December 2nd, “Abroad with my wife, the first time that I ever rode in my own coach.”
In 1669, April 19th, “Calling about my coach which hath been to the Coachmakers to be painted and the window frames gilt again.” We see from this entry that in 1669 coaches were made in England already with glass windows.
April 30th, “To the Coachmaker’s, and find many ladies sitting in the body of a coach, which must be finished by to-morrow, the Lady Marquess of Winchester and Lady Bellasis eating of bread and butter and drinking of ale; my coach is silvered over, but no varnish yet laid. I stood by it till at eight at night, and saw the painters varnish it, and it dries almost as fast as it can be laid on. I sent the same night my coachman and horses to fetch the coach home;” and on May 1st, “At noon to dinner, and after through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses’ manes and tails tied up with red ribbons, and new green reins.”
Sedan chairs came into fashion in England in 1634, and were in general use by the middle of the century. The alteration in the form of the coach, from the long barge shape of Charles I.’s time to that of Charles II. was, no doubt, suggested by the shape of the sedan chair, in London as well as in Germany.[2] The improvements mentioned by Mr Pepys show that coaches were being altered, but the progress of springs was slow. We appear, in England, to have taken the lead, in at the same time introducing springs and lessening the weight of coaches. In 1770, an elaborate treatise on Coachmaking was published at Paris by the Academy of Arts, written by Mons. Roubo. In this work we find that even at Paris then, springs were not at all universal. They were applied to the four corners of a perch carriage, and placed upright, and at first only clipped in the middle to the posts of the earlier carriages, and the leather braces went from the tops of the springs to the bottoms of the bodies, without any long iron loops such as we now
