Taylor.
THE seventeenth century saw great changes in vehicular design. In 1660 the first berlin was made. Steel springs, as we have seen, appeared a few years later in the brouette. About this time, too, a hooded gig or calèche made its appearance in the streets of Paris, the first of many carriages to be built upon entirely new lines. Glass windows and complete doors were used in the coaches, both public and private, which became smaller, more compact, and certainly more graceful. Improvements were not confined to one country, but proceeded simultaneously not only in various European countries, but also in South America. Roads, too, were improved, and laws for the regulation of traffic framed with some regularity and effect.
John Evelyn in his Diary gives interesting glimpses of such carriages and other vehicles as he saw during his several European tours. In Brussels (1641) he was allowed the use of Sir Henry de Vic’s coach and six, and travelled luxuriously in it as far as Ghent. “On the way,” he notes, “I met with divers little waggons, prettily contrived, and full of peddling merchandize, drawn by mastiff dogs, harnessed completely like so many coach-horses; in some four, in others six, as in Brussels itself I had observed. In Antwerp I saw, as I remember, four dogs draw five lusty children in a chariot.” When dogs were first used for the purpose of traction does not appear, but they are still to be seen in the Netherlands in a like capacity. A few days later, to continue with Evelyn’s observations, he was going from Ostend to Dunkirk “by waggon ... the journey being made all on the sea sands.” On his return to England, however, it is to be noticed that he rode post to Canterbury. In 1643 he was again in Paris, mentioning “the multitude of coaches passing every moment over the bridge,” this being, he says, to a new spectator, “an agreeable diversion.” In the following year, while standing in the garden of the Tuileries, he saw “so many coaches as one would hardly think could be maintained in the whole city, going late as it was, towards the course”—the fashionable rendezvous of the day—“the circle being capable of containing a hundred coaches to turn commodiously, and the larger of the plantations for five or six coaches abreast.” The road from Paris to Orleans he describes as “excellent.” Coming to Italy, he found Milan, in spite of the narrowness of its streets, abounding in rich coaches. In Paris again, two or three years afterwards, the design of a new coach so took his fancy that he determined, like his friend Mr. Pepys, to possess one for himself. And so on May 29th, 1652, “I went,” he writes, “to give orders about a coach to be made against my wife’s coming, being my first coach, the pattern whereof I brought out of Paris.” This was probably “booted,” but differed from the earlier coaches in having a curved roof.
The commonest French coach of this time seems to have been the corbillard, a flat-bottomed, half-open, half-close coach, furnished with curtains of cloth or leather in the front part. These were merely tied on to the supports, and would roll up when required. Doors there were none, but there was a “movable rail, over which a leather screen was hung” at the back portion of the carriage, which was about six feet long, and here were the seats. There were also projecting movable step-seats. Possibly Evelyn saw a newer model with a curved bottom and door half-way up, panelled in the lower part, but curtained above. Such a carriage was hung low, and would have swung from side to side, giving such passengers as were “bad sailors” a fit of nausea.
The English-designed coaches of this time, though without glass windows, were almost completely enclosed, and, compared with the new chariots, which were just upon making their appearance, of a huge size. In many of them three people could sit abreast, and seven or eight find room for themselves. In 1641 when Charles I passed through London on his return from Scotland, his was the only coach in the royal procession, but seven people, including His Majesty, were driving, apparently in comfort, within it.
The Commonwealth produced no new carriage, although isolated experiments were already being made. Cromwell himself was wont to drive his own coach and six “for recreation-sake” in Hyde Park, then as now a fashionable resort.
“When my Lord Protector’s coach,” wrote Misson, a Frenchman then on a visit to England, “came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby and my Lord’s three daughters, the coaches and horses flocked about them like some miracle. But they galloped (after the mode court-pace now) round and round the Park, and all that great multitude hunted them and caught them still at the turn like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste for them, and so after them again, and I never saw the like in my life.”
Cromwell’s desire to play coachman once led to an accident which might have been serious. The particulars are given in a letter from the Dutch Ambassador to the States-General, dated October 16th, 1654:—
“His Highness, only accompanied with secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the air in Hyde Park, when he caused some dishes of meat to be brought, when he had his dinner; and afterwards had a mind to drive the coach himself. Having put only the secretary into it,” he whipped up “those six grey horses, which the Count of Oldenburgh had presented unto His Highness, who drove pretty handsomely for some time. But at last, provoking these horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly and ran so fast that the postillion could not hold them in, whereby His Highness was flung out of the coach upon the pole.... The secretary’s ankle was hurt leaping out, and he keeps his chamber.”