Who can maintain thee in thy choice of gowns,
Of tires, of servants, and of costly jewels;
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.”
This, too, is borne out by the speech of Lady Eitherside already quoted. Many servants were needed for the carroch. Massinger speaks of one being drawn by six Flanders mares, and having its coachman, groom, postilion, and footman, to look after it. “These carroaches,” says Croal[22] “were larger and clumsier” than the coaches, “but were considered more stately.” Taylor speaks of the town Vehicle as “a mere Engine of Pride,” and gives a rather ludicrous account of some common women who had hired one of them to go to “the Greene-Goose faire at Stratford the Bowe.” The occupants of this carroch “were so be-madam’d, be-mistrist, and Ladified by the beggers, that the foolish Women began to swell with a proud Supposition or Imaginary greatnes, and gave all their mony to the mendicanting Canters.”
Poor Taylor! He felt very deeply on the question of these new coaches which were to put an end once and for all time to his trade. He must have felt that Henry of Navarre’s assassination in 1610 would never have taken place but for that monarch’s affection for his coach; yet in spite of his deep hatred, he was once prevailed upon to ride inside one of them. “It was but my chance” he records, “once to bee brought from Whitehall to the Tower in my Master Sir William Waades Coach, and before I had been drawn twenty yardes, such a Timpany of Pride puft me up, that I was ready to burst with the winde chollicke of vaine-glory. In what state I would leane over the boote, and looke, and pry if I saw any of my acquaintance, and then I would stand up vailing my Bonnet.”
It almost looks as though he had enjoyed his ride!