The use of coaches in Germany, in the sixteenth century, was not less than in Italy; the current of trade, especially from the East, had for a long time poured into those two countries towards Holland, enriching all the cities in its progress, and the rich traders built fine houses, and churches, and town halls, and would have their coaches handsomely decorated as well as their houses. Macpherson, in his history of commerce, says that Antwerp possessed five hundred coaches in 1560, in the time of Queen Elizabeth. France and England appear to have been behind the rest of Europe at this period.
The first coach was made in England in 1555 for the Earl of Rutland, by Walter Rippon, who also made a coach in 1556 for Queen Mary, and in 1564, a state coach for Queen Elizabeth; in 1580, the Earl of Arundel brought over a coach from Germany. Queen Elizabeth, however, preferred the use of a coach [[Plate 12]] which William Boonen brought her from Holland in 1560, and made him her coachman. This William Boonen’s wife brought out of Holland the art of clear-starching, and was appointed to prepare the Queen’s famous cambric ruffs, which in pictures of her are displayed round her neck. Taylor, called the water-poet, says that old Parr gave him this information in 1605, and adds that since, “coaches have increased with a mischief, and have ruined the trade of the waterman by hackney coaches, and now multiply more than ever.” Another writer complains that “now the use of these coaches brought of Germany is taken up and made common, that great ladies caused coaches to be made for them, and rid in them up and down the counties to the great admiration of all the beholders, and little by little they grew usual among the nobility and others of quality, so within twenty years there grew up a great trade of Coachbuilding in England.”
A curious tract or pamphlet was published in
