general use in England, is, however, placed in the reign of Elizabeth; her majesty's vehicle being the first that is called a coach. In 1564, William Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen's coachman; and to him Stow ascribes the introduction of coaches; most accounts agree from Germany; but the precise date, except in the sixteenth century, is uncertain. In 1588, Queen Elizabeth went from Somerset House to Paul's Cross to return thanks after the destruction of the Spanish Armada, in a coach presented to her by Henry, earl of Arundel. Stow says, that "she did come in a chariot throne," the same being "drawn by two white horses." The annexed cut, copied from an old print, represents her majesty in this coach. The queen's attendants followed in another carriage,

in which were two seats, which

were called

boots, where two of the officers sat, as the lord

mayor's officers do now, back to back. These coaches must have been clumsy, uncomfortable machines; they had no springs; and the state of the streets and roads must have made travelling in them any thing but easy. Yet fashion multiplied them so rapidly, that Dekker, in satirizing the follies of his day, complains that the wife of every citizen must be jolted now; and in 1636, there were six thousand of them kept in London and the neighbourhood.

Although Queen Elizabeth's coach is commonly considered to have been the earliest, facts indicate that coaches were not uncommon in use before that used by her majesty. Thus, in an account of a grand entertainment given to Elizabeth, at Cambridge, in 1564, we find that Sir William Cecil, secretary of state and chancellor of the university, having a sore leg, came with his lady in a coach." From the casual manner in which this circumstance is mentioned, we should conclude that coaches were, at least, known in this country at the above period; although the same account informs us that her majesty herself arrived on horseback.

66

In this year also, according to Stow, Walter Rippon made a coach for the earl of Rutland, which was the first coach made in England. The said Walter Rippon also made the first hollow turning coach, with pillars and arches, being then the queen's servant. Also in 1584, a chariot throne, with four pillars behind, to bear a canopy, with a crown imperial on the top, and

before two lower pillars, whereon stood a lion and a dragon, the supporters of the arms of England. In these early coaches there was no coach-box; the coachman rode on a saddle, as shown in the cut of the queen's coach, and as do now postilions; and when there were four horses, he drove those which went before him, guiding them with a rein. The duke of Buckingham, in 1619, was the first who drove six horses to his carriage; and a writer of the time says, stout old earl of Northumberland, hearing that the great favourite Buckingham was drawn about with a coach and six horses, thought he might very well have eight in his coach, with which he rode through the city of London, to the vulgar talk and admiration."

"The

Long after the introduction of coaches, it was thought disgraceful for the male sex to ride in them. Even Queen Elizabeth is said, in her old age to have “ reluctantly used such an effeminate conveyance." "In Sir Philip Sidney's days, so famous for men at armes, it was then," says Aubrey, "held as great a disgrace for a young gentleman to be seen riding in the streets in a coach, as it would now for such a one to be seen in the streets in a petticoat and waistcoat! so much is the fashion of the times altered." The judges did not use coaches, but rode on horseback to Westminster Hall, in term time, throughout the reign of James I. and probably much later. At the Restoration, Charles II. rode on horseback, between his two brothers,

the dukes of York and Gloucester; and the whole procession, consisting of a great number of persons, was equestrian. Again, the lord mayors of London rode on horseback until the reign of Queen Anne.

The first use of coaches, it is reasonable to suppose, experienced a reception similar to other improvements; and was opposed by those whose interests it affected. Thus, we find Taylor, the water-poet, treating the consequence of the introduction of coaches as a national calamity. He says: "Housekeeping never decayed till coaches came into England; till which time those were accounted the best men who had most followers or retainers: then land about or neere London was thought deere enough at a noble the acre yeerely; and a ten pound houserent now was scarce twenty shillings then. But the witchcraft of the coach quickly mounted the price of all things (except poor men's labour,) and withal transformed, in some places, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, or one hundred proper serving men into two or three animals ; (videlicet) a butterfly page, a trotting footman, a stiff-drinking coachman, a cooke, a clarke, a steward, and a butler." Yet, Taylor's objection, more probably, lay in the injury which coaches would prove to the watermen on the river Thames, on which he was originally a sculler. Taylor, however, shows that the coachmen of those times were hard-drinkers; and he is corroborated by Evelyn, who says that coachmen

were made drunk by way of making the masters welcome; a custom which might be expected to lead to habitual drinking.

The manufacture of early coaches must have been extremely rude. In the end of the sixteenth century, we hear of carriages, put together in a clumsy manner; yet also of carriages studded with gold, and hung with black satin; and of carriages of perfumed leather, in 1611. The imperial coaches of the seventeenth century were covered with red leather and black nails, the harness black, and in the whole work no gold. On festivals, the harness was adorned with silk fringes, whence the custom of dressing with ribbons at the present day. The imperial coaches were distinguished only by leather traces, while the ladies in the suite were obliged to be content with ropes. In 1631, we read of glass carriages, so named from having glass panels; whence our glass coaches; yet, Otway, long after the above period, mentions the lattices as substitutes for glasses or blinds.

Of a carriage of the seventeenth century, the annexed representation is preserved in Westminster Abbey, on the monument of Thomas Thynne*, who was assassinated in 1682; the scene of murder being represented in sculpture, and showing Thynne to have been killed in his carriage. In this specimen, the perch nearly

* Of Longleat, Wilts, see p. 12.