CH. IV BOOTS 71 



In carriages of the seventeenth century, in addi- 

 tion to the four people who sat inside, two more 

 persons, usually pages, or persons of lower rank, 

 sat sideways in the door-ways, facing the side of the 

 road, with their legs in a kind of box built out from 

 the side of the carriage and not unnaturally called 

 a 'boot,' and when what we now call the 'boots' 

 were added to a carriage, the name went with 

 them. The front boot, which was the support of 

 the driving-seat, must have had a closed top, but in 

 a public-coach, the addition behind was originally a 

 basket, open at the top, fastened upon the hind axle, 

 in which packages and passengers were carried. If 

 the passengers could do so, they sat down, but if 

 there were too many of them for this, they stood 

 up, and in cold weather the basket was half full of 

 straw to keep their legs warm. 



This basket is shown in Plates I., IV., V., and 

 VI. ; * it was later replaced by a wooden box, open 

 at the top ; this was afterward closed at the top, 

 the passengers sat on it, and it assumed its pres- 

 ent form. In the early coaching books we read of 

 persons in the hind boot. 



In Cross, vol. ii. p. 6, we read : ' Now the guard 



* In a plate published by Edw. Orme, Bond Street, London, in 

 18 16, of ' The Ghent and Brussels Diligence,' there is shown a basket 

 behind, another on the top, and another for the box-seat. The 

 coachman is on the roof, his reins passing over the heads of the 

 persons on, or in, the box. The flat, shallow basket is still seen on 

 the roof of broughams fitted up for station work. 



