virtue, sincerity, boldness, honesty, and resolution, that their assistance was courted in time of war, and that in particular the people of this land, by their discipline and intrepidity both within and without the kingdom, acquired so much celebrity that foreign nations readily united with them, we have for some time past found with great pain and uneasiness that their useful discipline and skill in riding in our electorate county and lordship have not only visibly declined, but have been almost lost (and no doubt other electors and princes have experienced the same among their nobility); and as the principal cause of this is that our vassals, servants, and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old, have dared to give themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches, and that few of them provide themselves with wellequipped riding-horses and with skilful experienced servants and boys acquainted with the roads; not being able to suffer any longer this neglect, and being desirous to revive the ancient Brunswick mode of riding handed down and bequeathed to us by our forefathers, we hereby will and command that all and each of our before-mentioned vassals, servants, and kinsmen, of whatever rank or condition, shall always keep in readiness as many riding-horses as they are obliged to serve us with by their fief or alliance; and shall have in their service experienced servants acquainted with the roads, and that they shall E have as many horses as possible with polished steel furniture, and with saddles proper for carrying the necessary arms and accoutrements, so that they may appear with them when necessity requires. We also will and command our before-mentioned vassals and servants to take notice that when we order them to assemble, either all together or in part, in times of turbulence, or to receive their fiefs, or when on other occasions they visit our court they shall not travel or appear in coaches but on their riding horses." Beckmann also mentions that in the archives of the county of Mark (Germany) there is preserved an edict, in which the feudal nobility and vassals are forbid the use of coaches under pain of incurring the punishment of felony. Other forms of opposition to coaches will be found on a later page. INTRODUCTION OF COACHES INTO BRITAIN. After what has been said, the proper heading of this section should perhaps be the re-introduction of coaches into this country. However, the coach in its modern acceptation was new to Britain in the sixteenth century, and hence its history properly starts from that time. We need hardly treat as an exception to this conclusion the statement in a recent volume, that Henry Tudor, on 22d August 1485, "drove in a covered coach to the entrance of St. Paul's after the battle of Redmere. One of the earliest records | imperiall on the toppe, and before, two lower pillars, whereon stood a lion and a dragon, the supporters of the armes of England." discoverable fixes the year 1553 as a period when coaches of some degree of magnificence were known in this country. On the last day of September in that year we learn that Queen Mary Tudor went in state from the Tower to Westminster in an open chariot drawn by six horses covered with cloth of tissue. It has been stated by several writers, probably on the authority of Camden, but erroneously, as the preceding quotations show, that the invention of coaches was brought hither from France in 1580, and that the first ever publicly seen was the equipage of Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel. It is further stated that this nobleman made a present of the same to Queen Elizabeth, who went in it from Somerset House to St. Paul's Cross in 1588, to return thanks on the destruction of the Spanish Armada. In the first engraved representation of an English coach, which bears the date 1582, Queen Elizabeth is represented seated in her coach, a curiously shaped and canopied vehicle, with feathers on the top, presenting an appearance between a triumphal car and a modern catafalque or open hearse. Taylor, the Water Poet, in The World runnes on Wheeles; or Odds betwixt Carts and Coaches, says, speaking of this carriage-"In the yeare 1564 one William Boonen, a Dutchman, brought first the use of coaches hither, and the said Boonen was Queen Elizabeth's coachman, for indeed a coach was a strange monster in those days, and the sight of them put both horse and man into amazement ; some said it was a great crab-shell brought out of China, and some imagined it to be one of the Pagan Stow, in his Chronicles, fixes the first use of coaches in England eleven years later. He says"In the year 1564 William Boonen, a Dutchman, became the Queen's coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. After a while divers great ladies, with as great jealousie of the Queen's displeasure, made their coaches and rid in them up and down the country, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then by little and little they grew usuall among the nobilitie and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade in coachmaking." The English were not slow to take up this trade, as it is stated that in the same year (1564) Walter Rippon made a coche for the Earl of Rutland, | which was the first coche that was ever made in England. Speaking of a later period, Stow says"The said Walter Rippon made the first hollow turning coche, with pillars and arches, for her majesty, being then her servant. Also in anno 1584, a chariot throne with foure pillars behind to beare a canopie, with a crowne temples in which the cannibals | to the town, and probably to the adored the devil; but at last their doubts were cleared, and coachmaking became a substantial trade." The combined ideas of the crab-shell and the pagan temple are admirable as describing the form of this coach. In the print above referred to is given a second coach, in which the queen's ladies are seated; and this form of coach is represented by our illustration. The peculiarity of this carriage is the projecting seat between the wheels, named the boot, in which one person could sit. The Water Poet has a hit at this boot also, asserting that the coach, "like a perpetual cheater, wears two boots and no spurs, sometimes having two pair of legs in one boot; and oftentimes, against nature, most preposterously, it makes fair ladies wear the boot. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways, as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach." He also says "If you note, they are carried back to back, like people surprised by pirates, to be tied in that miserable manner and thrown overboard." Towards the end of the sixteenth century the vehicles in use were divided into two classes, known by the respective names of coaches and caroches. The latter were larger and clumsier than the former, but were considered more stately. From an old play by Green (time of Elizabeth), entitled Tu quoque, we learn that a chariot was considered more appropriate court, while the coach was left for the country :— 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. Thus the "crab-shell" of the Queen may be held to represent the more showy and smaller vehicle for town use, while, as our illustration shows, the caroche ventured into the country roads, there duly to come to grief. Even in the city of London, the use of a coach was not all that could be considered pleasant or agreeablethe streets being, in the language of an early paving act, "very foul and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noyous." A Lover of his Country, who published a pamphlet in 1673, furnishes in a series of questions an amusing picture of the condition of the roads towards the end of the seventeenth century. He asks, "Is it for a man's health to travel with tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; and afterwards to sit in the cold till teams of horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to travel in rotten coaches, and to have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours, sometimes half a day, to have them mended, and then to travel all night to make good their stage?" The "perch" would be the coachman's seat seen in vehicles of a somewhat later date than those in · Have with them, for the great caroch, six horses And the two coachmen, and with my ambler bare, And my three women. the illustration. The necessity for | in which hackney coaches were exseveral attendants on such a coach pressly forbid to be "used or was obvious, and an allusion to suffered" in London or Westthis may be found in Ben Jonson's minster, unless they were to travel comedy, The Devil is an Ass, three miles out of the town, and where it is saidit was further provided that no one should go in a coach in the streets unless the owner of the coach constantly maintained four able horses for the royal service when required. This rather highhanded order, though coming the year after hackney carriages were introduced, does not, however, appear to have had the effect of suppressing them or reducing their number. But the object of the proclamation may be judged from the reference to keeping horses for the royal service when required, and from an allusion to the destruction of the pavements and the enhancement of the price of forage. And again, in Massinger's City Madam, the reference to a caroch drawn by six Flanders mares, with its "coachman, groom, postilion, footman," gives a fair idea of the retinue both of horses and men which the coaches and roads of that day entailed. Still, with all the expense of maintaining a coach and the obstacles the bad roads and streets presented to their use, the vehicles increased in number, and of course the satirists and the popular writers of the time had their own views as to this increase of ease and luxury. In the earliest years of the seventeenth century, parliamentary action against the use of carriages was demanded, and though a bill "to restrain the excessive use of coaches in this realme," introduced in 1601, was not carried into a law, the Attorney-General of the time was directed to look into the matter, and that “ some fit bill touching the use of coaches" should be introduced to the notice of the House of Commons. About the middle of the seventeenth century the practice of hiring out coaches was begun in London by Captain Baily. A royal decree was issued in 1635, While the coach had thus still to encounter suppressive efforts on the part of persons in authority, there are also evidences that in the minds of many persons the use of wheeled vehicles was immensely unpopular. The Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing together, quoted in our chapters on sedan chairs, gives a print of the carriages of this period, which were oval in form, closed in on all sides, and furnished with cushions, as well as with leather blinds to close the windows. This closing of the carriage gave rise to curious imputations against them, and again the Water Poet may be quoted as expressing the feeling of a part of the people of the time. Taylor's opposition, though meant by him to express the views of the |