before."*[3]

Such coaches were at first only used on state occasions.
The roads, even in the immediate neighbourhood of London, were so
bad and so narrow that the vehicles could not be taken into the
country. But, as the roads became improved, the fashion of using
them spread. When the aristocracy removed from the City to the
western parts of the metropolis, they could be better accommodated,
and in course of time they became gradually adopted. They were
still, however, neither more nor less than waggons, and, indeed,
were called by that name; but wherever they went they excited great
wonder. It is related of "that valyant knyght Sir Harry Sidney,"
that on a certain day in the year 1583 he entered Shrewsbury in his
waggon, "with his Trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and
see."*[4]

From this time the use of coaches gradually spread, more
particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters
which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and
others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback.
The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable
roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the
ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.
That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of
Taylor, the water-poet--who deplored the introduction of carriages
as a national calamity--that in the paved streets of London men and
women were "tossed, tumbled, rumbled, and jumbled about in them."
Although the road from London to Dover, along the old Roman
Watling-street, was then one of the best in England, the French
household of Queen Henrietta, when they were sent forth from