In 1579 the Earl of Arundel imported one of these new and strange machines from Germany. How novel and strange they were may be gathered from the particular mention thus accorded them in the annals of the time. When we consider how bad was the condition even of the streets of London, it will be abundantly evident that a desire for display rather than comfort brought about the increasing use of carriages that marked the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign. By 1601 they had become so comparatively numerous that it was sought to obtain an Act restraining their excessive use and forbidding men riding in them. This projected ordinance especially set forth the enervating nature of riding in carriages; but it would seem that the real objection was the growing magnificence displayed in this way by the wealthy, tending to overshadow the public appearances of Royalty itself. Whatever the real reason of this disabling measure, it was rejected on the second reading and never became law, and four years later both hackney and private carriages were in common use in London. Carters and waggoners hated them with a bitter hatred, called them “hell-carts,” and heaped abuse upon all who used them. Both their primitive construction and the fearful condition of the roads rendered their use impossible in the country. Teams of fewer than six horses were rarely seen drawing coaches in what were then regarded as London suburbs, districts long since included in Central London; and perhaps even the haughty and arrogant Duke of Buckingham, favourite of James I. and Charles, was misjudged when, in 1619, the people, seeing his carriage drawn by that number, “wondered at it as a novelty, and imputed it to him as a mastering pride.” Had he employed fewer horses he certainly would have been obliged to get out and walk, or to have again resorted to the use of the sedan-chair, in which, before he had set up a carriage, he was used to be carried, greatly to the indignation of the populace, to whom sedan-chairs were at that time novelties. “The clamour and the noise of it was so extravagant,” we are told, “that the people would rail upon him in the streets, loathing that men should be brought to as servile a condition as horses.” Yet no one ever thought of denouncing Buckingham or any other of the magnificos when they lolled in easy seats under the silken hangings of their state barges and were rowed by the labour of a dozen lusty oarsmen on the Thames. The work was as servile as the actual carrying of a passenger, but the innate conservatism of mankind could not at first perceive this. On the whole, Buckingham therefore has our sympathy. The most innocent doings of a favourite with Royalty are capable of being twisted into haughty and malignant acts, and had it not been for Buckingham’s position at Court his displays would not have brought him the hatred of the people and the rivalry of his own order which they certainly did arouse. The Earl of Northumberland was one of those who were thus goaded into the rivalry of display. Hearing that the favourite had six horses to his carriage, he thought that he might very well have eight, “and so rode,” we are told, “from London to Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.”
The first public carriages, according to a statement made to Taylor, the “water poet,” by Old Parr, the centenarian, were the “hackney-coaches,” established in London in 1605. “Since then,” says Taylor, writing on the subject at different times between 1623 and 1635, “coaches have increased with a mischief, and have ruined the trade of the watermen by hackney-coaches, and now multiply more than ever.” The “watermen” were, of course, those who plied with their boats and barges for hire upon the Thames, chiefly between London and Westminster, the river being then, and for long after, the principal highway for traffic in the metropolis. So greatly, indeed, was the river traffic for the time affected, that the sprack-witted Taylor relinquished his trade of waterman and embarked upon the more promising career of pamphleteering.
“Thirty years ago,” he says, in one of these outbursts, “The World runnes on Wheeles,” “coaches were few”:—
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.
Carroches, coaches, jades and Flanders mares
Doe 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.
“This,” we find him saying, on another occasion, “is the rattling, rowling, rumbling age, and the world runnes on wheeles. The hackney-men, who were wont to have furnished travellers in all places with fitting and serviceable horses for any journey, are (by the multitude of coaches) undone by the dozens.”
The bitter cry of Taylor and the Thames watermen may or may not have been hearkened to, but certainly hackney-coaches were prohibited in 1635. This, however, was probably due rather to Royal whim or prejudice than to any consideration for a decaying trade.
It was an arbitrary age, and it only needed a Star Chamber order for public carriages, considered by the Court to be a nuisance, to be suppressed. The reasons advanced read curiously at this time: “His Majesty, perceiving that of late the great numbers of hackney-coaches were grown a great disturbance to the King, Queen, and nobility through the streets of the said city, so as the common passage was made dangerous and the rates and prices of hay and provender and other provisions of the stable thereby made exceeding dear, hath thought fit, with the advice of his Privy Council, to publish his Royal pleasure, for reformation therein.” His Majesty therefore commanded that no hackney-coaches should be used in London unless they were engaged to travel at least three miles out of town, and owners of such coaches were to keep sufficient able horses and geldings, fit for his Majesty’s service, “whensoever his occasion shall require them.”
This despotic measure was amended in 1637, when fifty hackney-coachmen for London were licensed, to keep not more than twelve horses each. This meant either that three hundred or a hundred and fifty public carriages then came into use, according to whether two or four horses were harnessed. “And so,” says Taylor, “there grew up the trade of coach-building in England.”
These early carriages, whether hackney or private, were not only without springs, but were innocent of windows. In their place were shutters or leather curtains. The first “glass coach” mentioned is that made for the Duke of York in 1661. Pepys at this period becomes our principal authority on this subject. On May 1st, 1665, he is found witnessing experiments with newly-designed carriages with springs, and again on September 5th, finding them go not quite so easy as their inventor claimed for them. Yet, since private carriages were clearly becoming the fashion, Mr. Secretary-to-the-Admiralty Pepys must needs have one; and accordingly, on December 2nd, 1668, he takes his first ride: “Abroad with my wife, the first time that I ever rode in my own coach.”
