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, yͤ company yᵗ came up wᵗͪ mee were
persons of greate quality as knightes and ladyes. My journeys expence
was 30 _s._ This traval hath soe indisposed mee, yᵗ I am resolved
never to ride againe in yͤ 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 mʳᵉˢ
[mistress’s] coche, with all the furniture thereto belonging except
horses—xxxiiij_li._xiiij_s._ For the painting of my mʳ and mʳᵉˢ
armes upon the coche—ij_s._vj_d._” 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 xl_li._ for
a coache now made, xx_li._”
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, v_s._”
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,
iij_li._xiij_s._iiij_d._; payntinge them in oyle colour,
vj_s._viij_d._; a new pole for the horses to drawe by,
ij_s._vj_d._; a paire of springe trees, iij_s._iij_d._”
The provender bill for six horses is given, also an item “for setting
up the coach horses at dyvers times at Walsingham Howse, iiij_s._;
at Hatton Howse, xij_d._; at Baynardes Castle, ij_s._; dressing and
oyling the coach, ij_s._”; 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 xvj_s.
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, lxiiij_li._”
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.