Transcriber’s Notes
Hyphenation has been standardised.
Footnotes were moved to the ends of the text they pertain to and
numbered in one continuous sequence.
[Illustration: GOING TO BURY FAIR.
_From Engraving, A.D. 1750_.]
EARLY CARRIAGES AND ROADS
BY SIR WALTER GILBEY, Bart.
ILLUSTRATED
London VINTON & CO., Ltd., 9, NEW BRIDGE STREET, E.C.
1903
_The use of carriages, coaches and wheeled conveyances have had an
intimate relationship with the social life of English people from an
early period in history._
_Many instructive books have appeared on the subject of carriages
generally, but these have been for the most part written by experts in
the art of coach and carriage building._
_In this publication, attention has been given to the early history
of wheeled conveyances in England and their development up to recent
times._
[Illustration]
_Elsenham Hall, Essex._ _April, 1903._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction 1
First Use of Wheeled Vehicles 2
Badness of Early Roads 3
Saxon Vehicles and Horse Litters 4
Continental Carriages in the 13th and 14th Centuries 8
Conveyances in Henry VI.’s Time 11
“Chariots” First Used on Great Occasions 12
First Use of Carriages: called Coaches 13
Coaches in France 15
Coaches First Used by Queen Elizabeth 16
Duke of Brunswick, 1588, Forbids Use of Coaches 20
The Stage Waggon 21
The Introduction of Springs 23
Steel Springs Introduced 24
The First Hackney Coaches 26
Excessive Number of Coaches in London 28
Hackney Carriages and the Thames Watermen 30
Hackney Carriages a Nuisance in London 32
Licensed Hackney Carriages 33
Coaches with “Boots” 35
Carriages in Hyde Park 38
Coach and Cart Racing 40
Regulations for Hackney Carriages 41
Pepys on Carriages 43
Glass Windows in Carriages 45
Improvements in Carriages 47
Pepys’ Private Carriage 50
Carriage Painting in Pepys’ Day 52
The First Stage Coaches 54
Objections Raised to Stage Coaches 56
Seventeenth Century High Roads 62
Hackney Cabs as a Source of Revenue 66
Manners of the Cabman 69
Cab-driving a Lucrative Occupation 70
Coaches and Roads in Queen Anne’s Time 73
Coaching in George I.’s and II.’s Reigns 74
Dean Swift on Coaches and Drivers 76
Roads in the 18th Century 78
Speed of the 18th Century Stage Coach 80
The Application of Springs 84
Outside Passengers 87
Roads in George III.’s Time 88
Improvements in Stage Coaches 90
The Mail Coach 91
Regulations for Mail and Stage Coaches 94
Mail Coach Parade on the King’s Birthday 95
The Mail Coachman and Guard 97
“The Road” in Winter 100
Passenger Fares 102
Difference Between Stage and Mail Coach 102
The “Golden Age” of Coaching 104
Fast Coaches 106
Heavy Taxation of Coaches 111
Early Cabs 112
Private and Stage Coaches, 1750-1830 116
Varieties of Carriage 120
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
“Going to Bury Fair” _Frontispiece_
Hammock Waggon 5
Horse Litter 7
Flight of Princess Ermengarde 9
Queen Elizabeth’s Travelling Coach 17
Hackney Coaches in London, 1637 29
Coach of Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies 35
The Machine, 1640-1700 Face 56
Mr. Daniel Bourn’s Roller Wheel Waggon, 1763 79
Travelling Posting Carriage (1), 1750 83
Travelling Posting Carriage (2), 1750 85
Portrait of Mr. John Palmer Face 92
Portrait of Mr. Macadam 104
Royal Mail Coach 108
London Hackney Cab (Boulnois’ Patent) 115
Travelling Post, 1825-35 Face 118
King George IV. in His Pony Phaeton 120
[Illustration:
JOHN BALE SONS and DANIELSSON L^{TD}.
G^T TITCHFIELD STREET LONDON.]
EARLY CARRIAGES AND ROADS.
INTRODUCTION.
Only some three hundred and fifty years have elapsed since wheeled
conveyances for passengers came into use in England; but, once
introduced, they rapidly found favour with all classes of society, more
especially in cities. The progress of road-making and that of light
horse-breeding are so intimately connected with the development of
carriages and coaches that it is difficult to dissociate the three. In
the early days of wheeled traffic the roads of our country were utterly
unworthy of the name, being, more particularly in wet weather, such
quagmires that they were often impassable.
Over such roads the heavy carriages of our ancestors could only be
drawn by teams of heavy and powerful horses, strength being far more
necessary than speed; and for many generations the carriage or coach
horse was none other than the Great or Shire Horse. Improved roads
made rapid travel possible, and the increase of stage coaches created a
demand for the lighter and more active harness horses, for production
of which England became celebrated.
If comparatively little has been said concerning horses, it is because
the writer has already dealt with that phase of the subject in previous
works.[1]
[1] _The Great Horse, or War Horse; Horses, Past and Present._ By Sir
Walter Gilbey, Bart. (Vinton and Co., Ltd.)
FIRST USE OF WHEELED VEHICLES.
Wheeled vehicles for the conveyance of passengers were first introduced
into England in the year 1555. The ancient British war chariot was
neither more nor less than a fighting engine, which was probably
never used for peaceful travelling from place to place. Carts for
the conveyance of agricultural produce were in use long before any
wheeled vehicle was adapted for passengers. The ancient laws and
institutes of Wales, codified by Howel Dda, who reigned from A.D. 942
to 948, describe the “qualities” of a three-year-old mare as “to draw
a car uphill and downhill, and carry a burden, and to breed colts.”
The earliest mention of carts in England that some considerable
research has revealed is in the _Cartulary of Ramsay Abbey_ (Rolls
Series), which tells us that on certain manors in the time of Henry I.
(1100-1135) there were, among other matters, “three carts, each for
four oxen or three horses.”
BADNESS OF EARLY ROADS.
That carriages did not come into use at an earlier period than the
sixteenth century is no doubt due to the nature of the cattle tracks
and water-courses which did duty for roads in England. These were
of such a nature that wheeled traffic was practically impossible
for passengers, and was exceedingly difficult for carts and waggons
carrying goods.
In old documents we find frequent mention of the impossibility of
conveying heavy wares by road during the winter. For example, when
Henry VIII. began to suppress the monasteries, in 1537, Richard
Bellasis, entrusted with the task of dismantling Jervaulx Abbey, in
Yorkshire, refers to the quantity of lead used for roofing purposes,
which “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.”
In the Eastern counties, and no doubt elsewhere in England, our
ancestors used the water-courses and shallow stream beds as their
roads. This is clear to anyone who is at pains to notice the lie and
course of old bye-ways; and it is equally clear that a stream when low
offered a much easier route to carts, laden or empty, than could be
found elsewhere. The beds of the water courses as a general rule are
fairly smooth, hard and gravelled, and invited the carter to follow
them rather than to seek a way across the wastes. In process of use
the banks and sides were cut down by the wheels or by the spade; and
eventually the water was diverted into another channel and its old bed
was converted into a road.
SAXON VEHICLES AND HORSE LITTERS.
Strutt states that the chariot of the Anglo-Saxons was used by
distinguished persons for travel. If the illustrations from which
he describes them give a fair idea of their proportions and general
construction, they must have been singularly uncomfortable conveyances.
The drawing is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the Book of
Genesis in the Cotton Library (Claud. B. iv.), which Strutt refers to
the ninth century, but which a later authority considers a production
of the earlier part of the eleventh. The original drawing shows a
figure in the hammock waggon, which figure represents Joseph on his way
to meet Jacob on the latter’s arrival in Egypt; this figure has been
erased in order to give a clear view of the conveyance, which no doubt
correctly represents a travelling carriage of the artist’s own time,
viz., A.D. 1100-1200.
[Illustration: HAMMOCK WAGGON.
Supposed to have been in use in England about A.D. 1100-1200.]
Horse litters, carried between two horses, one in front and one
behind, were used in early times by ladies of rank, by sick persons,
and also on occasion to carry the dead. Similar vehicles of a lighter
description, carried by men, were also in use.
William of Malmesbury states that the body of William Rufus was brought
from the spot where he was killed in the New Forest in a horse-litter
(A.D. 1100). When King John fell ill at Swineshead Abbey, in 1216,
he was carried in a horse-litter to Newark, where he died. For a man
who was in good health to travel in such a conveyance was considered
unbecoming and effeminate. In recording the death, in 1254, of Earl
Ferrers, from injuries received in an accident to his conveyance,
Matthew Paris deems it necessary to explain that the Earl suffered from
gout, which compelled him to use a litter when moving from place to
place. The accident was caused by the carelessness of the driver of the
horses, who upset the conveyance while crossing a bridge.
The illustration is copied from a drawing which occurs in a manuscript
in the British Museum (Harl. 5256).
Froissart speaks of the English returning “in their charettes” from
Scotland after Edward III.’s invasion of that country, about 1360;
but there is little doubt that the vehicles referred to were merely
the baggage carts which accompanied the army used by the footsore and
fatigued soldiers.
[Illustration: HORSE LITTER USED A.D. 1400-1500.]
The same chronicler refers to use of the “chare” or horse-litter in
connection with Wat Tyler’s insurrection in the year 1380:—
“The same day that these unhappy people of Kent were coming to London,
there returned from Canterbury the King’s mother, Princess of Wales,
coming from her pilgrimage. She was in great jeopardy to have been
lost, for these people came to her chare and dealt rudely with her.”
As the chronicler states that the “good lady” came in one day from
Canterbury to London, “for she never durst tarry by the way,” it is
evident that the chare was a “horse-litter,” the distance exceeding
sixty miles.
The introduction of side-saddles by Anne of Bohemia, Richard II.’s
Queen, is said by Stow to have thrown such conveyances into disuse:
“So was the riding in those whirlicotes and chariots forsaken except
at coronations and such like spectacles:” but when the whirlicote or
horse-litter was employed for ceremonial occasions it was a thing of
great magnificence.
CONTINENTAL CARRIAGES IN THE 13TH AND 14TH CENTURIES.
Carriages were in use on the continent long before they were employed
in England. In 1294, Philip the Fair of France issued an edict whose
aim was the suppression of luxury; under this ordinance the wives of
citizens were forbidden to use carriages, and the prohibition appears
to have been rigorously enforced. They were used in Flanders during the
first half of the fourteenth century; an ancient Flemish chronicle in
the British Museum (Royal MSS. 16, F. III.) contains a picture of the
flight of Ermengarde, wife of Salvard, Lord of Rouissillon.
[Illustration: THE FLIGHT OF PRINCESS ERMENGARDE.
Carriage used about 1300-1350 in Flanders.]
The lady is seated on the floor boards of a springless four-wheeled
cart or waggon, covered in with a tile 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 tires. The conveyance
is drawn by two horses driven by a postillion who bestrides that on
the near-side. The traces are apparently of rope, and the outer trace
of the postillion’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 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 Kniltelfeld,
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 baggage cart of his own. The record points directly to
the conclusion that the carriages were passenger vehicles used by the
Earl himself.
CONVEYANCES IN HENRY VI.’s TIME.
It was probably possession of roads unworthy of the name that deterred
the English from following the example of their continental neighbours,
for forty years later the horse-litter was still the only conveyance
used by ladies. On July 13, 1432, King Henry VI. writes to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, and the
High Treasurer, in connection with the journeyings of Joan of Navarre,
widow of Henry IV.:—
“And because we suppose that she will soon remove from the place where
she is now, that ye order for her also horses for two chares and let
her remove thence into whatever place within our kingdom that she
pleases.”
“CHARIOTS” FIRST USED ON GREAT OCCASIONS.
There is still some little doubt concerning the date when the carriage
or coach was first seen in England; but it seems certain that wheeled
vehicles of some kind were used on great ceremonial occasions before
the coach suitable for ordinary travel came into vogue.
When Catherine of Aragon was crowned with Henry VIII., on June 24,
1509, she was, says Holinshed, conveyed in a litter followed by
“chariots covered, with ladies therein.” Similarly when Anne Boleyn
passed in state through London she was borne in a litter followed
by ladies in a chariot. From these records it is clear that the
horse-litter was considered the more dignified conveyance.
The litter used by princesses and ladies of high degree on state
occasions was very richly furnished. The poles on which it was
supported were covered with crimson velvet, the pillows and cushions
with white satin, and the awning overhead was of cloth of gold. The
trappings of the horses and dress of the grooms who led them were
equally splendid. Ancient records contain minute particulars of the
materials purchased for litters on special occasions, and these show
with what luxury the horse-litter of a royal lady was equipped.
In this connection we must note that Markland, in his _Remarks on the
Early Use of Carriages in England_, discriminates between the “chare”
and the horse-litter: the chare gave accommodation to two persons or
more and was used for ordinary purposes of travel, and he believes
that it ran on wheels; whereas the horse-litter accommodated only one
person, and that usually a lady of high rank, on ceremonial occasions.
The chariot was clearly rising in esteem at this period, for when Queen
Mary went in state to be crowned in the year 1553, she herself occupied
a chariot. It is described as “a chariot with cloth of tissue, drawn
with six horses”; and it was followed by another “with cloth of silver
and six horses,” in which were seated Elizabeth and Anne of Cleves.
FIRST USE OF CARRIAGES; CALLED COACHES.
We are now come to the period when the coach proper was introduced into
England. Stow, in his _Summary of the English Chronicles_, says that
carriages were not used in England till 1555, when Walter Rippon built
one for the Earl of Rutland, “this being the first ever made.” Taylor,
the “Water Poet,” in his life of Thomas Parr, states that Parr was 81
years old “before there was any coach in England.” Parr was born in
1483, so the year in which he reached 81 would be 1564; in that year
William Boonen, a Dutchman, brought from the Netherlands a coach which
was presented to Queen Elizabeth; and Taylor, on Parr’s authority,
mentions this as the “first one ever seen here.”
The obvious inference is that Parr had not heard of or (what is more
probable considering his advanced age) had forgotten the coach built
eleven years earlier for a much less conspicuous person than the
sovereign. There is also mention in the Burghley Papers (III., No. 53)
quoted by Markland, of Sir T. Hoby offering the use of his coach to
Lady Cecil in 1556. It is quite likely that the coach brought by Boonen
from the Netherlands served as a model for builders in search for
improvements, as we read in Stow’s _Summary_: “In 1564, Walter Rippon
made the first _hollow, turning coach_, with pillars and arches, for
her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.” What a “hollow, turning” coach may have
been it is difficult to conjecture. Drawings of a hundred years later
than this period show no mechanism resembling a “turning head” or
fifth wheel. Captain Malet[2] says that the Queen suffered so much in
this vehicle, when she went in it to open Parliament, that she never
used it again. The difference between the coach for ordinary travel
and the chariot for ceremony is suggested by the next passage in the
_Summary_: “In 1584 he (Rippon) made a _chariot throne_ with four
pillars behind to bear 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.”
[2] _Annals of the Road_, London, 1876.
Queen Elizabeth, according to Holinshed, used a “chariot” when she went
to be crowned at Westminster in 1558.
COACHES IN FRANCE.
By way of showing how the old authorities differ, mention may be made
of the coach which Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, brought from France
and presented to the Queen, it is said, in 1580. This vehicle is cited
as the first coach ever seen in public but inasmuch as we have ample
evidence to prove the last statement incorrect, apart from the fact
that the Earl died in 1579, nothing more need be said about it.
France does not seem to have been very far ahead of Britain in the
adoption of coaches. In 1550 there were only three in Paris; one
belonged to the Queen of Francis I., another to Diana of Poitiers, and
the third to René de Laval, who was so corpulent that he could not
ride. Mr. George Thrupp, in his _History of the Art of Coach Building_
(1876), observes that “there must have been many other vehicles in
France, but it seems only three covered and suspended coaches.”
COACHES FIRST USED BY QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Queen Elizabeth travelled in a coach, either the one built by Walter
Rippon or that brought by Boonen (who, by the way, was appointed her
coachman), on some of her royal progresses through the kingdom. When
she visited Warwick in 1572, at the request of the High Bailiff she
“caused every part and side of the coach to be opened that all her
subjects present might behold her, which most gladly they desired.”
The vehicle which could thus be opened on “every part and side” is
depicted incidentally in a work executed by Hoefnagel in 1582, which
Markland believed to be probably the first engraved representation of
an English coach. As will be seen from the reproduction here given, the
body carried a roof or canopy on pillars, and the intervening spaces
could be closed by means of curtains.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH’S TRAVELLING COACH.
About the year 1582.]
Queen Elizabeth seems to have preferred riding on a pillion when she
could; she rode thus on one occasion from London to Exeter, and again
we read of her going in state to St. Paul’s on a pillion behind her
Master of the Horse. Sir Thomas Browne, writing to his son on October
15, 1680, says: “When Queen Elizabeth came to Norwich, 1578, she came
on horseback from Ipswich by the high road to Norwich, but she had a
coach or two in her train.”
Country gentlemen continued to travel on horseback, though ladies
sometimes made their journeys by coach. The _Household Book_ of the
Kytson family of Hengrave in Suffolk contains the following entry under
date December 1, 1574: “For the hire of certain horses to draw my
mistress’ coach from Whitsworth to London 26 shillings and 8 pence.”
Other entries show that “my mistress” occupied the coach: whence it
would appear that not all our country roads in Queen Elizabeth’s time
were impassable during the winter, as we might reasonably infer from
many contemporary records. The horse-litter, as we may well suppose,
was an easier conveyance than the early springless coach: for example,
in Hunter’s _Hallamshire_ we find mention of Sir Francis Willoughby’s
request in 1589 to the Countess of Shrewsbury to lend her horse-litter
and furniture for his wife, who was ill and unable to travel either on
horseback or in a coach.
It may be observed here that the latest reference we have found to the
use of the horse-litter occurs in the _Last Speech of Thomas Pride_
(Harleian Miscellany): in 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 horse, and he was
tossed like a dog in a blanket.”
Owing no doubt to their patronage by royalty, coaches grew rapidly
popular. William Lilly, in a play called “Alexander and Campaspes,”
which was first printed in 1584, makes one of his characters
complain of those who had been accustomed to “go to a battlefield on
hard-trotting horses now riding in easy coaches up and down to court
ladies.” Stow, referring to the coach brought to England by Boonen,
says:—
“After a while divers great ladies, with as great jealousy of the
Queen’s displeasure, made them coaches and rid in them up and down the
countries, to the great admiration of all the beholders, but then by
little and little they grew usual among the nobilitie and others of
sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coach making.”
This confirms the statement of Lilly above quoted: it is quite clear
therefore that, about 1580, coaches had come into general use among the
wealthy classes. Their popularity became a source of anxiety to those
who saw in the use of a coach the coming degeneracy of men and neglect
of horsemanship.
DUKE OF BRUNSWICK, 1588, FORBIDS USE OF COACHES.
In 1588, Julius Duke of Brunswick issued a proclamation forbidding
the vassals and servants of his electorate to journey in coaches,
but on horseback, “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.” The Duke expressed
himself strongly in this proclamation, being evidently resolved that
the vassals, servants and kinsmen who “without distinction young and
old have _dared_ to give themselves up to indolence and to riding in
coaches,” should resume more active habits.
The same tendency on the one side and the same feeling on the other
in this country led to the introduction of a Bill in Parliament in
November, 1601, “to restrain the excessive use of coaches,” but it was
rejected. Whereupon:—
“Motion was made by the Lord Keeper, that forasmuch as the said
Bill did in some sort concern the maintenance of horses within this
realm, consideration might be had of the statutes heretofore made and
ordained touching the breed and maintenance of horses. And that Mr.
Attorney-general should peruse and consider of the said statutes, and
of some fit Bill to be drawn and prefered to the house touching the
same, and concerning the use of coaches: which motion was approved of
the House.”
It does not appear, however, that any steps were taken by the
Parliament of the time to check the liberty of those who could afford
it to indulge in coaches.
They were probably little used except in London and large towns where
the streets afforded better going than country roads: though, as
we have seen, Queen Elizabeth took coaches with her when making a
progress. The coach seems to have been unknown in Scotland till near
the end of the century, for we read that when, in 1598, the English
Ambassador to Scotland brought one with him “it was counted a great
marvel.”
THE STAGE WAGGON.
About 1564 the early parent of the stage coach made its appearance.
Stow says: “And about that time began long waggons to come in use, such
as now come to London from Canterbury, Norwich, Ipswich, Gloucester,
&c., with passengers and commodities.” These were called “stages”: they
were roomy vehicles with very broad wheels which prevented them sinking
too deeply into the mud: they travelled very slowly, but writers of the
period make frequent allusions to the convenience they provided. Until
the “long waggon” came into use the saddle and pack horse were the only
means of travelling and carrying goods: this conveyance was largely
used by people of small means until late in the eighteenth century,
when stage coaches began to offer seats at fares within the reach of
the comparatively poor.
Some confusion is likely to arise when searching old records from the
fact that words now in current use have lost their original meaning.
Thus in an Act passed in the year 1555 for “The amending of High
Ways,” the preamble states that certain highways are “now both very
noisome and tedious to travel in and dangerous to all passengers and
‘cariages.’” We might read this to mean vehicles for the conveyance
of passengers; but the text (which empowers local authorities to make
parishioners give four days’ work annually on the roads where needed)
shows us that the “cariage” or “caryage” is identical with the “wayne”
or “cart” used in husbandry. “Carriage” is used in the same sense in a
similar Act of Elizabeth dated 1571, which requires the local authority
to repair certain streets near Aldgate which “become so miry and foul
in the winter time” that it is hard for foot-passengers and “caryages”
to pass along them.
THE INTRODUCTION OF SPRINGS.
It is impossible to discover when builders of passenger vehicles first
endeavoured to counteract the jolting inseparable from the passage of
a primitive conveyance over rough roads by means of springs. Homer
tells us that Juno’s car was slung upon cords to lessen the jolting:
and the ancient Roman carriages were so built that the body rested on
the centre of a pole which connected the front and rear axles, thus
reducing the jolt by whatever degree of spring or elasticity the pole
possessed.
To come down to later times, Mr. Bridges Adams in _English Pleasure
Carriages_ (1837) refers to a coach presented by the King of Hungary to
King Charles VII. of France (1422-1461), the body of which “trembled.”
Mr. George Thrupp considers that this probably indicates a coach-body
hung on leather straps or braces, and was a specimen of the vehicle
then in use in Hungary. At Coburg several ancient carriages are
preserved: one of those built in 1584 for the marriage ceremony of Duke
John Casimir, the Elector of Saxony, is hung on leather braces from
carved standard posts which, says Mr. Thrupp, “are evidently developed
from the standards of the common waggon. The body of this coach is six
feet four inches long and three feet wide: the wheels have wooden rims,
but over the joints of the felloes are small plates of iron about ten
inches long.”
In regard to these iron plates it will be remembered that the wheels
of the coach represented in the “Flemish Chronicle” of the first half
of the fourteenth century referred to on pp. 8-9, is furnished with
complete iron tires. Neither this vehicle, nor that of Queen Elizabeth,
a sketch of which is given on p. 17 are furnished with braces of any
kind. It would not be judicious to accept these drawings as exactly
representing the construction of the carriages, but if the artist has
given a generally accurate picture it is difficult to see how or where
leather braces could have been applied to take the dead weight of the
coach body off the under-carriage.
STEEL SPRINGS INTRODUCED.
Mr. Thrupp states that steel springs were first applied to wheel
carriages about 1670,[3] when a vehicle resembling a Sedan chair on
wheels, drawn and pushed by two men, was introduced into Paris. This
conveyance was improved by one Dupin, who applied two “elbow springs”
by long shackles to the front axle-tree which worked up and down in
a groove under the seat. The application of steel springs to coaches
drawn by horses was not generally practised until long afterwards: in
1770 Mons. Roubo, a Frenchman, wrote a treatise on carriage building,
from which we learn that springs were by no means universally employed.
[3] See page 84.
When used, says Mr. Thrupp,
“They were applied to the four corners of a perch carriage and placed
upright, and at first only clipped in the middle to the posts of the
earlier carriages, while the leather braces went from the tops of the
springs to the bottoms of the bodies without any long iron loops such
as we now use; and as the braces were very long we find that complaints
were made of the excessive swinging and tilting and jerking of the
body. The Queen’s coach is thus suspended. Four elbow springs, as we
should call them, were fastened to the bottom of the body, but again
the ends did not project beyond the bottom, and the braces were still
far too long; and Mons. Roubo doubts whether springs were much use.”
The doubt concerning the value of springs was shared in this country;
for Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, in his _Essay on the Construction
of Roads and Carriages_ (1817), tells us that in 1768 he discovered
that springs were as advantageous to horses as to passengers, and
constructed a carriage for which the Society of English Arts and
Manufactures presented him with a gold medal. In this carriage the
axletrees were divided and the motion of each wheel was relieved by a
spring.
Travel in a springless coach over uneven streets and the roughest of
roads could not have been a sufficiently luxurious mode of progress
to lay the traveller open to charge of effeminacy. Taylor, the Water
Poet, was no doubt biased in favour of the watermen, but he probably
exaggerated little when he wrote, in 1605, of men and women “so tost,
tumbled, jumbled and rumbled” in the coach of the time.
THE FIRST HACKNEY COACHES.
It was in the year 1605 that hackney coaches came into use; for several
years these vehicles did not stand or “crawl” about the streets to
be hired, but remained in the owners’ yards until sent for. In 1634
the first “stand” was established in London, as appears from a letter
written by Lord Stafford to Mr. Garrard in that year:—
“I cannot omit to mention 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 created, according to his ability, some four
hackney coaches, put his men into 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.”
Lord Stafford adds that everybody is much pleased with the innovation.
It may here be said, on the authority of Fynes Morryson, who wrote
in 1617, that coaches were not to be hired anywhere but in London at
that time. All travel (save in the slow long waggons) was performed on
horseback, the “hackney men”[4] providing horses at from 2½d. to 3d.
per mile for those who did not keep their own.
[4] See _Horses Past and Present_, by Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. Vinton &
Co., 1900.
The number of coaches increased rapidly during the earlier part of the
seventeenth century.
EXCESSIVE NUMBER OF COACHES IN LONDON.
The preamble of a patent granted Sir Saunders Duncombe in 1634 to
let Sedan chairs refers to the fact that the streets of London and
Westminster “are of late time so much encumbered and pestered with the
unnecessary multitude of coaches therein used”; and in 1635 Charles
I. issued a proclamation on the subject. This document states that
the “general and promiscuous use” of hackney coaches in great numbers
causes “disturbance” to the King and Queen personally, to the nobility
and others of place and degree; “pesters” the streets, breaks up the
pavements and cause increase in the prices of forage. For which reasons
the use of hackney coaches in London and Westminster and the suburbs
is forbidden altogether, unless the passenger is making a journey of
at least three miles. Within the city limits only private coaches were
allowed to ply, and the owner of a coach was required to keep four good
horses or geldings for the king’s service.
[Illustration: HACKNEY COACHES IN LONDON, 1637.]
This proclamation evidently produced the desired effect, for in 1637
there were only sixty hackney carriages in London: the majority of
these were probably owned by James Duke of Hamilton, Charles’ Master
of the Horse, to whom was granted in July of that year power to license
fifty hackney coachmen in London, Westminster and the suburbs, and “in
other convenient places”; and this notwithstanding the fact that in
1636 the vehicles “in London, the suburbs and within four-mile compass
without are reckoned to the number of six thousand and odd.”[5]
[5] _Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing for Place and Precedence, the
Brewer’s Cart being Moderator._ Published at London by Robert Raworth
for John Crooch in 1636.
Charles I. can hardly have shared the dislike exhibited by some of his
subjects to wheel passenger traffic, for in 1641 we find him granting
licenses for the importation of horses and enjoining licensees to
import _coach_ horses, mares, and geldings not under 14 hands high and
between the ages of three and seven years.
HACKNEY CARRIAGES AND THE THAMES WATERMEN.
The number of cabs, then called hackney coaches, soon produced an
effect upon the earnings of the Thames watermen, who, until these
vehicles were introduced, enjoyed the monopoly of passenger traffic.
Thomas Dekker[6] refers to the resentment felt by the watermen in 1607,
two years after the hackney couch made its appearance:—
“The sculler told him he was now out of cash, it was a hard time; he
doubts there is some secret bridge made over to hell, and that they
steal thither in coaches, for every justice’s wife and the wife of
every citizen must be jolted now.”
[6] _A Knight’s Conjuring Done in Earnest._ By Thomas Dekker. London:
1607.
There seems to have been good reason for the preference given the
hackney coach over the waterman’s wherry. The preamble of an Act passed
in 1603 “Concerning Wherrymen and Watermen” shows that the risks
attending a trip on the Thames were not inconsiderable, and that love
of novelty was not the only motive which caused the citizens of London
to take the hackney coach instead of the wherry. This Act forbade the
employment of apprentices under 18 years of age, premising that:—
“It hath often happened that divers and sundry people passing by water
upon the River of Thames between Windsor and Gravesend have been put
to great hazard and danger of the loss of their lives and goods, and
many times have perished and been drowned in the said River through the
unskilfulness and want of knowledge or experience in the wherrymen and
watermen.”
In 1636, when, as we have seen, there were over 6,000 coaches, private
and hackney, in London, Sedan chairs also were to be hired in the
streets; and the jealousy with which the hackney coachman regarded the
chairman was only equalled by the jealousy with which the waterman
regarded them both. We quote from “Coach and Sedan,” the curious little
publication before referred to:—
“Coaches and Sedans (quoth the waterman) they deserve both to be thrown
into the Thames, and but for stopping the Channel I would they were,
for I am sure where I was wont to have eight or ten fares in a morning,
I now scarce get two in a whole day. Our wives and children at home
are ready to pine, and some of us are fain for means to take other
professions upon us.”
HACKNEY CARRIAGES A NUISANCE IN LONDON.
By the year 1660, the number of hackney coaches in London had again
grown so large that they were described in a Royal Proclamation as
“a common nuisance,” while their “rude and disorderly handling”
constituted a public danger. For these reasons the vehicles were
forbidden to stand in the streets for hire, and the drivers were
directed to stay in the yards until they might be wanted. We can well
understand that the narrowness of the streets made large numbers of
coaches standing, or “crawling,” to use the modern term, obstacles
to traffic; and it is interesting to notice that the earliest patent
granted in connection with passenger vehicles (No. 31 in 1625) was to
Edward Knapp for a device (among others) to make the wheels of coaches
and other carriages approach to or recede from each other “where the
narrowness of the way may require.”
LICENSED HACKNEY CARRIAGES.
In 1662, there were about 2,490 hackney coaches in London, if we may
accept the figures given by John Cressel in a pamphlet, which we shall
consider on a future page. It was in this year that Charles II. passed
a law appointing Commissioners with power to make certain improvements
in the London streets. One of the duties entrusted to them was that of
reducing the number of hackney coaches by granting licenses; and only
400 licenses were to be granted.
These Commissioners grossly abused the authority placed in their hands,
wringing bribes from the unfortunate persons who applied for licenses,
and carrying out their task with so little propriety that in 1663 they
were indicted and compelled to restore moneys they had wrongfully
obtained. In regard to this it is to be observed that one of the 400
hackney coach licenses sanctioned by the Act was a very valuable
possession. We learn from a petition submitted by the hackney coachmen
to Parliament that holders of these licenses, which cost £5 each, sold
them for £100. The petition referred to is undated, but appears to have
been sent in when William III.’s Act to license 700 hackney coaches
(passed in 1694) was before Parliament.
The bitterness of the watermen against Sedan chairs seems to have died
out by Pepys’ time, but it was still hot against the hackney coaches,
as a passage in the _Diary_ sufficiently proves. Proceeding by boat to
Whitehall on February 2, 1659, Samuel Pepys talked with his waterman
and learned how certain cunning fellows who wished to be appointed
State Watermen had cozened others of their craft to support an address
to the authorities in their favour. According to Pepys’ informant, nine
or ten thousand hands were set to this address (the men were obviously
unable to read or write) “when it was only told them that it was a
petition against hackney coaches.”
COACHES WITH “BOOTS.”
From _Coach and Sedan_ (see page 30), we obtain a quaint but fairly
graphic description of the coach of this period:—
“The coach was a thick, burly, square-set fellow in a doublet of black
leather, brasse button’d down the breast, back, sleeves and wings, with
monstrous wide boots, fringed at the top with a net fringe, and a round
breech (after the old fashion) gilded, and on his back an atchievement
of sundry coats [of arms], in their proper colours.”
[Illustration: COACH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’S LADIES. Showing near-side
“Boot.”]
The “boots” were projections at the sides of the body between the front
and back wheels, as shown in the drawing of the coach occupied by Queen
Elizabeth’s ladies; and there is much evidence to support the opinion
that these boots were not covered. Taylor in _The World Runnes on
Wheeles_ describes the boot with picturesque vigour:—
“The coach is a close hypocrite, for it hath a cover for any knavery
and curtains to veil or shadow any wickedness; besides, like a
perpetual cheater, it wears two boots and no spurs, sometimes having
two pairs of legs in one boot, and often-times (against nature) most
preposterously it makes fair ladies wear the boot; and if you note,
they are carried back to back like people surprised by pirates, to be
tied in that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea.”
These two fanciful descriptions explain very clearly what the “boot”
was and how occupied. The “monstrous width” referred to in _Coach and
Sedan_ confirms the statement by Taylor that sometimes “two pairs of
legs” occupied it, the proprietors of the legs sitting back to back.
“No trace of glass windows or perfect doors seems to have existed up
to 1650” (Thrupp), so we can well understand that the passengers who
were obliged to occupy the boot of a stage coach (for these as well as
hackney coaches were so built) on a prolonged journey would have an
exceedingly uncomfortable seat in cold or wet weather.
It was no doubt an open boot which was occupied by the writer of the
curious letter quoted by Markland. Mr. Edward Parker is addressing his
father, who resided at Browsholme, near Preston, in Lancashire; the
letter is dated November 3, 1663:—
“I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe ways pleasant,
being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. Ye company yt came
up with mee were persons of greate quality as knights and ladyes. My
journey’s expense was 30s. This traval hath soe indisposed mee yt I am
resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatch. I am extreamely hott and
feverish; what this may tend to I know not, I have not as yet advised
with any doctor.”
Sir W. Petty’s assertion that the splendour of coaches increased
greatly during the Stuart period recalls a passage in Kennett’s
_History of England_. George Villiers, the great favourite of James I.
who created him Duke of Buckingham, had six horses to draw his coach
(“which was wondered at then as a novelty and imputed to him as a
mast’ring pride”). The “stout old Earl of Northumberland,” not to be
outdone by the upstart favourite, “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.” The
first coaches were drawn by two horses only; love of display led to the
use of more for town use, but the deplorable condition of the country
roads justified the use of as many as quagmires might compel.
How much a coach weighed in these early days we do not know: Mr. R. L.
Edgeworth, writing in 1817, says, “now travelling carriages frequently
weigh above a ton;” and as carriages had undergone vast improvements by
that date, we are justified in concluding that those of a hundred or a
hundred and fifty years earlier weighed a great deal more.
CARRIAGES IN HYDE PARK.
During the Commonwealth (1649-1659), it was the fashion to drive in
“the Ring” in Hyde Park. The Ring is described by a French writer,[7]
as two or three hundred paces in diameter with a sorry kind of
balustrade consisting of poles placed on stakes three feet from the
ground; round this the people used to drive, in Cromwell’s time,
at great speed, as appears from a letter dated May 2, 1654, from a
gentleman in London to a country friend, quoted by Mr. Jacob Larwood in
his _Story of the London Parks_, (1872):—
[7] M. Misson. _Memoirs and Observations of a Journey in England_,
1697.
“When my Lord Protector’s coach came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby
and my Lord’s three daughters, the coaches and horses flocked about
them like some miracle. But they galloped (after the mode court-pace
now, and which they all use wherever they go) round and round the Park,
and all that great multitude hunted them and caught them still at the
turn like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste for them
and so after them again,[8] and I never saw the like in my life.”
[8] The following sentence from Misson explains this reference. He says
of the way people drive in the Ring: “When they have turned for some
time round one way they face about and turn the other.”
There is an interesting letter from the Dutch Ambassadors to the States
General, dated October 16, 1654, which is worth quoting here. The
Ambassadors give particulars of the accident to explain why no business
has been done lately:—
“His Highness [Oliver Cromwell], only accompanied with Secretary
Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the
air in Hyde Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be brought,
where he had his dinner; and afterwards had a mind to drive the coach
himself. Having put only the Secretary into it, being those six grey
horses which the Count of Oldenburgh[9] had presented unto His Highness
who drove pretty handsomely for some time. But at last, provoking these
horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly and ran so fast that
the postilion could not hold them in, whereby His Highness was flung
out of the coach box upon the pole.... The Secretary’s ankle was hurt
leaping out and he keeps his chamber.”
[9] This suggests that the North German province of Oldenbourg was
famed then, as now, for its breed of coach horses.
From this it is evident that when six horses were used a postillion
rode one of the leaders and controlled them; while the driver managed
the wheelers and middle pair. When four horses were driven it was the
custom to have two outriders, one to ride at the leaders’ heads and
one at the wheelers’; in town this would be merely display, but on a
journey the outrider’s horses might replace those of the team in case
of accident, or more frequently, be added to the team to help drag the
coach over a stretch of bad road.
COACH AND CART RACING.
John Evelyn in his Diary refers to a coach race which took place in
the Park on May 20, 1658, but gives no particulars. Mr. Jacob Larwood
observes that at this period and for a century later coach-racing was
a national sport; some considerable research through the literature of
these times, however, has thrown no light upon this sport, and while
we need not doubt that coaches when they chanced to meet on suitable
ground did make trials of speed, it is open to question whether the
practice was ever developed into a sport. It may be that Mr. Larwood
had in mind the curious cart-team races described by Marshall in his
_Rural Economy of Norfolk_, published in 1795.
This writer tells us that before Queen Anne’s reign the farmers of
Norfolk used an active breed of horses which could not only trot but
gallop. He describes as an eyewitness the races which survived to his
day; the teams consisted of five horses, which were harnessed to an
empty waggon:—
“A team following another broke into a gallop, and unmindful of the
ruts, hollow cavities and rugged ways, contended strenuously for the
lead, while the foremost team strove as eagerly to keep it. Both were
going at full gallop, as fast indeed as horses in harness could go
for a considerable distance, the drivers standing upright in their
respective waggons.”
REGULATIONS FOR HACKNEY CARRIAGES.