| “To-morrow ye shall on hunting fare And ride, my daughter, in a chare. It shall be cover’d with velvet red, And cloth of fine gold all about your head, With damask white and azure blue Well diaper’d with lilies new.” |
Chaucer himself describes a chare as
“With gold wrought and pierrie.”
When Richard II. of England, towards the end of the 14th century, was obliged to fly before his rebellious subjects, he and all his followers were on horseback, while his mother alone used a carriage. The oldest carriages used in England were known as chares, cars, chariots, caroches and whirlicotes; but these became less fashionable when Ann, the wife of Riehard II., showed the English ladies how gracefully she could ride on the side-saddle, Stow, in his Survey of London, remarking, “so was riding in those whirlicotes and chariots forsaken except at coronations and such like spectacles.”
There were curious sumptuary laws enacted during the 16th century in various Italian cities against the excessive use of silk, velvet, embroidery and gilding, on the coverings of coaches and the trappings of horses. In 1564 Pope Pius IV. exhorted the cardinals and bishops not to ride in coaches, according to the fashion of the times, but to leave such things to women, and themselves ride on horseback. The use of coaches in Germany in the 16th century was not less common than in Italy. The current of trade, especially from the East, had for a long time poured into those two countries towards Holland, enriching all the cities in its progress. Macpherson, in his History of Commerce, says that Antwerp possessed 500 coaches in 1560. France and England appear to have been behind the rest of Europe at this period.
The first coach in England was made in 1555 for the earl of Rutland by Walter Rippon, who also made a coach in 1556 for Queen Mary, and in 1564 a state coach for Queen Elizabeth. That one of the carriages used by Queen Elizabeth could be opened and closed at pleasure may be inferred from her causing at Warwick during one of her progresses—“every part and side of her coach to be opened that all her subjects present might behold her, which most gladly they desired.”
Coaches of the type now properly so-called were first known in England about the year 1580, and were introduced, according to Stow, from Germany by Henry Fitzalan, 12th earl of Arundel. By the beginning of the 17th century the use of coaches had become so prevalent in England that in 1601 the attention of parliament was drawn to the subject, and a bill “to restrain the excessive use of coaches” was introduced, which, however, was rejected on the second reading. Their use told severely on the occupation of the Thames watermen, and Taylor the poet and waterman complained bitterly both in prose and verse against the new-fangled practice:—
| “Carroaches, coaches, jades, and Flanders mares Doe rob us of our shares, our wares, our fares. Against the ground we stand and knock our heels Whilest all our profit runs away on wheeles.” |
The sneers of wits and watermen notwithstanding, coaches became so common, that in the early part of the 17th century they were estimated to number more than 6000 in London and its surrounding country.