Feb.
There was ‘meikle snaw in all parts; mony deer and roes slain.’—C. F.
1562. Apr.
The queen was at St Andrews, inquiring into a conspiracy of which the Duke of Chatelherault and the Earl of Bothwell had been accused by the Duke’s son, the Earl of Arran. In the midst of the affair, Arran proved to be ‘phrenetick.’ On the 4th of May, ‘my Lords Arran, Bothwell, and the Commendator of Kilwinning came fra St Andrews to the burgh of Edinburgh in this manner; that is to say, my Lord Arran was convoyit in the queen’s grace’s coach, because of the phrenesy aforesaid, and the Earl of Bothwell and my Lord Commendator of Kilwinning rade, convoyit with twenty-four horsemen, whereof was principal Captain Stewart, captain of the queen’s guard.’—D. O.
1562.
This is not the first notice of a travelling vehicle that occurs in our national domestic history. Several payments in connection with a chariot belonging to the late Queen Mary de Guise, so early as 1538, occur in the lord-treasurer’s books.[19] It is not, however, likely that either the chariot of the one queen or the coach of the other was a wheeled vehicle, as, if we may trust to an authority about to be quoted, such a convenience was as yet unknown even in England.
‘In the year 1564, Guilliam Boonen, a Dutchman, became the queen’s coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. And after a while, divers great ladies, with as great jealousy of the queen’s displeasure, made them coaches, and rid in them up and down the countries, to the great admiration of all the beholders; but then, by little and little, they grew usual among the nobility and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking.
‘And about that time began long waggons to come in use, such as now come to London from Canterbury, Norwich, Ipswich, Gloucester, &c., with passengers and commodities. Lastly, even at this time (1605) began the ordinary use of carouches.’—Howes’s Chronicle.