When the court made those excursions, which were called Progresses, to the seats of the nobility and gentry, waggons and other carriages were impressed for the purpose of conveying the king's baggage, &c.—Pegge.
This privilege in the crown was continued until the civil wars in the reign of Charles the First, and had been exercised in a manner very oppressive to the subject, insomuch that it frequently became the object of Parliamentary complaint and regulation. During the suspension of monarchy it fell into disuse, and King Charles II at the Restoration consented, for a consideration, to relinquish this as well as all other powers of purveyance and pre-emption. Accordingly, by stat. 12, Car. II. c. xxiv. s. 12, it was declared that no officer should in future take any cart, carriage, or other thing, nor summon or require any person to furnish any horses, oxen, or other cattle, carts, ploughs, wains, or other carriages, for any of the royal family, without the full consent of the owner. An alteration of this act was made the next year, wherein the rates were fixed which should be paid on these occasions, and other regulations were made for preventing the abuse of this prerogative.
[276] A burlesque on the speech of Hieronimo in "The Spanish Tragedy." See also note to "Green's Tu quoque," and the addition to it [xi. 248.]
[277] i.e., Towards bedtime. So in "Coriolanus"—
"And tapers burn'd to bedward."
—Steevens.
[278] Pounded. See note to "The Ordinary," act v. sc. 4, [vol. xii.]
[279] [Edits., appear speck and span gentlemen.] Speck and span new is a phrase not yet out of use; span new occurs in Chaucer's "Troilus and Creseide," bk. iii. l. 1671—
"This tale was aie span newe to beginne,
Til that the night departed 'hem at winne."
This is thought a phrase of some difficulty. It occurs in Fuller's "Worthies," Herefordshire, p. 40, where we read of spick and span new money. A late friend of mine was willing to deduce it from spinning, as if it were a phrase borrowed from the clothing art, quasi new spun from the spike or brooche. It is here written speck and span, and in all cases means entire. I deem it tantamount to every speck and every span, i.e., all over.—Pegge.