The writer attempts mediation, and his offer is favourably received. The combatants explain who they are. The burly fellow speaks first:—
“My name Sir (quoth hee) is Coach, who am a Gentleman of an anciente house, as you may perceive by my so many quarter’d coates, of Dukes, Marquises, Earles, Viscounts, Barons, Knights, and Gentlemen, there is never a Lord or Lady in the land but is of my acquaintance; my imployment is so great, that I am never at quiet, day or night; I am a Benefactor to all Meetings, Play-houses, Mercers shops, Taverns, and some other houses of recreation.... This other that offers me the wrong, they call him Mounsier Sedan, some Mr. Chair, a Greene-goose hatch’d but the other day ... and whereas hee is able with all the helpe and furtherance hee can make and devise, to goe not above a mile in an houre; as grosse as I am, I can runne three or foure in halfe an houre; yea, after dinner, when my belly is as full as it can hold (and I may say to you) of dainty bitts too.”
Whereupon the sedan chimes in:—
“Sir, the occasion of our difference was this: Whether an emptie Coach, that has a Lords head painted Coate and Crest, as Lion, Bull, Elephant, &c. upon it without, might take the wall of a Sedan that had a knighte alive within it.” I confess, he goes on to say, I am “a meere stranger, till of late in England; therefore, if the Law of Hospitalitie be observed (as England hath beene accounted the most hospitable kingdome of the World,) I ought to be the better entertained, and used, (as I am sure I shall) and find as good friends, as Coach hath any, it is not his bigge lookes, nor his nimble tongue, that so runnes upon wheeles, shall scare mee; hee shall know that I am above him both in esteeme, and dignitie, and hereafter will know my place better.... Neither, I hope, will any thinke the worse of mee, for that I am a Forreiner; hath not your Countrey Coach of England been extreemly enriched by strangers?”
Indeed, all your luxuries, he continues, are foreign, your perfumes are Italian, and your perukes made in France.
For some time it seems that Sedan is getting the best of it. Whereas the coach, he argues, has to wait out in the cold streets often for hours at a time, he is many times admitted into the privacy of my Lady’s chamber, where he is rubbed clean both within and without. “And the plain troath is,” he concludes, “I will no longer bee made a foole by you ... the kenell is your naturall walke.” At this moment a carman appears and supports the sedan. Coaches, he says, keep the town awake, endanger the lives of children, and, particularly in the suburbs, “be-dash gentlemen’s gowns.” There then follows a curious piece of dialogue between Sedan and Powel, a Welshman, one of his attendants:—
“Sedan. We have our name from Sedanum, or Sedan, that famous Citie and Universitie, belonging to the Dukes of Bevillon, and where hee keepes his Court.”
“Powel. Nay, doe you heare mee Master, it is from Sedanny, which in our British language, is a brave, faire, daintie well-favoured Ladie, or prettie sweete wench, and wee carrie such some time Master....”
Most of the morning is wasted by such desultory talk, and the street becomes blocked. There comes on the scene a waterman, who, of course, is equally antagonistic to both, and would throw coach and sedan into the Thames if he were not afraid of blocking the stream, and so bringing harm to himself. There follows him a country farmer, who thinks the sedan the honester and humbler of the two, but really knows very little about it. “I heare no great ill of you,” he is good enough to say, but is bound to add, “I have had no acquaintance with your cowcumber-cullor’d men.” Yet in the country he has in his way tried a sedan-chair, which is a “plaine wheele-barrow,” just as his cart is his coach “wherein now and then for my pleasure I ride, my maides going along with me.” But if they both come to Lincolnshire, the sedan, he thinks, will receive a warmer welcome than the coach.
After him comes a country vicar who has no hesitation in accusing the coach of all sorts of robberies. Soon, he cries, you will be “turned off.” You never cared for church, and indeed, during service, you disturb everybody rumbling your loudest outside. Also you are so set up that you will never give place “either to cart or carre.” A surveyor is less personal than the vicar, but has little good to say of the coach, although he agrees with most of the others that for a nobleman of high rank, it is something of a necessity.
Finally the brewer appears and speedily puts an end to the wrangle.