Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/147

carriages seern more and more to have become appendages of Roman pomp and magnificence. Sumptuary laws were enacted on account of the public extravagance, but they were little regarded, and were altogether abrogated by the emperor Severus. Suetonius states that Nero took with

him on his travels no less than a thousand carriages.

On the introduction of the feudal system the use of carriages was for some time prohibited, as tending to render the vassals less fit for military service. Men of all grades and professions rode on horses or mules, and sometimes the monks and women on she-asses. Horseback was the general mode of travelling ; and hence the members of the council, who at the diet and on other occasions were employed as ambassadors, were called rittmeister. In this manner also great lords made their public entry into cities.

Covered carriages were known in the beginning of the 16th century, but their use was confined to ladies of the first rank ; and as it was accounted a reproach for men to ride in them, the electors and princes sometimes excused their non-attendance at meetings of the state by the plea that their health would not permit them to ride on horseback. Covered carriages were for a long time forbidden even to women ; but about the end of the 15th century they began to be employed by the emperor, kings, and princes, in journeys, and afterwards on state occasions. In 1474 the Emperor Frederick III. visited Frankfort in a close carriage, and again in the following year in a very magni ficent covered carriage. Shortly afterwards carriages began to be splendidly decorated ; that, for instance, of the electress of Brandenburg at the tournament held at Ruppin in 1509 was gilded all over, and that of the duchess of Meck lenburg was hung with red satin. When Cardinal Dietrich- stein made his entrance into Vienna in 1611, forty carriages went to meet him ; and in the same year the consort of the Emperor Matthias made her public entrance on her marriage in a carriage covered with perfumed leather. The wedding carriage of the first wife of the Emperor Leopold, who was a Spanish princess, cost, together with the harness, 38,000 florins. Those of the emperor are thus described : " In the imperial coaches no great magnificence svas to be seen ; they were covered over with red cloth and black nails. The harness was black, and in the whole work there was no gold. The panels were of glass, and on this account they were called the imperial glass coaches. On festivals the harness was ornamented with red silk fringes. The imperial coaches were distinguished only by their having leather traces ; but the ladies in the imperial suite were obliged to be contented w r ith carriages the traces of which were made of ropes." At the magnificent court of Duke Ernest Augustus at Hanover, in 1681, there were fifty gilt coaches with six horses each. The first time that ambassadors appeared in coaches on a public solemnity was at the imperial commission held at Erfurt in 1613. Soon after this time coaches became common all over Ger many, notwithstanding various orders and admonitions to deter vassals from using them. These vehicles appear to have been of very rude construction. Beckmann describes a view he had seen of Bremen, painted by John Landwehr in 1661, in which was represented a long quadrangular carriage, apparently not suspended by straps, and covered with a canopy supported by four pillars, but without cur tains. In the side was a small door, and in front a low seat or box ; the coachman sat upon the horses ; and the dress of the persons within proved them to be burgomasters. At Paris in the 14th, 15th, and even 16th centuries, the French monarchs rode commonly on horses, the servants of the court on mules, and the princesses and principal ladies sometimes on asses. Persons even of the highest rank some times sat behind their equerry on the same horse. Carriages, however, were used at a very early period in France ; for there is still extant an ordinance of Philip the Fair, issued in 1294, by which citizens wives are prohibited from using them. It appears, however, that about 1550 there were only three carriages at Paris, one belonging to the queen, another to Diana of Poitiers, and the third to Rene de Laval, a very corpulent nobleman who was unable to ride on horseback. The coaches used in the time of Henry IV. were not suspended by straps (an improvement referred to the time of Louis XIV.), though they were provided with a canopy supported by four ornamental pillars, and with curtains of stuff or leather.

Occasional allusion is made to the use of some kinds of vehicles in England during the Middle Ages. In The Squyr of Low Degree, a poem of a period anterior to Chaucer, a description of a sumptuous carriage occurs :

"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 Richard 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." The same writer states that in the year 1564 Guilliam Boonen, a Dutch man, became the queen s coachman, and was the first that brought the use of coaches into England. Although Stow is incorrect in thus attributing the introduction of coaches to the time of Elizabeth, there is no doubt that at the period he indicates, the use of wheeled vehicles began to be so common that it then became a prominent public fact. " Little by little," he again states, " they became usual among the nobilitie and others of sort, and within twenty years became a great trade of coachmaking." By the beginning of the 17th century the use of coaches had become so prevalent that in 1601 the attention of Parlia ment 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.

Vehicles plying for public convenience, we have seen,

were in existence during the period of the Roman empire, and concurrently with the renewal of carriage locomotion in the 16th century, public carriages were again re established. Hackney coaches were first introduced in France during the minority of Louis XIV. by one Nicolas Sauvage, who lived at the sign of Saint Fiacre in the Rue St Martin, and hence hired carriages came to be called

fiacres, though eventually the name was restricted to such..