Sir W. Petty’s assertion that the splendour of coaches increased greatly during the Stuart period recalls a passage in Kennett’s History of England. George Villiers, the great favourite of James I. who created him Duke of Buckingham, had six horses to draw his coach (“which was wondered at then as a novelty and imputed to him as a mast’ring pride”). The “stout old Earl of Northumberland,” not to be outdone by the upstart favourite, “thought if Buckingham had six, he might very well have eight in his coach, with which he rode through the city of London to the Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.” The first coaches were drawn by two horses only; love of display led to the use of more for town use, but the deplorable condition of the country roads justified the use of as many as quagmires might compel.
How much a coach weighed in these early days we do not know: Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, writing in 1817, says, “now travelling carriages frequently weigh above a ton;” and as carriages had undergone vast improvements by that date, we are justified in concluding that those of a hundred or a hundred and fifty years earlier weighed a great deal more.
CARRIAGES IN HYDE PARK.
During the Commonwealth (1649-1659), it was the fashion to drive in “the Ring” in Hyde Park. The Ring is described by a French writer,[7] as two or three hundred paces in diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade consisting of poles placed on stakes three feet from the ground; round this the people used to drive, in Cromwell’s time, at great speed, as appears from a letter dated May 2, 1654, from a gentleman in London to a country friend, quoted by Mr. Jacob Larwood in his Story of the London Parks, (1872):—
[7] M. Misson. Memoirs and Observations of a Journey in England, 1697.
“When my Lord Protector’s coach 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, and which they all use wherever they go) 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,[8] and I never saw the like in my life.”
[8] The following sentence from Misson explains this reference. He says of the way people drive in the Ring: “When they have turned for some time round one way they face about and turn the other.”
There is an interesting letter from the Dutch Ambassadors to the States General, dated October 16, 1654, which is worth quoting here. The Ambassadors give particulars of the accident to explain why no business has been done lately:—
“His Highness [Oliver Cromwell], only accompanied with Secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the air in Hyde Park, where he caused some dishes of meat to be brought, where he had his dinner; and afterwards had a mind to drive the coach himself. Having put only the Secretary into it, being those six grey horses which the Count of Oldenburgh[9] 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 postilion could not hold them in, whereby His Highness was flung out of the coach box upon the pole.... The Secretary’s ankle was hurt leaping out and he keeps his chamber.”