10 INTRODUCTION. 



have been written anterior to the time of Chaucer, we 

 find the father of a royal lady promising that she shall 

 hunt with him, on the morrow, in " a chare,'' drawn by 



" Jennettes of Spain that ben so white, 

 Trapped to the ground with velvet bright." 



" It shall be covered with velvet red, 

 And clothes of fine gold all about your head ; 

 With damask white and azure blue, 

 Well diapered with lihes blue." 



However richly ornamented, the car eta, char, or chare — 

 and there is little, if any, doubt, to be entertained as to 

 their identity — may have been, it was, probably, a 

 clumsy, inelegant, and inconvenient structm-e ; for its em- 

 ployment appears to have been far from general among 

 high-born ladies, even on occasions of ceremony and 

 pomp. During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth 

 centuries, the French Princesses usually rode on don- 

 kies; and so late as the year 1534, a sacred festival 

 was attended by Queen Eleonora, and the females of 

 the blood royal of France, on horseback. Nor did the 

 superior and more recent invention of coaches, for a 

 long period, tend materially to supersede, among ladies, 

 the use of the saddle. These vehicles, according to 

 Stow, became known, in England, in 1580 ; but, many 

 years after, Queen Elizabeth herself is described as 

 having appeared, almost daily, on her palfrey. In the 

 time of Charles the Second, the fashion, among ladies. 



