60 History of Inland Transport 



friars, their lordships, remembering that there is an easy 

 passage by water unto that play-house, without troubling the 

 streets, and that it is much more fit and reasonable that those 

 which go thither should go by water, or else on foot, do 

 order all coaches to leave as soon as they have set down, and 

 not return till the play is over, nor return further than the 

 west end of Saint Paul's Church Yard, or Fleet conduit ; 

 coachmen disobeying these orders to be committed to Newgate 

 or Ludgate." 



Opposition to the innovation of the coaches was, however, 

 wholly unavailing, even when supported by Star Chamber 

 intimations that people ought to be content to " go by water 

 or else on foot " ; and in 1634 permission was obtained for 

 hackney coaches to ply in the streets for hire, instead of their 

 having to remain, as heretofore, in the stables. The first 

 public stand, for four carriages, with drivers in livery, was 

 set up in the Strand, near Somerset House. A month or 

 two later the watermen presented to Charles I. a petition in 

 which they said : 



" The hackney coaches are so many in number that they 

 pester and incumber the streets of London and Westminster, 

 and, which is worst of all, they stand and ply in the terme 

 tyme at the Temple gate, and at other places in the streets, 

 and doe carry sometymes three men for fourpence the man, 

 or four men for twelvepence, to Westminster or back again, 

 which doing of this doth undoe the Company of Watermen." 



The same year (1634) saw still another innovation, that of 

 the sedan chair, which was to play so important a role in 

 social life until towards the end of the eighteenth century, 

 and was, in fact, not to disappear until even later, since 

 there was a stand for sedan chairs still to be seen in St. James's 

 Square in 1821. How the sedan chair came to be introduced 

 is shown by a Royal Order issued as follows : 



" That whereas the streets of our cities of London and 

 Westminster and their suburbs, are of late so much in- 

 cumbered with the unnecessary multitude of coaches that 

 many of our subjects are thereby exposed to great danger, 

 and the necessary use of carts and carriages for provisions 

 thereby much hindered ; and Sir Sanders Buncombe's 

 petition representing that in many parts beyond sea people 

 are much carried in chairs that are covered, whereby few 



