The Coaching Era 61 



coaches are used among them ; wherefore we have granted 

 to him the sole privilege to use, let and hire a number of the 

 said covered chairs, for fourteen years." * 



On January 19, 1635, there was issued a Royal Proclamation 

 which said that 



" The great number of Hackney Coaches of late seen and 

 kept in London, Westminster, and their suburbs, and the 

 general and promiscuous use of coaches there, are not only 

 a great disturbance to his Majesty, his dearest consort the 

 Queen, the nobility, and others of place and degree, in their 

 passage through the streets, but the streets themselves are 

 so pestered and the pavements so broken up that the common 

 passage is thereby hindered and made dangerous, and the price 

 of hay and provender, &c., thereby made exceeding dear, 

 wherefore we expressly command and forbid that no Hackney 

 or hired coach be used or suffered in London, Westminster, 

 or the suburbs thereof, except they be to travel at least three 

 miles out of the same ; and also that no person shall go in a 

 coach in the said streets except the owner of the coach shall 

 constantly keep up four able horses for our service when 

 required." 



Vigorous efforts were made to enforce this proclamation, 

 and the Water Poet was especially active in the matter, in 

 the interests of his proteges, but all to no purpose. Two years 

 later the King, " finding it very requisite for our nobility and 

 gentry, as well as for foreign ambassadors, strangers and 

 others " that the said restrictions should be withdrawn, was 

 graciously pleased to sanction the licensing in London of fifty 

 hackney coaches. Such attempts at limitation must, however, 

 have been equally of no avail, since in 1652 there was another 

 order, which set forth that not more than 200 should ply in 

 the streets. In the following year the watermen sent a further 

 petition to the House of Commons, and in 1654 the Protector 

 issued an order limiting to 300 the number of hackney coaches 

 to ply in London and Westminster and six miles round, 

 while the number of hackney coach horses was not to exceed 

 600. Two years or so after this the watermen sent still another 



1 By an Act of Parliament passed in 1710 the number of sedan chairs 

 allowed to ply for hire in London was fixed at 200, but the limit was raised 

 in the following year to 300. This was, of course, independent of the 

 private sedan chairs, of which every mansion had at least one. 



