Such a reformation in vehicular traffic has taken place in Hyde Park in the first years of the twentieth century, that it seems worth tracing roughly the means of progression from the Roman car of two thousand years ago to the electric landaulette of to-day, and from the pack-horse to the snorting motor cycles.

Practically, every surviving method of locomotion has heralded its earliest votaries within the precincts of the Park, where the foot-propelled “hobby-horse” proved the forerunner of the bicycle. The first two-cylinder motors were tried—little cars which have since developed into the huge travelling cars almost like railway carriages themselves.

It is amusing to watch the disappearance from the roads of our dear old wooden box on wheels,—politely called an omnibus—besmirched by advertisements until its destination is difficult to decipher. The horse omnibus has been largely superseded by the motor bus,—still in its infancy, judging by its breakdowns, its noises, and its smells,—and the lumbering carts of former years are giving place to whole trains of rattling vans headed by a puffing engine, which parade our streets to the misery of those on foot, and the positive terror of the aged and the young.

Under the rule of the Anglo-Saxons, horsemanship was a skilled art. The youthful noble was bold in war and fleet in chase.

Horses were used for travel by the upper classes, while the lower orders journeyed on foot. A representation of two Saxon travellers, which occurs in the Cotton MSS., shows the lady sitting sideways in a kind of chair with her feet resting on a board, very similar to the arrangement adapted in later years for the lady riding pillion fashion, and still in use in Iceland and Ireland. It was a position which prevented the poor woman acquiring any power over her steed, or even feeling secure in her seat, yet it is repeatedly seen in illuminated manuscripts of the period.

The Saxons also had chariots for travelling, but they were only used by the wealthy, and together with agricultural carts were termed “wœgn” or “wœn” (from which words our “waggon” is derived) and “crat” or “cræt,” hence our word “cart.” These chariots which are represented as a square box, the shape of our ordinary farm cart, without any front, were hung low on two wheels, and drawn by a couple of horses. There is another drawing of one with four wheels, but neither vehicle was used except by grand ladies or invalids, and horses were not even acquired by Church dignitaries in those early days.

How quaint it would be to see one of these curious old waggons being led through Hyde Park to-day, and how amazing for those people of the past to see a carriage moving without a horse.

Towards the end of the Saxon period, the influence of Normandy permeated the English Court, and a great love of display spread among the nobles, who, from the time of Edmund Ironsides, gradually adopted Continental customs, entirely unknown in the Courts of the early Saxons.

With the Normans came the age of chivalry. Costly apparel and huge retinues did much to increase the state of the noble. In time of war the tenants-in-capite and the tenants paravail had each to produce a certain number of armed men, according to his rank, and thus the great lord had the means at his hand not only to summon a troop in case of need, but also a courtly retinue in time of pleasure or grand ceremonial.

The custom of travelling with an army of retainers had other justification than that of mere display. In the days of the early Plantagenets the King’s highway was infested with robbers; not the wild highwaymen of later days, but oft-times a princely youth, who, from the fastness of his castle-home, dashed out to scour the country round, seeking what he might confiscate, and woe to the hapless traveller pursuing his lonely journey. Two other classes of robbers were comprised of outlaws driven to despair by the cruel forest laws, and the bands of men returned from the Crusades, who had originally sold their belongings in order to join the holy war, and had come back penniless.

The horse-litter was also in use. In fact, it seems to have come down from untold ages, for it is mentioned in the Book of Isaiah, and was evidently introduced from the south, probably brought to England by some of the Crusaders. It consisted of a kind of coach slung between two horses, and was chiefly employed for carrying the sick and aged, and on State journeys or at funerals. Professor Markland, writing in 1821, says: “In Sicily there is no way of travelling through mountain passes but in a ‘legia.’” However, that must have died out, for in 1904, when travelling all over Sicily, I never saw a single one of these palanquins, and we just used horses when we could not drive.

Ladies generally rode on mules. They accompanied their lords on many of their hunting expeditions, and joined in their pursuits in the Norman and Plantagenet periods. The greyhound was a favourite dog amongst them. It is evident, too, that women went out hunting on their own account, and on these occasions they adopted the custom of riding astride; as the chair arrangement rigged up on one side was anything but safe. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, gives a reproduction of an illumination from an early fourteenth-century MS., where a lady is represented riding crossways, winding the horn and pursuing game, while another is shooting with a bow and arrow. Women are reported to have been more versed in falconry than their lords, although they generally followed this sport on foot, and chiefly sought waterfowl.

As is well known, side saddles were only introduced into England by Anne of Bohemia. Now we are reverting to the cross saddle for women used by our forbears.

An outcome of the Crusades was the introduction of Arab steeds. Normandy itself was also famous for a splendid breed of horses. The greatest mark of appreciation known was to present a Normandy horse, and the most tempting form of bribe was the gift of a prancing Arab palfrey or noble charger. King John accepted horses in exchange for grants of land, and in payment of feudal rights. At that time, and in the reign of Edward I., the price of horses ranged from one to ten pounds. The animals were richly caparisoned, and wore bells—sometimes numbering several hundreds—on their harness, and particularly on the bridle. In fact, the trappings were often worth more than the steed, just as is the case on the ranches of Mexico to-day, where the value of the Mexican saddle is probably ten times that of the horse.

Whips were used by ladies and the lower orders, but the nobles relied entirely upon the spur.

During the fourteenth century horseback was still the favourite means of getting about, although there were vehicles on wheels known under the names of “chares,” “cars,” “chariots,” “caroches,” and “whirlicotes.” The roads until Elizabeth’s time were of almost inconceivable badness.

The mother of Richard II. is recorded as using a “chare” and a “whirlicote,” when in the disturbances of 1381 she had to travel from place to place, and on account of her age she was thus accommodated; but Stow remarks that the introduction of the side-saddle by Anne of Bohemia was displacing the whirlicote except on State and ceremonial occasions. Anne granted forty shillings a year to her “pourvoioir de noz chariettes.” But such “chariettes” were merely cumbersome waggons to which strong horses were attached. Priests rode at the head of troops and at pageants, and were some of the greatest equestrians of the age; the monks from Westminster enjoyed many a gallop in Hyde Park.

It was a bad time for wayfarers, this of the Middle Ages. Accommodation was lacking, provisions were scarce, and often they were overtaken by nightfall with no hostelry of any kind at hand. Travelling itself was dangerous in the turbulent state of the country, and, in fact, the highways were considered so unsafe that in 1285 a law was passed, enacting that all shrubs and trees were to be cut down for two hundred feet from the roadside between market towns, to allow no cover for robbers. People journeying along the same road had a custom of joining together in order to form a party of sufficient strength to defy attack, as Chaucer describes in the Canterbury Tales. To those who could not afford a horse the danger was tenfold. If encumbered with baggage or their family, the men often took a mule to carry their packages or give their wives and children a rest.

Little bands of travellers were made up in the City of London, and started in company through the wilds of Tyburn to reach Oxford, or some of the northern towns. Such caravans continually passed along the Bayswater Road or Knightsbridge.

It is difficult to realise what these journeys meant, when every necessary or comfort the wayfarer required had to be carried on his shoulders, or borne in his pack. The modern match was represented by flint and steel; money was often in specie or in kind. The wretched traveller must take food for several days, or go provided with bow and arrow, spear and cooking utensils, to kill and cook his food, or else eat it raw. Materials for a bed had to be carried if he would have one, and a tent if he objected to sleeping in the open. But these evils were often mitigated by the kindly hospitality in the age of chivalry, and which extended into the fifteenth century.

Rough waggons came more into use, but the pack-horse long remained the chief mode of conveyance. Illustrations of the time show a cart resembling our present miller’s van in shape, drawn by two horses tandem-fashion, but led, not driven. Large trains of attendants were more than ever in request, for robbery became worse than before.

In the Earl of Northumberland’s Household Book an account is given of his moving his possessions from place to place; for in the olden days habitations, if a man possessed more than one, were not furnished, and not only personal effects had to be transferred, but beds and tables as well.

Even kings when going from one place to another took their furniture. The most wonderful thing is how dexterously these removals were accomplished, especially at the French Court, which, at the time of Catharine de Medici and subsequently, was ever on the move, travelling between Paris and the many castles on the Loire. The coach (really a room on wheels) was for the use of the King and Queen, and other conveyances, numbering a hundred or more, followed in the wake.

Many records survive from the Tudor period of State ceremonials in which the old horse-litter played a conspicuous part. Catharine of Arragon entered London in one of these, when she came to England to wed Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII., who died soon after the marriage. There are so many people in England who remember the magnificent, and withal comfortable, processions for the marriage festivities of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, the Jubilee processions of Queen Victoria, and the Coronation of our reigning Monarch and his Consort, that the following entries of arrangements for the reception of Princess Catharine four hundred years ago, made in the Duke of Northumberland’s Household Book, may be of interest as a contrast:

At Catharine’s Coronation with Henry VIII., “chariots covered, with ladies therein,” followed her litter; and when Anne Boleyn came to London she made a State entry in a most wonderful litter ornamented with the richest materials.

When Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., went to Scotland, whose King James IV. she married, she was conveyed “on varey rich litere, borne by two fair coursers vary nobly drest, in the wich litere the sayd queene was borne in the intryng of townes, or otherways to her good playsure.”

Can one imagine anything more horrible than being swung about in a litter for weeks as that poor woman was on her journey from London to Scotland? The bumps and shakes, the discomfort of the cramped position, seem terrible to think of in these days of Pulman cars, restaurants, and quick trains.

By the middle of the sixteenth century riding pillion fashion was again much in vogue, the lady sitting behind the gentleman, in a kind of chair similar to that used by the Anglo-Saxon dames. They called the board for their feet a “planchette.”

Queen Mary Tudor went from the Tower to Westminster at her Coronation “sitting in a chariot of cloth of tissue drawn with six horses,” followed by another chariot “with cloth of silver” and six horses, in which sat Anne of Cleves and the Princess Elizabeth. Great Queen Bess, when it came to her turn to be crowned, also used a chariot for her State procession to the Abbey.

The coach is said to have been introduced in 1564 by Boonen, a Dutch coachman employed by Queen Elizabeth, who enjoyed her first drives and the pleasures of her new possession in London’s spacious parks. These equipages were almost too gorgeous for description. The Queen seems to have employed them at times in her different progresses and for her State entries, but her chief mode of locomotion was riding on horseback. This was undoubtedly on account of the dreadful state of the roads, which rendered impossible the common use of the coach in the country for some years. In fact, in London itself, the streets were so narrow, so ill-kept, and so uneven, that it was a very jolting business to drive at all.

Elizabeth’s coach was generally drawn by two white horses, was gaudily decorated, and had a canopy, but was open at the sides. The driver sat on a kind of narrow chair close behind the horses, and rather low down. The Queen liked to be the only lady in the land to ride in such a vehicle, and her jealousy was so aroused when the ladies of London thought to follow suit, that she became irate, and actually passed a law “to restrain the excessive use of coaches.” In spite of this legislation and the bad state of the roads, so many people ordered these equipages that there was soon an actual dearth of leather to cover them, just as there is scarcity of rubber for tyres of motors to-day.

D’Avenant, writing of the gay Metropolis at this time, says: “Surely your ancestors contrived your narrow streets in the days of the wheelbarrow, before the greater engines, carts, were invented.” Mary Queen of Scots, unlike Elizabeth, seems to have ridden on all her journeys.

The first public vehicles were, according to Stow, started in 1564, and were called “caravans.” Forty years later, one of these was running between London and Canterbury, and a patent was granted to a man to run a stage-coach on the little trip between Edinburgh and Leith.

The reign of James I. also saw the pioneer hackney coach in London. A few years afterwards the first “rank” was established, when a Captain Baily acquired four hackney coaches and made them stand at the Maypole (near St. Mary’s in the Strand) for hire. Skeats derives the word “hackney” from two Dutch words, meaning a “jolting nag”—the old way of spelling it was “hacquenée.” The coachman rode his horse, postillion fashion, and used whip and spurs. There was constant rivalry between the chairmen of the sedans and coachmen of that age, and good-humoured chaff and jeers were bandied from one to another as freely as between the omnibus drivers and chauffeurs of motor cars to-day.

Many transformations have taken place since the first hackney carriage plied for hire in 1615 and the advent of the first public motor cab at Hyde Park Corner in 1906. It was several months before the first handful of these were augmented by an addition of five hundred, with the pleasing joys of the taximeter.

The next novelty for getting about was the sedan-chair.

On the return of Prince Charles (aferwards Charles I.) from the Court of Spain, he brought four back with him, and gave one to the Duke of Buckingham, “his dear Steenie,” who was hooted when he appeared in it in the streets. The chairs were very unpopular, as the people objected to see men employed as beasts of burden. However, when it was understood that letting them on hire might prove profitable, they were at once adopted.

Oddly enough, the streets of the old Moorish town of Tangier to-day resemble London of the sixteenth century. That is to say, they are so narrow, so badly paved, so weird, that no vehicle can drive through them. Therefore anyone, who can afford a beast of any kind, rides. Only the very poorest are on foot, and there the sedan-chair still survives.

Going out to dinner in evening-dress on horseback is somewhat disarranging to a woman; therefore one is carried in this fashion. Well do I remember, in 1898, four terrible-looking Jews arriving in the hall of the hotel, and bidding me enter a chair. I did, and shaking and wobbling from side to side was borne out to a dinner-party. No Mohammedan would lower himself to carry a Christian, and Jews therefore perform the office—nice, cut-throat-looking villains they appear, too. The office of chairman is looked upon as infra dig., just as it was in London in the seventeenth century. There are only three or four sedan-chairs in Tangier, and consequently, on party-nights they are in much demand, and some of the guests arrive too early and some too late, for all the women have to be borne to their destination by such means.

A patent was granted to Sir Sanders Duncombe in 1634, extending over fourteen years, for letting sedan chairs out on hire, and the preamble states that it was for the purpose of lessening the danger of the streets which were so “encumbered and pestered” with the coaches of the day. Before the end of the century these chairs were looked upon as an absolute necessity. Ladies shopped in them, called on their friends, went to parties, to theatres—in fact, they were quite the fashion, and held their own for many years to come.

In the reign of James I. the nobility alone were allowed to drive four horses, so the Duke of Buckingham, ever ready to outdo everyone else in the matter of fashion and up-to-dateness, started a coach-and-six, but such was the extravagant rivalry of the age that the Duke of Northumberland shortly afterwards drove a coach-and-eight. It is said that in the neighbourhood of London in 1638 six thousand coaches were kept.

As coaches denoted exalted rank, everyone naturally wanted to drive one. But, alas! the twentieth century has sounded their knell. Those delightful meets held in the summer months at the Magazine in Hyde Park, when the Four-in-Hand and Coaching Club muster twenty or thirty coaches each time, drive round the Park, then off to Hurlingham or Ranelagh to lunch, are coming to an end. Motors are hustling coaches off the road, and already the two famous Polo Clubs outside London are instituting automobile races and shows, because the entries for the coaches have dwindled so terribly, while for the former they have gone up by bounds in a few years. Horses are already threatened.

From the time of their introduction, private coaches were richly caparisoned. Among the State papers there is a queer old record against May Day, 1637, of three accounts:

One is of £1326, 1s. 8d. for gold and silk laces and fringes delivered for the King’s service in the stables in 1633; another for £374, 12s. 11d. for gold and silver fringe for making a “caroch” for the Queen “against May Day, 1636”; and a third account of £168, 7s. 8d. for suits and cloaks for the footmen, coachmen, and postillions of the Queen “against May Day.”

As the coaches gained favour the horse-litter gradually died out. When Queen Henrietta Maria’s mother came from France to visit her in 1638, she entered London in a litter embroidered with gold and borne by two mules, but her journey from Harwich had been accomplished by coach. Evelyn also says that he used one in 1640, when he took his aged father from Bath to Wootton. There is one more mention of the litter in Charles II.’s reign, but with so many wheeled vehicles coming into daily use, no wonder this means of locomotion ceased.

However, the coaches did not altogether bring joy to the traveller. Evelyn, in his Character of England, published in 1659, is full of indignation at the reception the coach riders endured at the hands of the populace.

By the middle of the seventeenth century a regular system of stage-coaches seems to have been installed. In 1661 the journey between London and Oxford occupied two whole days.

A coach called “The Flying Dutchman” was also put upon the road, which accomplished the journey in thirteen hours, but for some reason or other, we find that in 1692 the distance again occupied two days. In 1682 the trip between London and Nottingham required four days in winter.

These coaches were probably uncovered, and had projections at the sides known as the boot, in which the passengers sat with their backs to the carriage. A coach with four horses carried six travellers; the caravan with four or five horses took twenty-five. The coachman sometimes drove and sometimes rode as postillion. The fare from London to Exeter, Chester, or York was 40s. in summer, 45s. in winter, and the journey took eight days in summer and twelve in winter. Therefore stage-coaches were beyond the reach of the poor.

Coaches still run between London and Oxford, and in the summer people clamour for places for this lovely drive of fifty-two miles, now accomplished in a few hours, through some quaint old villages and pretty lanes.

There is nothing more pleasing to the artistic eye, or more interesting to the historian, than a driving tour through rural England. Our villages are unique. We welcome motors as a means of getting about, but are glad an enterprising young American is going to try and revive London coaching in our midst. It is, of course, still popular in Devon, Cornwall, the Lakes, and Scotland; in the country districts, in fact, for summer tourists.

I have included here a reproduction of the card of one of the public coaches running out of London in 1906, for it promises soon to have an antiquarian interest. Every summer morning for years past these coaches have left Piccadilly, and lately, Northumberland Avenue, for Brighton, Dorking, Windsor, and elsewhere. Now the motor is killing all that, and in a year or two, probably, the last surviving opportunity of coaching into the country will be gone. These old cards seem therefore worth preserving.

THE OLD ESTABLISHED

Dorking Coach

“PERSEVERANCE,”

Leaves HOTEL METROPOLE, Northumberland Avenue,
At 10.30 a.m.

AND

Returns from the WHITE HORSE HOTEL, DORKING,

At 3.15 p.m.

EVERY DAY (Sundays excepted).

* Change Horses.

Return Fare, 15s. Single, 10s. Box Seat, 2s. 6d. extra each way.

The whole of the Coach to Boxhill or Dorking and back, £8, 8s.

Places can be secured at the Coach Office,

Cigar Department, Hotel Metropole, Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross.

The “VENTURE”

WINDSOR and LONDON COACH,

WILL LEAVE THE

HOTEL METROPOLE, CHARING CROSS,
at 10.45 a.m. calling at the Grand Hotel,

Viâ Putney, Wimbledom Common, Kingston, Hampton Court, Sunbury, and Staines, returning from

The WHITE HART HOTEL, WINDSOR,

AT 3.50 P.M.

EVERY DAY (Sundays included).

* Change Horses here.

Windsor and back, 17/6. Single Fare, 12/6. Box Seat, 2/6 extra each way.

Seats can be booked in advance at the Wine and Cigar Department, Hotel Metropole, or at the “White Hart Hotel,” Windsor.

PARCELS CARRIED AND PUNCTUALLY DELIVERED.

For further particulars apply to Wine and Cigar Department, Hotel Metropole.

The whole of Coach to Windsor and back, £10, 10s.

The “VIVID”

HAMPTON COURT AND LONDON COACH

LEAVES THE

HOTEL METROPOLE, CHARING CROSS,

At 11.30 a.m., and 12 on SUNDAYS,

CALLING AT THE GRAND HOTEL,

Viâ Hammersmith, East Sheen, Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington, and returns from the

THAMES HOTEL, HAMPTON COURT,

at 4.30 p.m.

EVERY DAY (Sundays included).

* Change Horses here.

Seats can be booked at the Wine and Cigar Department, Hotel Metropole, and Thames Hotel, Hampton Court.

Hampton Court and back, 10/6. Box Seat, 2/6 extra each way.

For further particulars apply to Wine and Cigar Department, Hotel Metropole.

This Coach attends all Suburban Race Meetings, leaving the Hotel Metropole Two Hours and a Half before the First Race.

Count de Grammont gave Charles II. a calash as a present, which cost him two thousand guineas; it put every other vehicle in the shade by its elegance. The Queen and the Duchess of York first drove in it in the Park. Then began a terrible rivalry between Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stewart as to which of them should take precedence in the use of the new toy. The beautiful equipage became a source of squabble and contention at Court, and finally Miss Stewart was given the honour. She may have enjoyed the drive, but did she enjoy the jealousy it awoke?

We hear much of “dust” in these motoring days, and many experiments have been tried to lay it. Motorists need never despair, though the problem is at least two and a half centuries old. Lying in the Public Record Office is a warrant issued in 1664 to James Hamilton, the Chief Ranger of Hyde Park, “to water the passage from the gate to where the coaches resort in the Park, to avoid the annoyance of dust, much complained of, the expense to be borne by the charge of 6d. on each coach; and to prevent all horses coming into the Park except such as have gentlemen or livery servants on them, as they cause much dust.”

Pepys apparently suffered with the others, and all through the eighteenth century the favourite sneer of the Press at Hyde Park was that people went to “take the dust” there, not the air. For many years a barrel of water used to be placed in a cart, and when it arrived at the right place, the tap was turned, allowing a single stream to descend to the ground. Even our water-carts, that leave the streets covered with puddles, to the detriment of all light and dainty skirts on a lovely summer’s day, are an improvement on this, and Hyde Park has its own carts, stationed in the Store Yard at the back of the Royal Humane Society’s Lodge.

In a quaint paper in the Harleian Miscellany (vol. viii. page 561), written by one who signed himself “A Lover of His Country” (1673), there is a long protest against the annoyances of the streets: