12 Introduction. 



rode in a careta, the outside and inside of which 

 were covered with sky-blue velvet, interspersed 

 with golden lilies. Under the Gallicised denomi- 

 nation of char, the Italian car eta, shortly- after- 

 wards became known in France ; where, so early 

 as the year 1294, an ordinance was issued by 

 Philip the Fair, forbidding its use to citizens' 

 wives. Nor was England far behind in the adop- 

 tion of the vehicle ; for, in " The Squyr of Low 

 Degree," a poem supposed to 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 lilies blue." 



However richly ornamented, the careta, 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 incon- 

 venient structure ; for its employment 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, 



