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.
[Illustration: _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,
xxij_d_,” 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, xxxviij_li_.xiij_s_.ij_d_.”
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.”