The illustration is copied from a drawing which occurs in a manuscript in the British Museum (Harl. 5256).
Froissart speaks of the English returning “in their charettes” from Scotland after Edward III.’s invasion of that country, about 1360; but there is little doubt that the vehicles referred to were merely the baggage carts which accompanied the army used by the footsore and fatigued soldiers.
HORSE LITTER USED A.D. 1400-1500.
The same chronicler refers to use of the “chare” or horse-litter in connection with Wat Tyler’s insurrection in the year 1380:—
“The same day that these unhappy people of Kent were coming to London, there returned from Canterbury the King’s mother, Princess of Wales, coming from her pilgrimage. She was in great jeopardy to have been lost, for these people came to her chare and dealt rudely with her.”
As the chronicler states that the “good lady” came in one day from Canterbury to London, “for she never durst tarry by the way,” it is evident that the chare was a “horse-litter,” the distance exceeding sixty miles.
The introduction of side-saddles by Anne of Bohemia, Richard II.’s Queen, is said by Stow to have thrown such conveyances into disuse: “So was the riding in those whirlicotes and chariots forsaken except at coronations and such like spectacles:” but when the whirlicote or horse-litter was employed for ceremonial occasions it was a thing of great magnificence.