At Catharine’s Coronation with Henry VIII., “chariots covered, with ladies therein,” followed her litter; and when Anne Boleyn came to London she made a State entry in a most wonderful litter ornamented with the richest materials.
When Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., went to Scotland, whose King James IV. she married, she was conveyed “on varey rich litere, borne by two fair coursers vary nobly drest, in the wich litere the sayd queene was borne in the intryng of townes, or otherways to her good playsure.”
Can one imagine anything more horrible than being swung about in a litter for weeks as that poor woman was on her journey from London to Scotland? The bumps and shakes, the discomfort of the cramped position, seem terrible to think of in these days of Pulman cars, restaurants, and quick trains.
By the middle of the sixteenth century riding pillion fashion was again much in vogue, the lady sitting behind the gentleman, in a kind of chair similar to that used by the Anglo-Saxon dames. They called the board for their feet a “planchette.”
Queen Mary Tudor went from the Tower to Westminster at her Coronation “sitting in a chariot of cloth of tissue drawn with six horses,” followed by another chariot “with cloth of silver” and six horses, in which sat Anne of Cleves and the Princess Elizabeth. Great Queen Bess, when it came to her turn to be crowned, also used a chariot for her State procession to the Abbey.
The coach is said to have been introduced in 1564 by Boonen, a Dutch coachman employed by Queen Elizabeth, who enjoyed her first drives and the pleasures of her new possession in London’s spacious parks. These equipages were almost too gorgeous for description. The Queen seems to have employed them at times in her different progresses and for her State entries, but her chief mode of locomotion was riding on horseback. This was undoubtedly on account of the dreadful state of the roads, which rendered impossible the common use of the coach in the country for some years. In fact, in London itself, the streets were so narrow, so ill-kept, and so uneven, that it was a very jolting business to drive at all.
Elizabeth’s coach was generally drawn by two white horses, was gaudily decorated, and had a canopy, but was open at the sides. The driver sat on a kind of narrow chair close behind the horses, and rather low down. The Queen liked to be the only lady in the land to ride in such a vehicle, and her jealousy was so aroused when the ladies of London thought to follow suit, that she became irate, and actually passed a law “to restrain the excessive use of coaches.” In spite of this legislation and the bad state of the roads, so many people ordered these equipages that there was soon an actual dearth of leather to cover them, just as there is scarcity of rubber for tyres of motors to-day.
D’Avenant, writing of the gay Metropolis at this time, says: “Surely your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of the wheelbarrow, before the greater engines, carts, were invented.” Mary Queen of Scots, unlike Elizabeth, seems to have ridden on all her journeys.
The first public vehicles were, according to Stow, started in 1564, and were called “caravans.” Forty years later, one of these was running between London and Canterbury, and a patent was granted to a man to run a stage-coach on the little trip between Edinburgh and Leith.
The reign of James I. also saw the pioneer hackney coach in London. A few years afterwards the first “rank” was established, when a Captain Baily acquired four hackney coaches and made them stand at the Maypole (near St. Mary’s in the Strand) for hire. Skeats derives the word “hackney” from two Dutch words, meaning a “jolting nag”—the old way of spelling it was “hacquenée.” The coachman rode his horse, postillion fashion, and used whip and spurs. There was constant rivalry between the chairmen of the sedans and coachmen of that age, and good-humoured chaff and jeers were bandied from one to another as freely as between the omnibus drivers and chauffeurs of motor cars to-day.