftier than that of the Egyptians. The entrance was at the back. It was never covered, but frequently bore a curious basket-like arrangement, the πείρινς, upon or in which two people could sit. The ἄντυξ, or rim, in most cases ran round the three sides of the body, but occasionally there was only a curved barrier in front. The body itself was often strengthened by a trellis-work of strips of light wood or metal. The barrier was of varying height; in some chariots it did not reach above the driver’s knee; in others it came up to his waist, but in war-chariots never higher than that. The axle was of oak, ash, elm, or even of iron, and precious metals, according to the legend, were used for the chariots of the gods. So of Juno’s car we read:—

“The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung.

On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel

Of sounding brass: the polish’d axle steel.

Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame;

The circles gold, of uncorrupted frame,

Such as the heavens produce; and round the gold

Two brazen rings of work divine were roll’d.

The bossy naves of solid silver shone;

Braces of gold suspend the moving throne.”

The last line suggests an innovation which was certainly not followed for some considerable time.

The chariot in general was about seven feet long, and could be lifted by a strong man like Diomed. Indeed, it could be driven over the bodies of dead warriors. The pole sloped sharply upwards, and sometimes ended in the head of a bird or animal. It emerged either from the floor of the car or from the axle. Towards its end the yoke for the horses was fastened about a pin fixed into it. Though the Lydians used chariots with two or even three poles, the Greeks never had more than one; and as with the Egyptians, there were no traces. If the pole broke, the horses must have dashed away with part of it, leaving the chariot at a standstill. Occasionally, too, a third horse was used, upon which sat a postilion.

At a later period several Grecian carriages were in common use, though not in warfare. Representations of such cars are to be found on the Elgin Marbles. And, as was the case a dozen or more centuries afterwards, the carriage became the outward sign of luxury. It invariably appeared in the state processions, and was made the receptacle for the most gorgeous ornamentation. Gold, ebony, copper, ivory, and white lead were all used for this purpose, while the interiors of the cars were made comfortable with soft cushions and fine tapestries. They appeared, too, in great numbers at the famous chariot races, at which four or more horses were driven abreast. Often the same man was rich enough to possess more than one carriage. So we read of Xerxes changing from his ἄρμα to his ἁρμάμαξα, or state-carriage, at the end of a march. Besides these, there were also the ἀπήνη, a kind of family sociable, the ἅμαξα, a waggon, the κάναθρον, and the φορεῖον, or litter.

The ἁρμάμαξα was a large four-wheeled waggon, enclosed by curtains and provided with a καμάρα or roof. Four or more horses were required to draw it. It was so large that a person could lie in it at full length, and, indeed, on many occasions it acted the part of a hearse. By far the most extraordinary hearse ever built was a ἁρμάμαξα used to convey the body of Alexander the Great—himself the possessor of numerous carriages—from Babylon to Alexandria.

“It was prepared,” says Thrupp, “during two years, and was designed by the celebrated architect and engineer Hieronymus. It was 18 feet long and 12 feet wide, on four massive wheels, and drawn by sixty-four mules, eight abreast. The car was composed of a platform with a lofty roof supported by eighteen columns, and was profusely adorned with drapery and gold and jewels; round the edge of the roof was a row of golden bells; in the centre was a throne, and before it the coffin; around were placed the weapons of war and the arms that Alexander had used.”

The ἁρμάμαξα was also largely used by the ladies of Greece, who when they drove forth were careful to see that the curtains completely enclosed them. The ἅμαξα, also a four-wheeled waggon, was probably similar to the ἁρμάμαξα, though built upon a less imposing scale. The ἀπήνη was a still lighter carriage. It is described by Herodotus, and seems to have been a covered vehicle surrounded by silken curtains which could be pulled back when required. Its interior was generally furnished with cushions of goat leather. Two wheels were more frequent, but four were sometimes found. It was said that Timoleon, an old blind man, drove upon one occasion into the senate house and delivered a speech from his ἀπήνη. In some cases a two-wheeled carriage of this kind was not furnished with curtains, but enclosed in an oval-shaped covering of basket-work. Hesiod objected to such a conveyance because of its inability to keep out the dust. Little is known of the κάναθρον, but it was a Laconian car made of wood, with an arched, plaited covering, used chiefly by women. Doubtless it was little different from the ἀπήνη.

Coming to the Romans, we find a far greater variety of vehicles, though the descriptions that have come down are meagre and not particularly distinctive. That the Romans early realised the enormous importance, both military and otherwise, of carriages, is shown by their amazing roads. Such roads had never before been constructed. They were, says Gibbon, “accurately divided by milestones, and ran in a direct line from one city to another, with very little respect for the obstacles, either of nature or private property. Mountains were perforated, and bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams. The middle part of the road was raised into a terrace, which commanded the adjacent country, consisted of several layers of sand, gravel, and cement, and was paved with large stones, or, in some places near the capital, with granite.” Probably the most famous of these roads was the Appian Way, connecting Rome with Capua. It was wide enough, according to Procopius, who marched along it in the sixth century, for two chariots to pass one another without inconvenience or delay, a matter certainly not possible, for instance, in most of the Eastern cities at that time. And so, with the finest engineers the world had seen linking up various cities, cross-country travelling in a carriage, from being well-nigh impossible, became comparatively easy. Gibbon mentions in this connection the surprising feat of one Cæsarius, who journeyed from Antioch to Constantinople, a distance of 665 miles, in six days.

The Roman war-chariot, or currus, was practically the same as the Greek ἄρμα, though certain modifications were introduced. More than two horses were driven, and from their number came several words, such as sejugis, octojugis, and decemjugis, which sufficiently explain themselves. It appears, moreover, that the currus was occasionally driven by four horses without either pole or yoke, and it has been suggested that in such a case the driver probably stopped the car by bearing all his weight on to the back of the body, so that its floor would touch the ground, thus forming a primitive brake. Besides the currus, and even before their marvellous roads had been laid down, the Romans possessed other cars. The earliest of these seems to have been a long, covered, four-wheeled waggon, called arcera, which was mainly used to carry infirm or very old people. In this the driver sat on a seat in front of the body, and drove two horses abreast. Though the most ancient of the Roman carriages, the arcera, as seen on monuments, has a very modern appearance. In more luxurious times the lectica, a large litter, seems to have led to its gradual extinction.

The essedum, at one time very popular in Italy, was brought in the first place to Rome by Julius Cæsar. It was the war-chariot of the Britons, and was entirely unlike the Roman or Egyptian cars. The wheels were much larger, the entrance was in front and not at the back, there was a seat, and the pole, instead of running up to the horses’ necks, remained horizontal, and was so wide that the driver could step along it. The British charioteers could drive their cars at a very great rate, and were exceedingly agile on the flat pole, from the extremity of which they threw their missiles. The cars were purposely made as noisy as possible to strike dismay into the enemy’s lines. At times the wheels were furnished with scythes, which projected from the axle-tree ends, and helped to maim those unfortunate enough to be run down.[9] Cicero, hearing good opinions of it, besought a friend to bring him a good pattern from Britain, and took occasion to add that the chariot was the only pleasing thing which that benighted country produced. The essedum speedily became popular in Rome, though not as an engine of war. Decorated and constructed of fine materials, it was the fashionable pleasure carriage. Curiously enough, however, the seat which had been so conspicuous a feature of the chariot in its native place was not used in Rome. The owner drove the essedum himself, and yoked two horses to the pole. There was some opposition to its use on the grounds of undue luxury, and a tribune who rode abroad in one was on that account considered effeminate. Seneca put the esseda deaurata amongst things quæ matronarum usibus necessaria sint. Emperors and generals used them as travelling carriages, and they were to be hired at regular posting-stations. A somewhat similar carriage, the covinus, was also in use in various countries at this date. This was covered in except in front; like the essedum, it had no seat for the driver, and in times of war it seems to have had scythes attached to the axle in the British fashion. Little, however, is known of it, and it may be dismissed here with a mere mention of its existence.

Cisium
The Primitive Gig
(From a Roman Inscription)

Agrippina’s Carpentum
(From a Roman Coin)

The essedum is of particular importance insomuch as it may be considered to be the prototype of all the vehicles of the curricle or gig type. The first of these in use amongst the Romans was the cisium, whose form is well shown on a monumental column near Treves. It was surprisingly like the ordinary gig of modern times. The body at first was fixed to the frames, but afterwards seems to have been suspended by rough traces or straps. The entrance was in front, there was a seat for two, and underneath this a large box or case. Mules were generally used to draw it, one, a pair, or, according to Ausonius, three—in which case a postilion sat on the third horse. They were built primarily for speed, and were in common use throughout Italy and Gaul, though the ladies, unwilling to be seen in an uncovered carriage, drove in other conveyances. The cisium on the whole must have been comfortable and light. Seneca admits that you could write a letter easily while driving in one. And in due course the new carriage became so popular that it could be hired, and the cisiarii, or hackney coachmen, could be penalised for careless driving. Indeed, so very modern were the Roman ideas upon the question of travel, that there were certain places at which the cisium was always to be found—a kind of primitive cab-rank.

Coming to the larger waggons and carriages, there were the sarracum, the plaustrum, the carpentum, the pilentum, the benna, the reda, the carruca, the pegma—a huge wheeled apparatus used for raising great weights, particularly in theatrical displays—and a mule-drawn litter, the basterna. Of these the sarracum was a common cart used by the country folk for conveying produce. It had either two or four wheels, and was occasionally used by passengers, though, as Cicero observed, as a conveyance the sarracum was very vulgar. It was not confined to Italy, but was common enough amongst those barbaric tribes against whom Rome was so often victorious. It was in sarraca, moreover, that the bodies were removed from Rome in times of plague. Rather lighter than this carriage, though heavy enough to our modern ideas, was the plaustrum,[10] an ancient two or four-wheeled waggon of rude construction. This was, in its primitive form, just a bare platform with a large pole projecting from the axle; there were no supporting ribs at all, and the load was simply placed on the platform. Upright boards, or openwork rails, however, were used to make sides, and at a later period a large basket was fastened on to the platform by stout thongs. The wheels of the plaustrum were ordinarily solid, of a kind called tympana, or drums, and were nearly a foot thick. Such a cart was but a slow vehicle, and could turn only with great difficulty. It was drawn by oxen or mules, and like the sarracum was also used to carry passengers.[11]

Pilentum
The State Carriage of the Romans

Benna

The carpentum, though two-wheeled, bore resemblance to the Greek ἁρμάμαξα. It had an arched covering. It was in use during very early times at Rome, though only distinguished citizens were privileged to ride in it. The currus arcuatus, given by Numa to the Flamines, was no doubt a form of carpentum, which was also the travelling carriage of the elder Tarquin. It seems to have been evolved from the plaustrum, being originally little more than a covered cart; but in the days of the Empire it became most luxurious, and was not only furnished with curtains of the richest silk, but seems to have had solid panellings and sculptures attached to the body. Agrippina’s carpentum, for instance, had fine paintings on its panels, and its roof was supported by figures at the four corners. Like the ἁρμάμαξα, it was also used as a hearse. Two mules were required to draw it. The pilentum was a carriage of a more official character. It may be called the state coach of the Romans—a four-wheeled becushioned car with a roof supported by pillars, but, unlike the carpentum, open at the sides. It was always considered to be the most comfortable of the Roman carriages, and may indeed have been hung upon “swing-poles” between the wheels. The social difference between the pilentum and the carpentum may be deduced from one of the many carriage laws passed by the Senate. The Roman matrons were allowed to drive in the carpentum on all occasions, but might use the pilentum only at the games or public festivals. Such “sumptuary laws” were constantly being passed, and a special vote was even required to enable the mother of Nero to drive in her carriage in the city itself. It was not until the fourth century A.D. that all such restrictions were banished.

Pliny mentions another carriage of imperial Rome—the carruca, which had four wheels and was used equally in the city and for long journeys. Nero travelled with great numbers of them—on one occasion with no less than three thousand. In Rome itself the fashionable citizen drove forth in a carruca that was covered with plates of bronze, silver, or even gold. Enormous sums were spent upon their decoration. Painters, sculptors, and embroiderers were employed. Martial speaks of an aurea carruca costing as much as a large farm. The carruca, indeed, may be said to correspond with the phaeton, which was so fashionable in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. As with the phaeton, so with the carruca—the higher it was built the better pleased was its owner. Various kinds of carruca existed. The carrucæ argentatæ were those granted by Alexander Severus to the senators. There is also mention of a carruca domestoria. Unfortunately, however, no contemporary representation of a carriage can definitely be said to be a carruca. Little enough, moreover, is known of the two other waggons, the reda and the benna. The reda was a large four-wheeled waggon used mainly to convey agricultural produce. It seems to have been brought into Italy from Wallachia. The benna was a cart whose body was formed entirely of basket-work. There is a drawing of it on the column of Antoninus at Rome. A similar vehicle persists to this day in Italy, South Germany, and Belgium, and bears a similar name.

Under the Empire, then, carriage-building flourished, particularly after Alexander Severus had put an end to all the older restrictions. Various forms of carriages were to be seen on the roads, and there was, as I have hinted, even an attempt at a spring. One of the carriages of this period is definitely described as “borne on long poles, fixed to the axles.” “Now a certain amount of spring,” says Thrupp, “can be obtained from the centre of a long, light pole. The Neapolitan Calesse, the Norwegian Carriole, and the Yarmouth Cart were all made with a view to obtaining ease by suspension on poles between bearings placed far apart. In these the seat is placed midway between the two wheels and the horse, on very long shafts, which are there made into wooden springs.” And in the old Roman carriages, he goes on to say, “the weight was carried between the front and hind axles, on long poles or wooden springs. The undercarriage of the later four-wheeled vehicles used by the Romans was, in all probability, the same as is in use at the present day, both in this country and on the Continent, and indeed in America, for the under-carriages of agricultural waggons.” Even with such splendid roads as the Romans possessed, however, the streets of their towns do not seem to have been very wide, and this must be one of the reasons for the early appearance of another kind of conveyance, the litter, which, during the dark ages, was practically the only carriage to be used.

These litters came from the East. The Babylonians in particular preferred to be carried about in a chair or couch rather than to be jolted in a carriage. Ericthonius, a lame man, is supposed to have introduced them into Athens, where they were known as φορεῖα or σκιμπόδια. Speedily they became popular, especially with the women. Magnificently decorated, the φορεῖον was constantly carried along the narrow streets, and on being brought over to Rome proved no less agreeable to the Romans. The lectica, or, as it was called at a later period, the sella, may in the first instance have been used to carry the sick, but in a short time became a common form of conveyance. This palanquin had an arched roof of leather stretched over four posts. The sides were covered by curtains, though at a later period it would seem that crude windows of talc were used. The interior was furnished with pillows, and when standing the litter rested upon four feet. Two slaves bore it by means of long poles loosely attached. In Martial’s time these lecticarii wore red liveries, and were sometimes preceded by a third slave to make way. Julius Cæsar restricted their numbers, and in the reign of Claudius permission to use them was granted only as a particular mark of the royal favour. Several varieties of litter appeared. The sella portatoria or gestatoria was a small sedan chair. Some, however, were constructed to hold two. The cathedra, which was probably identical with the sella muliebris mentioned by Suetonius, was mostly used by women. The basterna was a much larger litter, also used by women under the Empire, which was carried by two mules. In this carriage the sides might be opened or closed, and the whole body was frequently gilded.

A few other primitive carriages here call for mention. The Dacians, who inhabited parts of what is now Hungary, used square vehicles with four wheels, in which the six spokes widened towards the rims. The Scythians used a peculiar two-wheeled cart consisting of a platform on which was placed a conical covering, resembling in shape a beehive, and made of a basket-work of hazelwood, over which were stretched the skins of beasts or a thatching of reeds. When camping out these people would lift this covering bodily from the cart and use it as a tent. Much the same custom was followed by the wandering Tartars. “Their huts or tents,” says Marco Polo, “are formed of rods covered with felt, and being exactly round and nicely put together, they can gather them into one bundle, and make them up as packages, which they carry along with them in their migrations, upon a sort of car with four wheels.” “Besides these cars,” he continues, “they have a superior kind of vehicle upon two wheels, covered likewise with black felt, and so effectually as to protect those within it from wet during a whole day of rain. These are drawn by oxen and camels, and serve to convey their wives and children, their utensils, and such provisions as they require.” The same traveller described the carriages of Southern China. Speaking of Kin-sai, then the capital, he says, “The main street of the city ... is paved with stone and brick to the width of ten paces on each side, the intermediate part being filled up with small gravel, and provided with arched drains for carrying off the rain-water that falls into the neighbouring canals, so that it remains always dry. On this gravel it is that the carriages are continually passing and re-passing. They are of a long shape, covered at top, having curtains and cushions of silk, and are capable of holding six persons. Both men and women who feel disposed to take their pleasure are in the daily practice of hiring them for that purpose, and accordingly at every hour you may see vast numbers of them driven along the middle part of the street.” To this day such carriages as are here described can be had for hire in China, though in general they are of a smaller size. In some respects they resembled what is called in this country a tilted cart.

The Persians used large chariots in which was built a kind of turret from whose interior the warriors could at once throw their spears and obtain protection. One, taken from an ancient coin, is thus described by Sir Robert Ker Porter in his Travels in Georgia, Persia, and Ancient Babylon (1821):—

” ... a large chariot, which is drawn by a magnificent pair of horses; one of the men, in ampler garments than his compeers, and bareheaded, holds the bridle of the horses ... [which] are without trappings, but the details of their bits and the manner of reining them are executed with the utmost care. The pole of the car is seen passing behind the horses, projecting from the centre of the carriage, which is in a cylindrical shape, elevated rather above the line of the animals’ heads. The wheel of the car is extremely light and tastefully put together.”

Here, too, it is to be noticed that the driver is shown with his arms over the backs of the animals. In another chariot, which most probably was Persian, the body seems to be made of a “light wood, as of interlaced canes. Similar chariots are seen in the Assyrian bas-reliefs and others, somewhat resembling this, on Etruscan and Grecian painted vases. A chariot thus constituted must have been of extreme rapidity and of scarcely any weight.”[12]

The Persians also had an idol-car, which was a kind of moving platform, and their chariots were at one period armed with scythes. These scythes, generally considered to be the invention of Cyrus, do not seem to have hung from the axle-ends, as was the case in Britain, but from the body itself, “in order,” thinks Ginzrot, who wrote on these early carriages, “to allow the wheels to turn unobstructed. In this way,” he says, “the scythes had a firm hold, and could inflict more damage than if they had been applied to the wheels or felloes and revolved with them. Nearly all writers treating on this subject are of this opinion, and Curtius says: Alias deinde falces summis rotarum orbibus hærebant [thence curving downwards]. The scythes could easily have been attached to the body ... and, notwithstanding, it might be said they extended over the felloe, for Curtius said, not that the scythes revolved with the wheels, but hærebant.”[13]

Early Indian carriages were probably not very different from some of those now in use amongst the natives. The common gharry is certainly built after a primitive model. In this there are two wheels, “a high axle-tree bed, and a long platform, frequently made of two bamboos, which join in front and form the pole, to which two oxen are yoked.” In Arabia there was the araba, a primitive latticed carriage for women, which possessed “wing-guards”—pieces of wood shaped to the top of the wheels and projecting over them—a feature also to be found in the early Persian cars.

Taking these early carriages as a whole one may be inclined to feel surprise at the varieties displayed, yet there were not after all very great differences between them. They were two-or four-wheeled contrivances with a long pole in front, and it is only in mere size and decoration that discrimination can properly be made. “The Egyptians,” says Thrupp, “with all their learning and skill, appear to have made no change during the centuries of experience; as at the beginning, so at the end, the kings stand by the side of their charioteers, or hold the reins themselves. The Persians and Hindoos introduced luxurious improvements, and in lofty vehicles elevated the nobles above the heads of the people, and secluded their women in curtained carriages. The Greeks introduced no new vehicles, but perfected so successfully the useful waggon, that their model is still seen throughout Europe, without change of principle or structure. The Romans, on the other hand, in their career of conquest, gathered from every nation what was good, and, wherever possible, improved upon it.” After the fall of the Roman Empire, however, there was little further progress for several centuries. In the general retrogression, which, rightly or wrongly, one associates with those dark ages, the wheeled carriage, in common with a multitude of other adjuncts to civilisation, was to suffer.

Chapter the Second

THE AGE OF LITTERS

“There is a litter; lay him in ’t and

drive toward Dover, friend!”

King Lear.

AS roadmakers, the Romans, if they can be said to have had successors at all, were succeeded by the monks. On the assumption that travellers were unfortunate people, as indeed they were, needing help, religious Orders were founded whose chief work was that of building bridges and repairing the roads. Other Orders likewise performed such tasks, though possibly for more selfish reasons, being as they were large owners of cattle, and immersed as much in agricultural as in theological occupations. So in many parts of Europe the Pontife Brothers, or bridge-makers, were to be found. There were also Gilds formed to repair the roads, such as the Gild of the Holy Cross in Birmingham, founded in the reign of Richard II, which “mainteigned ... and kept in good reparaciouns the greate stone bridges, and divers foule and dangerous high wayes, the charge whereof the towne of hitsellfe ys not hable to mainteigne.” In Piers the Plowman, too, the rich merchants are exhorted to repair the “wikked wayes” and see that the “brygges to-broke by the heye weyes” may be mended “in som manere wise.” The maintenance of the roads in England, says M. Jusserand,[14] “greatly depended upon arbitrary chance, upon opportunity, or on the goodwill or the devotion of those to whom the adjoining land belonged. In the case of the roads, as of bridges, we find petitions of private persons who pray that a tax be levied upon those who pass along, towards the repair of the road.” So in 1289, Walter Godelak of Walingford is praying for “the establishment of a custom to be collected from every cart of merchandize traversing the road between Jowemarsh and Newenham, on account of the depth, and for the repair, of the said way.” Unfortunately for him—and doubtless he was no exception to the rule—the reply came: “The King will do nothing therein.”

Indeed the roads were in a truly abominable condition. As often as not, deep ruts marred what surface there had ever been, and here and there brooks and pools rendered easy passage an impossibility. There is a patent of Edward III (Nov. 20, 1353) which ordered “the paving of the high road, alta via, running from Temple Bar”—then the western limit of London—“to Westminster.” “This road,” says M. Jusserand, “had been paved, but the King explains that it is ‘so full of holes and bogs ... and that the pavement is so damaged and broken’ that the traffic has become very dangerous for men and carriages. In consequence, he orders each proprietor on both sides of the road to remake, at his own expense, a footway of seven feet up to the ditch, usque canellum,” and see to it that the middle of the road is well paved. In France matters were just as bad. “Outside the town of Paris,” runs one fourteenth-century ordinance, “in several parts of the suburbs ... there are many notable and ancient high-roads, bridges, lanes, and roads, which are much injured, damaged or decayed and otherwise hindered by ravines of water and great stones, by hedges, brambles, and many other trees which have grown there, and by many other hindrances which have happened there, because they have not been maintained and provided for in time past; and they are in such a bad state that they cannot be securely traversed on foot or horseback, nor by vehicles, without great perils and inconveniences; and some of them are abandoned at all parts because men cannot resort there.” Wherefore it was proposed that the inhabitants should be compelled, by force if necessary, to attend to the matter.

While, however, the wretched state into which the roads were being allowed to fall had a great deal to do with the almost total, though indeed temporary, extinction of the wheeled pleasure carriage in western Europe, there is another fact which must be taken into consideration in any endeavour to account for it. As will appear in a little, the renaissance of carriage-building in the sixteenth century was for a time retarded in various places by a widespread feeling of distrust against anything that could be thought to lead to an accusation of effeminacy. Laws were passed—as was the case, for instance, in 1294, under Philip the Fair of France—forbidding people to ride in coaches, and sharp comparisons were drawn by the satirists between the hardy horsemen of old and the modern comfort-loving individuals who lolled, or were supposed to loll—though how they could have done so in those springless monstrosities is past comprehension—in their gaudily decorated carriages. I would not insist upon the point, but it may be that in the reaction against such undue luxuries as had helped to bring ruin to the Roman Empire, carriages for that reason became unpopular. From which, of course, it would follow that the disappearance of the carriage led, in part at any rate, to the neglect of the roads, and such new roads as were made would be laid down primarily for the convenience only of the horsemen. The same thing applied also to the litters, though their popularity naturally followed merely upon the state of the roads.

Before attempting to deal with these litters, it will be well to see what is known—it is not very much—of such wheeled carriages as there were at this time, and at the outset it is necessary to bear in mind that the old chroniclers used the word carriage in anything but its modern significance. To them a carriage was no more than an agricultural or baggage cart. Time and again you have accounts of this or that great man making his way, peaceably or otherwise, through some country, accompanied by numbers of carriages. These were simply his luggage carts, and although, as in earlier times, the cart, gaily ornamented, could very easily be converted into a pleasure carriage, it is important to remember the real meaning of the word. Such carts, in point of fact, were extremely common. In England they were generally square boxes made of planks borne on two wheels. Others, of a lighter pattern, were built of “slatts latticed with a willow trellis.” Their chief peculiarity was to be found in their wheels, which were furnished with extraordinarily large nails with prominent heads. Contemporary manuscripts give rough pictures of such carts. One of these is shown drawn by three dogs. One man squats inside, a second helps to push it from behind. A most interesting illustration in the Louterell Psalter—a fourteenth-century manuscript—shows a reaper’s cart going uphill. Here the two huge, six-spoked wheels with their projecting nails are clearly shown. The platform of the cart is strengthened by upright stakes with a cross-rail connecting them at the sides. The driver, standing over the wheels on the poles, is holding a long whip which is flicking the leader of three horses. Three other men are helping at the rear, and the stacks of wheat are held in position by ropes.

The earliest Anglo-Saxon carriage of which there is record belongs to the twelfth century. Strutt refers to a drawing in one of the Cottonian manuscripts, which represents a peculiar four-wheeled contrivance with two upright poles rising from the axle-trees, from which poles is slung a hammock. Such a chariot or chaer was apparently used by the more distinguished Anglo-Saxons when setting out upon long journeys. The drawing shows the figure of Joseph on his way to meet Jacob in Egypt, but is no doubt a correct representation of a travelling carriage in the artist’s lifetime. This hammock is interesting as being a primitive form of suspension, which may or may not have led to the later experiments in that direction.

Fourteenth Century English Carriage
(From the Louterell Psalter)

Fourteenth Century Reaper’s Cart
(From the Louterell Psalter)

A most luxurious English carriage of the fourteenth century is shown in the Louterell Psalter. This was obviously evolved from a four-wheeled waggon. Five horses, harnessed at length, drew it, a postilion with a short whip riding on the second, and another with a long whip on the wheeler. The tunnel-like body was highly ornamented, and its front decorated with carved birds and men’s heads. The frame of the body was continued in front as two poles, and underneath, hanging by a ring and looking rather ludicrous, is shown a small trunk. Women only appear in this carriage, the men riding behind it.

“Nothing,” remarks M. Jusserand, “gives a better idea of the encumbering, awkward luxury which formed the splendour of civil life during this century than the structure of these heavy machines. The best had four wheels; three or four horses drew them, harnessed in a row, the postilion being mounted on one, armed with a short-handled whip of many thongs; solid beams rested on the axles, and above this framework rose an archway rounded like a tunnel; as a whole, ungraceful enough. But the details,” he goes on to say, speaking of the carriage shown in the Louterell Psalter, “were extremely elegant, the wheels were carved and their spokes expanded near the hoop into ribs forming pointed arches; the beams were painted and gilt, the inside was hung with those dazzling tapestries, the glory of the age; the seats were furnished with embroidered cushions; a lady might stretch out there, half sitting, half lying; pillows were disposed in the corners as if to invite sleep, square windows pierced the sides and were hung with curtains. Thus travelled,” he continues with a touch of picturesqueness, “the noble lady, slim in form, tightly clad in a dress which outlined every curve of the body, her long, slender hands caressing the favourite dog or bird. The knight, equally tightened in his cote-hardie, regarded her with a complacent eye, and, if he knew good manners, opened his heart to his dreamy companion in long phrases like those in the romances. The broad forehead of the lady, who has perhaps coquettishly plucked off her eyebrows and stray hairs, a process about which satirists were indignant, brightens up at moments, and her smile is like a ray of sunshine. Meanwhile the axles groan, the horse-shoes—also heavily nailed—crunch the ground, the machine advances by fits and starts, descends into the hollows, bounds altogether at the ditches, and falls violently back with a dull noise.”

Other gaily decorated carriages, surprisingly like our modern vans, though on two wheels, are shown in Le Roman du Roy Meliadus, another fourteenth-century manuscript preserved in the British Museum, but only the richest and most powerful of the nobles could afford to keep them.

“They were bequeathed,” says M. Jusserand, “by will from one another, and the gift was valuable. On September 25, 1355, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, wrote her last will and endowed her eldest daughter with ‘her great carriage with the coverture, carpets, and cushions.’ In the twentieth year of Richard II, Roger Rouland received £400 sterling for a carriage destined for Queen Isabella; and John le Charer, in the sixth [year] of Edward III, received £1000 for the carriage of Lady Eleanor—the King’s sister.”

These were fabulous sums, when it is remembered that an ox cost about thirteen shillings and a sheep but one shilling and five pence.

Now it may be that such a “great carriage” as is shown in the Louterell Psalter was identical with the whirlicote in which, according to Stowe, Richard II and his mother took refuge on the occasion of Wat Tyler’s rebellion.

“Of old time,” says this honest tailor, who himself witnessed the introduction of coaches into England, “coaches were not known in this island, but chariots or whirlicotes, then so called, and they only used of princes or great estates, such as had their footmen about them; and for example to note, I read that Richard II, being threatened by the rebels of Kent, rode from the Tower of London to the Mile’s End, and with him his mother, because she was sick and weak, in a whirlicote, the Earl of Buckingham ... knights and Esquires attending on horseback. But in the next year [1381] the said King Richard took to wife Anne, daughter to the King of Bohemia, that first brought hither the riding upon side saddles; and so was the riding in whirlicotes and chariots forsaken, except at coronations and such like spectacles.”

From this it would appear that the whirlicote (which may, as Bridges Adams suggests, have been derived from “whirling” or moving “cot” or house) was identical with the chariot or chaer. Unfortunately the translators of Froissart, who mentions the incident of Richard’s ride from the Tower, cannot agree upon the correct word to render the original charette. Charette, chariette, chare, chaer (Wicliffe), and char (Chaucer) all occur in the early chronicles, and there seems no means, if, indeed, there is any need, of differentiating between them. All were probably waggons modified for the conveyance of such passengers as could afford to pay highly for the privilege. One fact, however, suggests that there were at any rate two different kinds of carriages in England at this time, for we read that the body of Richard II was borne to its last resting-place “upon a chariette or sort of litter on wheels, such as is used by citizens’ wives who are not able or not allowed to keep ordinary litters.” With this in mind, it is difficult to agree with Sir Walter Gilbey when he says[15] that the chare was a horse litter, though it is fair to add that he acknowledges an opposite view.

The charette is obviously the French form of caretta, which was the carriage in which Beatrice, the wife of Charles of Anjou, entered Naples in 1267.[16] This vehicle is described as being covered both inside and without with sky-blue velvet powdered with golden lilies. Pope Gregory X entered Milan in 1273 in a similar carriage. The caretta was probably an open car “shaded simply by a canopy.” In the next century, the Anciennes Chroniques de Flandres, a manuscript belonging to 1347, shows an illustration of Ermengarde, the wife of Salvard, Lord of Rousillon, travelling in a four-wheeled conveyance remarkably like the ordinary country waggon of to-day.

“The lady,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “is seated on the floor-boards of a springless four-wheeled cart or waggon, covered in with a tilt that could be raised or drawn aside; the body of the vehicle is of carved wood and the outer edges of the wheels are painted grey to represent iron tyres. The conveyance is drawn by two horses driven by a postilion who bestrides that on the near [left] side. The traces are apparently of rope, and the outer trace of the postilion’s horse is represented as passing under the saddle-girth, a length of leather (?) being let in for the purpose; the traces are attached to swingle-bars carried on the end of a cross-piece secured to the base of the pole where it meets the body.

“Carriages of some kind,” he continues, “appear also to have been used by men of rank when travelling on the Continent. The Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land of Henry, Earl of Derby, in 1390 and 1392-3 (Camden Society’s Publications, 1894) indicate that the Earl, afterwards King Henry IV of England, travelled on wheels at least part of the way through Austria.

“The accounts kept by his Treasurer during the journey contain several entries relative to carriages; thus on November 14, 1392, payment is made for the expenses of two equerries named Hethcote and Mansel, who were left for one night at St. Michael, between Leoban and Kniltefeld, with thirteen carriage horses. On the following day the route lay over such rugged and mountainous country that the carriage wheels were broken despite the liberal use of grease; and at last the narrowness of the way obliged the Earl to exchange his own carriage for two smaller ones better suited to the paths of the district.

“The Treasurer also records the sale of an old carriage at Friola for three florins. The exchange of the Earl’s ‘own carriage’ is the significant entry: it seems very unlikely that a noble of his rank would have travelled so lightly that a single cart would contain his own luggage and that of his personal retinue; and it is also unlikely that he used one luggage cart of his own. The record points directly to the conclusion that the carriages were passenger vehicles used by the Earl himself.”

It is to be noted that the carriage of the Lady Ermengarde was a Flemish vehicle. Flanders, indeed, seems to have shared with Hungary the honour of playing pioneer in carriage-building throughout the ages, and long after the general adoption of coaches in Europe, Flemish models, and also Flemish mares, were freely imported into the various countries.

Another carriage of this time is described in a pre-Chaucerian poem called The Squyr of Low Degree, in which the father of a Hungarian princess is made to say:—

“Tomorrow ye shall on hunting fare,

And ride my daughter in a chare.

It shall be covered with velvet red,

And cloths of fine gold all about your head;

With damask white, and azure blue,

Well diapered with lilies new;

Your pomelles shal be ended with gold,

Your chains enammelled many a fold.”

The pomelles no doubt were “the handles to the rods affixed to the roof, and were for the purpose of holding on by, when deep ruts or obstacles in the road caused an unusual jerk in the vehicle.” One notices that lilies were apparently a common form of decoration on these early carriages, but it is to be regretted that the accounts in general are so scanty.

We come to the litters.

Of these the commonest, both in England and on the Continent, seem to have been modifications of the Roman basterna. Generally they were covered with a sort of vault with various openings. Two horses, one at either end, carried them. The great majority held only one person. Thrupp describes them in some detail.

“They were,” he says, “long and narrow—long enough for a person to recline in—and no wider than could be carried between the poles which were placed on either side of the horses. They were about four to five feet long, and two feet six inches wide, with low sides and higher ends. The entrance was in the middle, on both sides, the doors being formed sometimes by a sliding panel and sometimes simply by a cross-bar. The steps were of leather or iron loops, the latter being hinged to turn up when the litter was placed on the ground. The upper part was formed by a few broad wooden hoops, united along the top by four or five slats, and over the whole a canopy was placed, which opened in the middle, at the sides, and ends, for air and light.”

Isolated references to these horse-litters are scattered throughout the old chronicles, but afford meagre information. William of Malmesbury states that the body of William Rufus was placed on a reda caballaria, a horse-litter, the name of which suggests its origin. According to Matthew of Westminster, King John, during his illness in 1216, was removed from Swinstead Abbey to Newark in a similar vehicle, the lectica equestre. Generally, however, the horse-litter was reserved exclusively for women, men being unwilling to risk an accusation of effeminacy. So, in recording the death of Earl Ferrers in 1254, from injuries received in an accident to his conveyance, the historian is careful to explain that his Lordship suffered from the gout, which was why he happened to be in a litter at all.

As time passed, the litter rather than the wheeled carriage became the state vehicle. Froissart, writing of the second wife of Richard II, describes “la june Royne d’Angleterre” as travelling “en une litere moult riche qui etoit ordondée pour elle.” Margaret, the daughter of Henry VII, journeyed to Scotland, it is true, on the back of a “faire palfrey,” but she was followed by “one vary riche litere, borne by two faire coursers vary nobly drest; in wich litere the sayd queene was borne in the intryng of the good townes, or otherwise to her good playsher.” But on the Continent new improvements were being made in wheeled carriages, and when in 1432 Henry VI wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other high dignitaries of the Church, with regard to the widow of Henry of Navarre, he ordered them to place two chares at her disposal, rather than the litter to which one might have thought she would be entitled. Sir Walter Gilbey translates the word to mean a horse-litter, but Markland, in his paper on the Early Use of Carriages in England (Archæologia, Vol. XX), differentiates between the two, ascribing a more ceremonial use to the litter, and this seems to me to be nearer the truth. Both vehicles, for instance, are mentioned by Holinshed in his description of the coronation ceremony of Catherine of Aragon in 1509. The Queen herself rode in a litter of “white clothe of golde, not covered nor bailed, which was led by two palfreys clad in white damask doone to the ground, head and all, led by her footman. Over her was borne a canopie of cloth of gold, with four gilt staves, and four silver bells. For the bearing of which canopie were appointed sixteen knights, foure to beare it one space on foot, and other foure another space.” But the Queen’s ladies followed her in chariots decorated in red, and the same thing is true of Anne Boleyn, who in 1533 rode to her coronation in a litter, but was followed by four chariots, three decorated with red, and one with white. Such chariots probably resembled those to be described in the next chapter; the point to notice here is that they were being used now, and although the litters still continued until the time of Charles II—Mary de Medicis, the Queen-Mother of France, entered London in 1638 in a litter, though she had travelled from Harwich in a coach, and as late as 1680 “an accident happened to General Shippon, who came in a horse-litter wounded to London; when he paused by the brewhouse in St. John Street a mastiff attacked the horses, and he was tossed like a dog in a blanket”—the wheeled carriage once again became the vehicle of honour, and at the coronation of Mary in 1553 a chariot[17] and not a litter was used by the Queen. This had six horses, and was covered with a “cloth of tissue.” Whatever its discomforts may have been, it cannot have been less dignified than the litter which it had, now for all time, supplanted.

Chapter the Third

INTRODUCTION OF THE COACH (1450-1600)

“Go—call a Coach; and let a Coach be called:

Let him that calls the Coach, be called the Caller!

And in his calling, let him no thing call,

But Coach! Coach!! COACH!!!”

Chrononhotonthologos.

BOTH horse-litters and early wheeled carriages seem to have had some pretensions towards comfort. They afforded protection against the inclemency of the weather; there had been certain rude attempts at suspension, and the soft cushions helped to minimise the unpleasant joltings to which every carriage was liable. When, however, the renaissance of carriage-building occurred, people seem to have been but little more progressive than they had been centuries before. There were, as I have already hinted, still two factors which militated against a speedy adoption of such vehicles, more comfortable though they undoubtedly were, as now began to be made—the state of the roads, and the dislike of anything bordering upon the effeminate.

The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not only in England, but in every European country. As one writer of the sixteenth century complains, the roads, “by reason of straitness and disrepair, breed a loathsome weariness to the passenger.” Nor is this writer a solitary grumbler: there are numerous complaints. In 1537 Richard Bellasis, one of the monastery-wreckers, was unable to proceed with his work: “lead from the roofs,” he reports, “cannot be conveyed away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and deepe that no carriage [cart] can pass in winter.” Indeed, no one seems to have looked after the roads with any care, either in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. Yet there were, in this country, repeated bequests for their preservation. Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, a sufferer himself, left one hundred marks to be bestowed on the highways in Craven, and the same sum on those of Westmorland. John Lyon, the founder of Harrow School, gave certain rents for the repair of the roads from Harrow and Edgware to London. This was in 1592, and Lyon’s example was speedily followed by Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse. There was, indeed, legislation of a kind, but in general the roads were in a terrible condition, and for a long time, so far as men were concerned, the saddle remained triumphant.

And for an even longer time continued that prejudice against carriages which led to the framing of actual prohibitive laws. Even women were occasionally forbidden the use of coaches, and there is the story of the luxurious duchess who in 1546 found great difficulty in obtaining from the Elector of Saxony permission to be driven in a covered carriage to the baths—such leave being granted only on the understanding that none of her attendants were to be allowed the same privilege. So, too, in 1564, Pope Pius IV was exhorting his cardinals and bishops to leave the new-fangled machines to women, and twenty-four years later Julius, Duke of Brunswick, found it necessary to issue an edict—it makes quaint reading now—ordering his “vassals, servants, and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old,” who “have dared to give themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches ... to take notice that when We order them to assemble, either altogether or in part, in Times of Turbulence, or to receive their Fiefs, or when on other occasions they visit Our Court, they shall not travel or appear in Coaches, but on their riding Horses.” More stringent is the edict, preserved amongst the archives of the German county of Mark, in which the nobility was forbidden the use of coaches “under penalty of incurring the punishment of felony.” So, also, we have the case of René de Laval, Lord of Bois-Dauphin, an extremely obese nobleman living in Paris, whose only excuse for possessing a coach was his inability to be set upon a horse, or to keep in that position if the horse chanced to move. This was in 1550. In England there was a similar feeling of opposition. In 1584 John Lyly, in his play Alexander and Campaspe, makes one of his characters complain of the new luxury. In the old days, he says, those who used to enter the battlefield on hard-trotting horses, now ride in coaches and think of nothing but the pleasures of the flesh. The once famous Bishop Hall speaks bitterly of the “sin-guilty” coach:—

“Is’t not a shame to see each homely groome

Sit perched in an idle chariot roome

That were not meete some pannel to bestride

Sursingled to a galled hackney’s hide?

Nor can it nought our gallant’s praises reap,

Unless it be done in staring cheap

In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent,

Jogging along the harder pavement.”

Possibly the same idea is to be found in the framing of a Parliamentary Bill of 1601 “to restrain the excessive use of coaches,” which, however, was thrown out. So again in 1623, the delightful though sadly biased water-poet, John Taylor, is lamenting the decadence of England, due, according to him, to the growing custom of driving in coaches.

“For whereas,” he says, “within our memories, our Nobility and Gentry would ride well mounted (and sometimes walke on foote) gallantly attended with three or four, score brave fellowes in blue coates, which was a glory to our Nation; and gave more content to the beholders, then [sic] forty of your Leather tumbrels: Then men preserv’d their bodies strong and able by walking, riding, and other manly exercises: Then saddlers was a good Trade, and the name of a Coach was Heathen Greek. Who ever saw (but upon extraordinary occasions),” he goes on to ask, “Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Norris, Sir William Winter, Sir Roger Williams, or (whom I should have nam’d first) the famous Lord Gray and Willoughby, when the renowned George Earle of Cumberland, or Robert Earle of Essex? These sonnes of Mars, who in their time were the glorious Brooches of our Nation, and admirable terrour to our Enemies: these, I say, did make small use of Coaches, and there were two mayne reasons for it, the one was, that there were but few Coaches in most of their times: and the second is, they were deadly foes to all sloth and effeminacy.”

To Taylor, indeed, and probably to every one of his fellow-watermen, a coach was always a “hell-cart” designed on purpose to put an end to his own most worthy calling. But less biased poets than outspoken Taylor gave tongue to an opposition which continued for nearly two centuries. Gay, for instance, looked on the vastly improved vehicle of his day as no more than an excuse for extravagant display:—

“O happy streets, to rumbling wheels unknown,

No carts, no coaches shake the floating town!

Thus was of old Britannia’s city bless’d,

Ere pride and luxury her sons profess’d.”

And again:—

“Now gaudy pride corrupts the lavish age,

And the streets flame with glaring equipage;

The tricking gamester insolently rides,

With Loves and Graces on his chariot’s sides;

In saucy state the griping broker sits,

And laughs at honesty, and trudging wits.”

Perhaps he is thinking of some personal inconvenience, rather than of mere unnecessary luxury, when he asks:—

“What walker shall his mean ambition fix

On the false lustre of a coach and six?”

And so late as 1770, the eccentric Lord Monboddo, who still maintained the superiority of a savage life, refused to “sit in a box drawn by brutes.” It is, of course, easy to magnify such opposition to coaches as followed on the grounds of mere luxury and display, but in the earlier history of the coach, to which we are now come, it is a factor which must by no means be neglected. The coach, like every other novelty, had to fight its way, and if one is inclined to believe, after reading such accusations as there are of the earliest coaches with their magnificent adornments and numerous attendants, that the owners altogether deserved the reproaches of their more Spartan fellows, it may be well to recall Macaulay’s words. In his sketch of the state of England in 1685, when coaches were still lavishly adorned, he says of them: “We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People in the time of Charles the Second travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire.” And what is true of 1685 is certainly true of 1585.

Buckingham is supposed to have been the first man to use a coach and six in this country, though this is by no means certain. Of him a well-known story apropos of this question of undue luxury is told. “The stout old Earl of Northumberland,” it runs, “when he got loose, hearing that the great Favourite Buckingham was drawn about with a Coach and six horses (which was wondered at then as a novelty, and imputed to him as a mastring pride) thought if Buckingham had six he might very well have eight in his Coach, with which he rode through the City of London to the Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.... Nor did this addition of two horses by Buckingham grow higher than a little murmur. For in the late Queen’s time there were no coaches, and the first [had] but two Horses; the rest crept in by Degrees as men at first venture to sea.”[18] Yet what may have been true of Buckingham, whose love of luxury was notorious, need not have been true of those other owners of coaches, who were constantly travelling about the country.

Finally there is the other side of the question to be remembered, and, as M. Ramde quaintly points out in his History of Locomotion, the very luxury which people so disliked had a beneficent effect; for “after the development of the use of carriages, and their frequent employment by the court and nobility, the liberty to throw everything out of the window became intolerable! Thus the carriage of luxury has been the cause of cleanliness in the streets.”

Now it must be understood that the coach proper differs from all earlier vehicles in being not only a covered, but also a suspended carriage. The canopy has given place to the roof, a roof, that is to say, which forms part of the framing of the body; and the body itself is swung in some fashion, however primitive, from posts or other supports. Further, it seems reasonable to suppose, on the analogy of the berlin and the landau—two later carriages which took their names from the towns in which they were first made—that the first coaches were built in a small Hungarian town then called Kotzee. Yet it is to be observed that Spain, Italy, and France, in the persons of various enthusiasts, have claimed the invention—their claims being mainly based on such similarities as may be observed between the real coach and the earlier cars and charettes.[19] Bridges Adams, indeed, not to be outdone, hazards the suggestion that England might also be included in such a list by reason of her invention of the whirlicote, though he is obliged to admit that nobody knows exactly what a whirlicote was like. It is probably due to these patriotic gentlemen that several rather ludicrous suggestions have been made to explain the derivation of the word coach, which has a similar sound in nearly all European languages. Menange rashly suggests a corruption of the Latin vehiculum. Another writer puts forward the Greek verb ὀχέω, to carry. Wachten, a German, finds in kutten, to cover, a suitable explanation, and Lye produces the Flemish koetsen, to lie along. This last, perhaps, is the most reasonable suggestion of those unwilling to give the palm to Hungary, for not only were the Flemish vehicles well known before the introduction of the new carriage, but there is also some confusion, at any rate, in this country, between the two words coach and couch, both being found in the old account books. Even in the sixteenth century the word seems to have bothered people. There is an amusing reference to this point in an early seventeenth-century tract called Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing, of which I shall have more to say in the next chapter.

“Their first invention,” says a character in this dialogue, “and use was in the Kingdome of Hungarie, about the time when Frier George, compelled the Queen and her young sonne the King, to seeke to Soliman the Turkish Emperour, for aid against the Frier, and some of the Nobilitie, to the utter ruine of that most rich and flourishing Kingdome, where they were first called Kottcze, and in the Slavonian tongue Cottri, not of Coucher the French to lie-downe, nor of Cuchey, the Cambridge Carrier, as some body made Master Minshaw, when hee (rather wee) perfected his Etymologicall dictionarie, whence we call them to this day Coaches.”

It is also to be noted that the first English coaches, so called, were probably not suspended at all, but merely upholstered carts for reclining—in fact nothing more than the old chariots. In the second half of the sixteenth century, practically every pleasure carriage in England, though not on the Continent, was called a coach or a carroche. Consequently it is difficult to give a date for the importation of the first real coach into this country. Indeed, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty precisely when carriages of the suspended type were first made. Such early accounts as exist are at once fragmentary and obscure, and the few illustrations little better than caricatures with a perspective reminiscent of that in Hogarth’s famous example of false drawing. It can only be repeated that the hammock slung from the four posts of a waggon, such as we have seen existed amongst the Anglo-Saxons and possibly was also in use in parts of Europe, may have provided the idea of permanent suspension as a means to comfort, and that such scanty evidence as there is goes to prove that the carriages exported from Hungary towards the end of the fifteenth century seem to have been the first coaches to be built.

So early as 1457 there is mention of such a carriage, given by Ladislaus, King of Hungary, to the French King, Charles VII. The Parisians who saw it described it as “branlant et moulte riche.” What this “trembling” carriage was like there is no means of discovering, but it certainly suggests an attempt at suspension, and may perhaps be taken for the earliest coach to be recorded by history. This obviously was Hungarian, and Hungary is again mentioned in the same connection by Stephanus Broderithus, who relates that in 1526, “when the archbishop received intelligence that the Turks had entered Hungary, not content with informing the King of this event, he speedily got into one of those light carriages which from the name of the place we call kotcze, and hastened to His Majesty.” And apparently these light carriages were actually used for military purposes, Taylor avowing that “they carried soldiers on each side with cross-bowes,” this being the best purpose to which he considered the coach had ever been put or was likely to be put in the future. All this is clear enough, but Beckmann, in his History of Inventions, mentions another circumstance which strengthens the evidence: “Siegmund, Baron de Herberstein, ambassador from Louis II, to the King of Hungary, says in his Commentarie de rebus Moscoviticis, where he occasionally mentions some travelling-stages in Hungary: ‘The fourth stage for stopping to give the horses breath is six miles below Taurinum, in the village of Cotzi, from which both drivers and carriages take their name, and are generally called cotzi.’”[20]

Very probably these new Hungarian carriages were seen in most European countries before 1530. “At tournaments,” says Bridges Adams, “they were made objects for display; they are spoken of as being gilded all over, and the hangings were of crimson satin. Electresses and duchesses were seldom without them; and there was as much rivalry in their days of public exhibition as there is now [1837] amongst the aspirants of fashion in their well-appointed equipages at a queen’s drawing-room.”

What did these early coaches look like? Shorn of their hangings, they must have resembled nothing so much as the hearse of to-day. The first illustrations show no signs of suspension, and portray what appear to be gaudily decorated waggons, and that in effect is what they were. The first coach makers of Hungary, like their predecessors, were certainly content to take for their model the common agricultural waggon of Germany. Indeed, Hungary seems to have played pioneer in this respect at a very early date. Von Ginzrot, in his work on early vehicles, gives an illustration of a closed passenger carriage which bears more than a superficial resemblance to the later coaches. “The body,” says Thrupp, “is a disguised waggon; the tilt-top has two leather flaps to fall over the doorway, and the panels are of wicker-work.” It would have been quite easy, he continues, to use such waggons, as had been the case long before, for passenger traffic, “by placing the planks across the sides, or suspending seats by straps from the sides”; and he further mentions an oil painting at Nuremberg, of two waggons “with carved and gilt standard posts both in front and behind the body”—an interesting stage in the transformation from rude cart to private coach. There is a detailed and technical description of these waggons in Thrupp’s own book, but it will be enough here to notice that they were generally narrower at the bottom than at the top, as were the first coaches, and that the four wheels were nearly of the same size. Working from such a model, the Hungarian artificers produced a comparatively light, though large, four-wheeled carriage with some pretensions to grace of line, a roofed body, broad seats, and a side entrance. The body, however, was not completely enclosed by solid panels, which only took the place of the curtains at a later date. Carvings and other ornamentation followed on the owner’s rank and taste. And towards the end of the sixteenth century, if not before, the actual body was suspended on straps or braces. There are preserved at Coburg and Verona one or two coach-bodies which show signs of the iron hoops by which they were hung. The earliest of these was built for Duke Frederick of Saxony in 1527, and Count Gozzadini, in a slim folio which he privately printed some sixty years ago, describes a coach-body built in 1549 which still shows traces of its heraldic ornamentation on the framework.

“This coach,” says Thrupp, acting as the Count’s translator, “was built under the direction of an Italian at Brussels, for the ceremony of the marriage of Alexander, the son of Octavius Farnese, Duke of Parma, with a Portuguese princess. The wedding took place in 1565 at Brussels. There were four carriages Flanders fashion [? charettes] and four coaches after the Italian fashion, swinging on leather braces. The chief, or state, coach is described as being in the most beautiful manner, with four statues at the ends, the spokes of the wheels like fluted columns. There were seraphims’ heads at the end of the roof and over the doorway, and festoons of fruit in relief over the framing of the body. The coachman was supported by two carved figures of lions, two similar lions were at the hind wheel, and the leather braces that supported the body and the harness were embossed with heads of animals. The ends of the steps were serpents’ heads. The whole of the wood and ironwork was covered with gold relieved with white. The coach was drawn by four horses, with red and white plumes of feathers, and the covering of the body and of the horses was gold brocade with knotted red silk fringe. The cushions of gold-embroidered stuff were perfumed with amber and musk, that infused the soul of all who entered the coach with life, joy, and supreme pleasure.”

Truly a Southern notion!

What is apparently the oldest coach to be preserved practically intact is to be seen at Coburg. This coach was built for a particular occasion—the marriage of John, Elector of Saxony, in 1584. The body is long and ornate, and is hung from four carved standard posts surmounted by crowned lions. The wheels are large—four feet eight inches and five feet—and the roof is at a slightly higher level than the lions’ heads. Mounting steps must have existed, but have been lost.

Not unnaturally the advent of these coaches followed upon the commercial prosperity of each country. Germany seems to have imported a number of carriages from Hungary, and made others from Hungarian models, but even more prosperous than Germany at this time was Holland, which probably possessed more coaches than any other country in Europe. Here there would have been native designs to follow and improve upon, and, as I shall show in a moment, it was probably from the Netherlands that the first coach was imported into England. Antwerp, for instance, a superlatively rich city in the sixteenth century, is credited by Macpherson with having no less than five hundred coaches —and so five hundred scandals, according to the local philosophers—in 1560, at which date London had but two, and Paris no more than three. Of the French trio of carosses, as they were called, one was the Queen’s property, a second belonged to the fashionable Diana of Poitiers, and the third had been built for the use of that corpulent noble who has already been mentioned. Some Italian towns possessed many, others none. There is preserved at the Musée Cluny in Paris a Veronese carriole built in the sixteenth century by Giovanna Batta Maretto, with panels painted by a distinguished artist of the time. Verona, indeed, seems to have had many coaches. But it was easily surpassed by Ferrara, which so early as 1509 is credited with the possession of no less than sixty coaches, the whole of these forming the Duke’s procession on the occasion of a state visit from the Pope. And, as Thrupp points out, these sixty carriages were not litters or cars, as might be supposed, but coaches, for it is particularly mentioned by the historian that “the Duchess of Ferrara rode in a litter, and her ladies followed her in twenty-two cars.” Spain had apparently no coaches until 1546, and here again there was considerable opposition to their use. Yet although England, France, and Spain seem to have been behind other countries in taking to the new carriages, all three possessed a flourishing, if not very large, coach-building trade before 1600.

From a Print by Hofnagel, 1582

Here, perhaps, we may consider the introduction of the coach into England in rather greater detail. “It is a doubtful question,” remarks Taylor in his ill-natured way,” whether the divell brought Tobacco into England in a Coach, or else brought a Coach in a fogge or mist of Tobacco.” Apparently he had an equal dislike for both coach and tobacco. But although we owe to the water-poet such contemporary satirical writings on the subject as there are, he is not to be trusted as an historian. Taylor, indeed, is a very bad historian, not so much on account of his inability to see two sides of a question, as because, like many another poet, he has made of exaggeration a fine art, and allowed his memory to play second fiddle to his inclinations. It is to the worthy Stowe that we must turn for the facts. Stowe liked the coaches little better than did Taylor, but his training had made him exact, and we may take it for granted that he is more or less correct when he says that the first coach to be seen upon British roads belonged to the year 1555. Curiously enough, this is the date of the first General Highways Act. The preamble of this Bill stated that certain roads were “now both very noisesome and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and carriages [carts].” The local authorities were empowered to compel parishioners to give four days’ work every year to the repairing of the roads, though how far such orders were carried out it would be impossible to say. The merit of actually introducing the coach is given by Stowe to Henry Manners, second Earl of Rutland, who caused one Walter Rippon to build him a carriage from some foreign, most probably Dutch, pattern. This Earl of Rutland had borne the Spurs at the coronation of Edward VI, and in 1547 had been made Constable of Nottingham Castle. He had received the French hostages in 1550 at the time of the treaty which followed on the loss of Boulogne. It is to be regretted that neither in his correspondence nor in the family account-books preserved at Belvoir is there mention of either Rippon or his coach. There is, indeed, the “Book of John Leek of riding charges carriages [carts] and forrene paymentes” in 1550, and another book compiled by Leek’s successor, George Pilkington, in the following year, but all travelling entries concern only horses and the cartage of goods. In 1555 “George Lassells, Esquyer” was “Comptroller to the householde” and paid “to Edward Hopkynson for ij ryding roddes of bone for my Ladye and other thinges, xxijd,” but there is no mention of any carriage for his Lordship’s own use. What is more unfortunate is that there are no account-books of the Manners family between 1559 and 1585, and it is not until 1587, when a fourth Earl of Rutland was head of his house, that this significant entry occurs:—

“Coach, a newe, bought in London, xxxviijli.xiijs.ijd.”

To go back to Rippon, it is not known who he was. He is supposed to have built a coach for Queen Mary in 1556, and in 1564 the first “hollow turning coach” with pillars and arches, for Queen Elizabeth, though precisely what is meant by a “hollow turning” coach it is difficult to conjecture. This same Rippon twenty-four years later built another coach for the Queen, which is described as “a chariot throne with foure pillars behind, to beare a crowne imperiale on the toppe, and before two lower pillars, whereon stood a lion and a dragon, the supporters of the armes of England.” It cannot have been very comfortable, and Elizabeth seems to have preferred another coach brought out of Holland by one William Boonen, who about 1560 was made her coachman, a position he was still occupying at the end of the century. This Boonen was a Dutchman, whose wife is said to have introduced the art of starching into England, whence followed those huge ruffs so conspicuous in all the Elizabethan portraits. Boonen’s coach could be opened and closed at pleasure. On the occasion of the Queen’s passing through the town of Warwick, she had “every part and side of her coach to be opened, that all her subjects present might behold her, which most gladly they desired.” This coach is described as “on four wheels with seven spokes, which are apparently bound round with a thick wooden rim secured by pegs. It is precisely such a vehicle,” adds the anonymous historian in the Carriage Builder’s and Harness Maker’s Art Journal, “as is now [1860] used by the brewers, with a tilt over it, which opens in the centre on one side, and would contain half a dozen persons.” On the other hand, one may safely assert that no brewer’s cart was ever decorated in the same way, for the framing of Elizabeth’s carriage was of wood carved in a shell pattern and gilded. “The whole composition,” runs another account, “contains many beautiful curves. The shell-work creeps up to the roof, which it supports, and which is dome-shaped.... The roof is capped by five waving ostrich feathers, one at each corner, and the fifth on the centre of the roof, and springing from a kind of crown.” The driver’s seat was apparently a kind of movable stool, and two horses were used. Even this coach, however, of which there is a print by Hoefnagle, dated 1582, cannot have been very comfortable, and in 1568, when the French ambassador obtained an audience, Elizabeth was complaining of “aching pains” from being knocked about in a coach driven too fast a few days before. “No wonder,” comments one historian, “that the great queen used her coach only when occasions of state demanded.” Whenever possible, indeed, she used her horse. “When Queen Elizabeth came to Norwich, 1578,” wrote Sir Thomas Browne a hundred years later, “she came on horseback from Ipswich, by the high road to Norwich, in the summer time; but she had a coach or two,” he added, “in her trayne.”

In the print just mentioned there is shown a second coach, which is perhaps a better example of the carriage of the period. One sees again its hearse-like appearance, though the top is broader than the bottom, and the body is partially enclosed; but there is one peculiarity which deserves particular mention. This was a small seat which projected on either side, between the wheels. It was known as the boot. Here sat the pages or grooms or the ladies in attendance. Taylor, of course, has his fling against it. The booted coach, he says, is like a perpetual cheater, wears “two Bootes and no Spurs, sometimes having two paire of Legs and one boote; and oftentimes (against nature) most preposterously it makes faire Ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are carrried backe to backe like people surpriz’d by Pyrats to be tyed in that miserable manner, and throwne overboard into the Sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate Sea-crabs, in being drawne Side-wayes, as they are when they sit in the boote of the Coach.” The boot, however, was already tending to disappear in Taylor’s day. How it originated is not clear. It was always uncovered, whence followed much hardship, particularly if the weather was unfavourable. Nor can one think that it was very capacious. There is an early seventeenth-century pamphlet entitled My Journie, in which a stout old lady is put into the boot of a coach, and cannot move. When going uphill all the passengers are supposed to get out and walk, but the old lady, once settled, refuses to budge, and, indeed, cannot be extricated until the end of the journey. There is further mention of the discomfort in a boot in 1663, when Edward Barker, writing to his father, a Lancashire squire, complains of his troubles in the side seat. “I got to London,” he says, “on Saturday last, my journey was noe ways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye, y^e company y^t came up w^th mee were persons of greate quality as knightes and ladyes. My journeys expence was 30 s. This traval hath soe indisposed mee, y^t I am resolved never to ride againe in y^e coatch. I am extreamly hot and feverish.” The monstrous width of these early coaches followed, of course, on their projecting side seats, which only entirely disappeared when the coach had come to be completely enclosed and provided with glass windows.

It may be that the boot in process of time was metamorphosed into the large, deep, four-sided basket which was strapped to the back of public coaches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and, indeed, this basket seems to have been called the boot in eighteenth-century stage coaches. It was probably in such a basket-boot as this that Mr. Pepys put his great barrel of oysters, “as big as sixteen others,” which was given him in 1664.

An interesting point in this connection is that those who travelled on the seatless and presumably most uncomfortable roof of a coach plying for hire, paid more for the privilege than did those who rode in the boot.

However greatly the chroniclers may differ as to the date of the actual introduction, and others besides Taylor disagree with Stowe, there seems no doubt that by 1585 many of the nobility and some wealthy commoners owned private coaches, and, indeed, certain enterprising tradesmen, as will appear, let other coaches on hire at so much per day.

“After a while,” says Stowe, “divers great ladies, with a great jealousy of the Queen’s displeasure, made them coaches and rid them up and down the countries, to the great admiration of all the beholders, but then little by little they grew usual amongst the nobilitie and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coach-making.”

Indeed, every one of any wealth was eager to possess them. A private coach settled any doubts as to your quality. It was a new fashion, a new excitement. “So a woman,” says Quicksilver, the rake, in Eastward Hoe, “marry to ride in a coach, she cares not if she rides to her ruin. ’Tis the great end of many of their marriages.” And again, in Ben Jonson’s Alchemist it is said of the Countess that she

“... has her pages, ushers

Her six mares—

Nay, eight!

To hurry her through London, to the Exchange,

Bethlem, the china-houses—

Yes, and have

The citizens gape at her, and praise her tires.”

Even the plain country-folk seem to have been smitten with the new toy, for toy it was to them. “Has he ne’er a little odd cart,” asks Waspe in Bartholomew Fair, “for you to make a coach on, in the country, with four pied hobby-horses?” Any shift for a coach, thought he, and no doubt voiced public opinion.

The first owners of coaches appear to have been those who had travelled abroad. So early as 1556, Sir Thomas Hoby, who had been our ambassador to France, possessed a coach and offered to lend it to the Lady Cecil. The account-book for 1573 of the Kytson family, of Hengrave, in Suffolk, mentions another early coach. “For my m^res [mistress’s] coche, with all the furniture thereto belonging except horses—xxxiiijli.xiiijs. For the painting of my m^r and m^res armes upon the coche—ijs.vjd.” In 1579 the Earl of Arundel is said to have brought a coach into England from Germany, and this coach is interesting from the fact that certain historians have credited it with being the first coach in England. How such a tradition arose is not clear, but it may be that this German coach had certain features which more nearly approached those of the later Stuart, fully-enclosed, coaches. Further details are to be found in the Manners notebooks, and these afford a glimpse of the methods adopted by the coachmakers, not yet a large body, of the day. In the notebooks of Thomas Screven, 1596-97, after an item for twenty-eight shillings for three-quarters of “scarlet sleves and labelles for his L[ordship’s] parlyament robes” comes another of six shillings “to my Lady Adeline’s coachman,” and one, just below, of greater interest:—

“Item paid to Wm. Wright, coachmaker, in parte of xlli. for a coache now made, xxli.”

After that, in the 1598-99 book comes an item to “the Countess of South[ampton’s] coachman that wayted on my Lord to Dertford, vs.” This suggests the growing popularity of the coach, more especially as there is another disbursement in the same year to the Countess of Essex’s coachman. Then follow from November 25th, 1598, details of the expenses of the new coach for my Lord’s own use—which apparently took considerable time to furnish.

“Item for ij paire of new wheeles for the coache, tymber worke and iron work, and setting them on the axeltrees, iijli.xiijs.iiijd.; payntinge them in oyle colour, vjs.viijd.; a new pole for the horses to drawe by, ijs.vjd.; a paire of springe trees, iijs.iijd.”

The provender bill for six horses is given, also an item “for setting up the coach horses at dyvers times at Walsingham Howse, iiijs.; at Hatton Howse, xijd.; at Baynardes Castle, ijs.; dressing and oyling the coach, ijs.”; while the most necessary whip costs Mr. Screven twelve pence. Other payments are six shillings for two new bearing braces for the “double hanging” of the coach—here at any rate is definite mention of suspension, a fact which might suggest that, after all, either Rippon’s or Lord Arundel’s coach had been of the suspended type—four shillings for a long spring brace, two shillings and sixpence for a new “wynge,” and sixteen pence for two “bearing raynes.” The new coach, however, is not ready in time for his Lordship, who thereupon hires one with three horses to take him “to the Court at Nonesuch, 23, 24, and 25 of September, at xvjs. per diem.” Meanwhile payments for his own coach continue. For four “skynnes of orange colour leather goate” he pays various sums; for the timber work, for more painting, for a covering in “black lether,” and for making the “curtaynes, and setting on the firinge, and making the blew cloth cover” a sum of twenty-six pounds, nineteen shillings, is expended. Nor is this all. My Lord was evidently determined to make his coach as gorgeous as possible. Nine yards of “marygold coulour velvet for the seat and bed in the coach” were required, and each yard cost twenty-three shillings. The quilting for the bed cost forty shillings. In addition, there was a lace of “crymosin silk” and no less than “v elles of crymosin taffaty for curtaynes,” costing three pounds fifteen shillings; also “9 yardes of blew clothe for a cover.” Then, of great interest, comes the final entry:—

“Item, paid to Ryly, embroderer, in full for embrodering iij sumpter clothes of crymosin with his L[ordship’s] armes thereon at large, and vij otheres embrodered onely with great peacocks, with carsey for the garding and tasselles and frynge, 14 July, lxiiijli.”

Mr. Ryly was well paid for his work[21].

From such details it is possible to imagine what this and other coaches of the time were like. You figure a huge, gaudy, curtained apparatus with projecting sides and incomplete panels, large enough to contain a fair-sized bed, hung roughly from four posts, and capable of being dragged at little better than a snail’s pace—“four-wheeled Tortoyses” Taylor calls them—along roads hardly worthy of the name. Twenty miles a day was considered good going. Says Portia, in the Merchant of Venice:—

“... I’ll tell thee all my whole device

When I am in my coach, which stays for us

At the park gate; and therefore haste away,

For we must measure twenty miles to-day.”

The coachman, as we learn from the water-poet, was “mounted (his fellow-horses and himselfe being all in a finery) with as many varieties of laces, facings, Clothes and Colours as are in the Rainebowe.” Nor was he over-polite, particularly if the coach he drove was hired. In Jonson’s Staple of News one of the pieces of mock-news to appear in the ideal paper concerns the fraternity:—

“and coachmen

To mount their boxes reverently, and drive

Like lapwings with a shell upon their heads

Through the streets.”

They seem to have thought that their finery allowed them to treat the pedestrians with but scant respect. And no wonder these “way-stopping whirligigges,” as Taylor calls the coaches, surprised the inhabitants. When one of them was seen for the first time, “some said it was a great Crab-shell brought out of China, and some imagin’d it to be one of the Pagan Temples in which the Cannibals adored the devill.” For some time, indeed, the coaches must have given the common folk something to think about. A coach rumbling along brought them to their windows, just as the horseless carriage, centuries later, proved a similar attraction. There is a scene in Eastward Hoe which well illustrates this point.

Enter a Coachman in haste in ’s frock, feeding.

Coach. Here’s a stir when citizens ride out of town indeed, as if all the house were afire! ’Slight, they will not give a man leave to eat ’s breakfast afore he rises.

Enter Hamlet, a footman, in haste.

Ham. What coachman? My lady’s coach, for shame! her ladyship’s ready to come down.

Enter Potkin, a tankard bearer.

Pot. ’Sfoot, Hamlet, are you mad? whither run you now?...

Enter Mrs. Fond and Mrs. Gazer.

Fond. Come, sweet mistress Gazer, let’s watch here, and see my Lady Flash take coach.

Gazer. O’ my word, here’s a most fine place to stand in. Did you see the new ship launch’d last day, Mrs. Fond?

Fond. O God, and we citizens should lose such a sight!

Gazer. I warrant here will be double as many people to see her take coach, as there were to see it take water.

My lady’s point of view is put forward by Lady Eitherside in The Devil is an Ass. Says she:—

“If we once see it under the seals, wench, then,

Have with them for the great caroch, six horses,

And the two coachmen, with my Ambler bare,

And my three women; we will live, i’ faith,

The example of the town, and govern it.

I’ll lead the fashion still.”

Contemporary references to coaches, however, are but scarce. The most important of these is Taylor’s own The World runnes on Wheeles: or, Oddes betwixt Carts and Coaches, an amusing pamphlet written in prose and not in verse, because the author, as he says, was lame at the time of its composition, and because beyond the three words, broach, Roach, and encroach, he could find no suitable rhymes. Encroach, however, he thinks might have done, for that word, as he explains in his dedication to various companies likely to suffer from the importation of the coach, “best befits it, for I think never such an impudent, proud Intruder or Encroacher came into the world as a Coach is; for it hath driven many honest Families out of their Houses, many Knights to Beggers, Corporations to poverty, Almesdeedes to all misdeedes, Hospitality to extortion, Plenty to famine, Humility to pride, Compassion to oppression, and all Earthly goodnes to an utter confusion.” To the cart he does not object, but for the “hyred Hackney-hell-carts” he cannot find sufficient abuse. His arguments in favour of carts as against coaches are certainly novel, if not entirely convincing as coming from a waterman well used to live passengers himself.

“And as necessities and things,” he says, “whose commodious uses cannot be wanted, are to be respected before Toyes and trifles (whose beginning is Folly, continuance Pride, and whose End is Ruine) I say as necessity is to be preferred before superfluity, so is the Cart before the Coach; For Stones, Timber, Corne, Wine, Beere, or any thing that wants life, there is a necessity they should be carried, because they are dead things and cannot go on foot, which necessity the honest Cart doth supply: But the Coach, like a superfluous bable, or uncharitable Miser, doth seldom or never carry or help any dead or helplesse thing; but on the contrary, it helps those that can helpe themselves ... and carries men and women, who are able to goe or run; Ergo, the Cart is necessary, and the Coach superfluous.”

In fact, the coach, according to poor Taylor, is directly responsible for every calamity from which the country has suffered since its introduction. Leather has become dearer, the horses in their traces are being prostituted, and there is a “universal decay of the best ash-trees.”

“A Wheele-wright,” he continues, “or a maker of Carts, is an ancient, a profitable and a Trade, which by no meanes can be wanted: yet so poore it is, that scarce the best amongst them can hardly ever attaine to better than a Calves skin fate, or a piece of beefe and Carret rootes to dinner on a Sunday; nor scarcely any of them is ever mounted to any Office above the degree of a Scavenger, or a Tything-man at the most. On the contrary, your Coachmakers trade is the most gaine-fullest about the Towne, they are apparelled in Sattens and Velvets, and Masters of their Parish, Vestry-men, who fare like the Emperors Heliogabalus or Sardanapalus, seldome without their Mackroones, Parmisants, Jellies and Kickshawes, with baked Swannes, Pasties hot, or cold red Deere Pyes, which they have fro their Debtor Worships in the Country: neither are these Coaches onely thus cumbersome by their Rumbling and Rutting, as they are by their standing still, and damming up the streetes and lanes, as the Blacke Friers, and divers other places can witnes, and against Coachmakers doores the streets are so pestered and clogg’d with them, that neither man, horse or cart can passe for them; in so much as my Lord Maior is highly to bee commended for his care in their restraint, sending in February last, many of them to the Courtes for their carelessnesse herein.”

In another work of Taylor’s, The Thiefe, there is a passage of equal interest:—

“Carroaches, Coaches, Jades and Flanders Mares

Do rob us of our shares, our wares, our Fares:

Against the ground we stand and knock our heeles,

Whilest all our profit runs away on wheeles;

And whosoever but observes and notes,

The great increase of Coaches and of Boats,

Shall finde their number more than e’r they were

By halfe and more within these thirty yeeres.

Then watermen at Sea had service still,

And those that staid at home had worke at will:

Then upstart Helcart-Coaches were to seeke,

A man could scarce see twenty in a weeke,

But now I thinke a man may daily see,

More than the Whirries on the Thames can be.

When Queen Elizabeth came to the Crowne,

A Coach in England, then was scarcely knowne,

Then ’twas as rare to see one, as to spy

A Tradesman that had never told a lye.”

It will be seen from the first of these lines, that a difference is made between the coach and the caroche (carroch or carroache). On this point there is a definite statement in the Elizabethan play Tu Quoque:—

“Prepare yourself to like this gentleman,

Who can maintain thee in thy choice of gowns,

Of tires, of servants, and of costly jewels;

Nay, for a need, out of his easy nature,

May’st draw him to the keeping of a coach

For country, and carroch for London.”

This, too, is borne out by the speech of Lady Eitherside already quoted. Many servants were needed for the carroch. Massinger speaks of one being drawn by six Flanders mares, and having its coachman, groom, postilion, and footman, to look after it. “These carroaches,” says Croal[22] “were larger and clumsier” than the coaches, “but were considered more stately.” Taylor speaks of the town Vehicle as “a mere Engine of Pride,” and gives a rather ludicrous account of some common women who had hired one of them to go to “the Greene-Goose faire at Stratford the Bowe.” The occupants of this carroch “were so be-madam’d, be-mistrist, and Ladified by the beggers, that the foolish Women began to swell with a proud Supposition or Imaginary greatnes, and gave all their mony to the mendicanting Canters.”

Poor Taylor! He felt very deeply on the question of these new coaches which were to put an end once and for all time to his trade. He must have felt that Henry of Navarre’s assassination in 1610 would never have taken place but for that monarch’s affection for his coach; yet in spite of his deep hatred, he was once prevailed upon to ride inside one of them. “It was but my chance” he records, “once to bee brought from Whitehall to the Tower in my Master Sir William Waades Coach, and before I had been drawn twenty yardes, such a Timpany of Pride puft me up, that I was ready to burst with the winde chollicke of vaine-glory. In what state I would leane over the boote, and looke, and pry if I saw any of my acquaintance, and then I would stand up vailing my Bonnet.”

It almost looks as though he had enjoyed his ride!

Chapter the Fourth

INTERLUDE OF THE CHAIR

“I love sedans, cause they do plod

And amble everywhere,

Which prancers are with leather shod,

And ne’er disturb the eare.

Heigh doune, derry derry doune,

With the hackney Coaches doune,

Their jumping make

The pavements shake,

Their noise doth mad the toune.”

Ancient Ballad.

JUST as the horse-litter gave way before the coach, so the coach, not long after its appearance, found a serious rival in the man-drawn litter or Sedan chair. When or where this chair came from, or who brought it into use once again, is not known. That Sedan itself was the first place to adopt this chair may be true—the analogy already mentioned holding good—but beyond a few half-serious words in a curious seventeenth-century pamphlet to be quoted in a little, there is no positive evidence whatever. Several writers, indeed, assert that Sedan had nothing to do with the chair for ever associated with its name, but in that tantalising manner which is unfortunately characteristic of former times, omit to state their reason. It has been suggested that sedan was the name of the cloth with which the chair was lined, but if this were so, the cloth most probably took its name from the chair it adorned. But wherever it was first made it is reasonable to suppose that the narrowness of the streets made a smaller vehicle than either coach or horse-litter convenient.

The earliest chair, other than those ancient lecticæ and φορεῖα mentioned in the first chapter, appears to have belonged to the Emperor Charles V, in the first half of the sixteenth century. This, indeed, does bear some resemblance to the common conception of a chair, but the first Sedans of some fifty years later resembled nothing so much as a modern dog-kennel provided with two poles. A more unsociable apparatus was surely never built, and yet its almost immediate popularity is easily explained. With the urban streets not yet properly paved and the eternal jolting of the coach, to the accompaniment of such a clatter as must have made speech almost impossible, anything in the nature of a conveyance that made at once for physical comfort and comparative silence would have been favourably received.

There is mention of a chair being shown in England in 1581—just at the time when the country was beginning to show an interest in carriages—but it was not until after the death of Elizabeth that such a novelty was seen in the streets of London. You are not wholly surprised, moreover, to hear that the innovation was due to Buckingham, that apostle of luxury, who probably first saw the chair on his visit to Spain with Prince Charles. Indeed the Prince is supposed to have brought back three of them with him.

At first, of course, there was opposition.

“Every new thing the People disaffect,” wrote Arthur Wilson, the historian, “They stumble sometimes, at the action for the person, which rises like a little cloud but soon after vanishes. So after, when Buckingham came to be carried upon Men’s shoulders the clamour and the noise of it was so extravagant that the People would rail on him in the Streets, loathing that Men should be brought to as servile a condition as Horses. So irksome is every little new impression that breaks an old Custom and rubs and grates against the public humour. But when Time had made these Chairs common, every loose Minion used them, so that that which got at first so much scandal was the means to convey those privately to such places where they might give much more. Just like long hair, at one time described as abominable, at another time approved as beautiful. So various are the fancies of the times!”

It is to be noticed that Buckingham, according to this account, was carried upon men’s shoulders. This was the case at first, but such a mode was speedily changed for that of hand-poles—at once safer and more comfortable for the occupant, and certainly more convenient for the men.[23]

John Evelyn disagrees with Wilson and ascribes the introduction of the chair into England to Sir Saunders Duncombe, a Gentleman-Pensioner knighted by James I in Scotland in 1617, who enjoyed Buckingham’s patronage. In his Diary for 1645, he writes of the Neapolitans: “They greatly affect the Spanish gravity in their habit; delight in good horses; the streets are full of gallants on horseback, in coaches and sedans, from hence brought first into England by Sir Saunders Duncombe.” Undoubtedly Duncombe was responsible for the great popularity of the chair in England, and for a time held a monopoly in such chairs as could be had for hire, but it may be that Buckingham suggested this monopoly in the first place, after the temporary opposition to their use had been overcome. Which rather suggests that Spain was actually the first country where they were used, though this is mere conjecture.

In the meantime much was happening to the coaches. They were increasing enormously in number, not only those privately owned, but also those hired out by the day. These latter soon became known as hackney-coaches.[24] They seem to have been put on the streets as early as 1605, but “remained in the owner’s yards until sent for.” In 1633 the Strand was chosen as the first regular stand for such coaches by a Captain Bailey, one of the pioneers of the movement.

“I cannot omit to mention,” writes Lord Stafford, “any new thing that comes up amongst us though ever so trivial. Here is one Captain Bailey, he hath been a sea captain, but now lives on land about this city where he tries experiments. He hath erected, according to his ability, some four hackney coaches, put his men in livery and appointed them to stand at the Maypole in the Strand, giving them instructions at what rate to carry men into several parts of the town where all day they may be had. Other hackney men veering this way, they flocked to the same place and performed their journeys at the same rate, so that sometimes there is twenty of them together, which dispose up and down, that they and others are to be had everywhere, as watermen are to be had at the waterside. Everybody is much pleased with it, for whereas before coaches could be had but at great rate”—one recalls the prices paid by Lord Rutland a few years before—“now a man may have one much cheaper.”

Most of these coaches that were put on to the streets seem to have been old and disused carriages belonging to the quality. Many of them still bore noble arms, and, indeed, it would seem that when the hackneys were no longer disused noblemen’s carriages, the proprietors found it advisable to pretend that they were. Nearly every hansom and four-wheeled cab at the end of the nineteenth century bore some sort of coronet on its panels.

The drivers of these first hackneys wore large coats with several capes, one over the other, for warmth. London, however, seems to have been the only town in which they were to be seen. “Coaches,” wrote Fynes Morison in 1617, “are not to be hired anywhere but in London. For a day’s journey a coach with two horses is let for about 10s. a day, or 15s. with three horses, the coachman finding the horses’ feed.” From the same author it would appear that most travellers still doggedly kept to their horses, and indeed, in some counties a horse could be hired for threepence a day, an incredibly small sum. “Carriers,” he also records, “have long covered waggons in which they carry passengers too and fro; but this kind of journeying is very tedious; so that none but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort.” These were the stage-waggons which in due course gave rise to the stage-coaches, which in their turn were superseded by the mail-coaches.

A similar movement in France gave rise to the fiacres, so called from the sign of St. Fiacre, which adorned one of the principal inns in Paris, in front of which the public coaches stood. In Scotland, too, one Henry Andersen, a native of Pomerania, had in 1610 been granted a royal patent to provide public coaches in Scotland, and for some years ran a service between Edinburgh and Leith. England had yet to follow Andersen’s example, but the hackneys were increasing so rapidly in London that in 1635 a proclamation was issued to suppress them. And it is to be noticed that Taylor’s diatribes were directed more particularly against these public conveyances than against the privately owned carriages, which, after all, could hardly affect his trade. The proclamation was as follows:—

“That the great numbers of Hackney Coaches of late time seen and kept in London, Westminster, and their Suburbs, and the general and promiscuous use of Coaches there, were not only a great disturbance to his Majesty, his dearest Consort the Queen, the Nobility, and others of place and degree, in their passage through the Streets; but the Streets themselves were so pestered, and the pavements so broken up, that the common passage is thereby hindered and more dangerous; and the prices of hay and provender and other provisions of stable, thereby made exceeding dear: Wherefore We expressly command and forbid, That, from the feast of St. John the Baptist next coming, no Hackney or Hired Coach, be used or suffered in London, Westminster, or the Suburbs or Liberties thereof, excepting they be to travel at least three miles out of London or Westminster, or the Suburbs thereof. And also, that no person shall go in a Coach in the said Streets, except the owner of the Coach shall constantly keep up Four able Horses for our Service, when required.”

It is dated January 19th, 1635/6, and must have had a considerable, if temporary, effect, for as Samuel Pegge points out in his unfinished manuscript on the early use of coaches[25] it could not “operate much in the King’s favour, as it would hardly be worth a Coach-master’s while to be at so great a contingent charge as the keeping of four horses to be furnished at a moment’s warning for His Majesty’s occasional employment.”

It was then that Sir Saunders Duncombe obtained his monopoly, and, of course, everything was in his favour. The actual patent granted to him belongs to the previous year, but the two are approximately contemporary. From a letter written in 1634 to Lord Stafford, it appears that Duncombe had in that year forty or fifty chairs “making ready for use.” Possibly the whole thing was worked up by Buckingham and his satellites. Duncombe’s patent gave the enterprising knight the right “to put forth and lett for hire” the new chairs for a term of fourteen years. In his petition he had explained that “in many parts beyond the seas, the people there are much carried in the Streets in Chairs that are covered; by which means very few Coaches are used amongst them.” And so Duncombe was allowed to “reap some fruit and benefit of his industry,” and might “recompense himself of the costs, charges, and expences” to which he had, or said he had, been put.

For two years these covered chairs held the advantage, and indeed seem to have been exceedingly popular. There is a most amusing pamphlet, which I have already mentioned, “printed by Robert Raworth, for John Crooch,” in 1636, entitled Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for Place and Precedence, the Brewer’s Cart being Moderator. It is signed “Mis-amaxius,” and is dedicated “to the Valorous, and worthy all title of Honor, S^r Elias Hicks.” “Light stuffe,” the author calls it, and tells us that he is “no ordinary Pamphleteer ... onely in Mirth I tried what I could doe upon a running subject, at the request of a friend in the Strand: whose leggs, not so sound as his Judgement, enforce him to keepe his Chamber, where hee can neither sleepe or studie for the clattering of Coaches.” It is an interesting little production, both for its own whimsicalities and for the sidelights it affords into the town’s views on the subject of vehicles at the time. It starts with the cuckoo warning the milkmaids of Islington to get back to Finsburie. The writer, accompanied by a Frenchman and a tailor, walks back to the city, and in a narrow street comes across a coach and a sedan quarrelling about which of them is to “take the wall.”

“Wee perceived two lustie fellowes to justle for the wall, and almost readie to fall together by the eares, the one (the lesser of the two) was in a suite of greene after a strange manner, windowed before and behind with Isen-glasse, having two handsome fellowes in greene coats attending him, the one went before, the other came behind; their coats were lac’d down the back with a greene-lace sutable, so were their halfe sleeves, which perswaded me at first they were some cast suites of their Masters; their backs were harnessed with leather cingles, cut out of a hide, as broad as Dutch-collops of Bacon.

“The other was a thick burly square sett fellow, in a doublet of Black-leather, Brasse-button’d down the brest, Backe, Sleeves, and winges, with monstrous wide bootes, fringed at the top, with a net fringe, and a round breech (after the old fashion) guilded, and on his back-side an Atcheivement of sundry Coats in their propper colors, quarterd with Crest, Helme and Mantle, besides here and there, on the sides of a single Escutchion or crest, with some Emblematicall Word or other; I supposed, they were made of some Pendants, or Banners, that had beene stollen, from over some Monument, where they had long hung in a Church.

“Hee had onely one man before him, wrapt in a red cloake, with wide sleeves, turned up at the hands, and cudgell’d thick on the backe and shoulders with broad shining lace (not much unlike that which Mummers make of strawe hatts) and of each side of him, went a Lacquay, the one a French boy, the other Irish, all sutable alike: The Frenchman (as I learned afterward) when his Master was in the Countrey, taught his lady and his daughter French: Ushers them abroad to publicke meetings, and assemblies, all saving the Church whither shee never came: The other went on errands, help’d the maide to beate Bucks, fetch in water, carried up meate, and waited at the Table.”