THE COACir-HORSE. 



95 



times exhibit his share of scars. One of them, twenty-seven years old, 

 lately died at Stangleton Lodge, near Bedford, that had belonged to one 

 of the regiments of lancers, and was in the battle of Waterloo, and the 

 engagements of the two days that preceded it. I^o fewer than eight mns- 

 ket-balls were discovered in him after his death, and the scars of several 

 Avonnds by the sabre and the lance. 



A horse died at Snowhill, near Gainsford, in 1753, that had been in 

 General Carpenter's regiment at the battle of Shirreff-Muir, in 1715, being 

 at that time seven years old. He was Avounded by a bullet in his neck in 

 that eno-ag-ement, and this bullet was extracted after his death, 



THE COACH-HORSE. 



This animal in external appearance is as different from what he was 

 fifty years ago as it is possible to conceive. The clnmsy-barrelled, cloddy- 

 shouldered, round-legged, black family horse — neither a coach nor a dray- 

 horse, but something between both — as fat as an ox — but, with all his 

 pride and prancing when he first starts, not equal to more than six miles 

 an hour, and knocking-up with one hard day's work, is no more seen 



THE fOACH-IIORSE. 



He indeed was quite in keeping with the vehicle he had to draw in olden 

 times. Wheel carriages, bearing any resemblance to chariots, first came 

 into use in the reign of Richard II., about the year 1388 ; they were called 

 vhiiiicotes, and were little better than litters or cotes (cots) placed on 

 wheels. We are told by Master John Stowe, that ' Richard II. being 

 threatened by the rebels of Kent, rode from the Tower of London to the 

 Miles End, and with him his mother, because she Avas sick and weak, in a 

 whirlicote ; ' and this is described as an ugly vehicle of four boards put 

 together in a clums}' manner. 



Coaches were not used until the time of Elizabeth, when we were told 

 (Stowe's Survey of London and Westminster, book i.) ' divers gi^eat ladies 



