for no other reason than that they could carry but one person. They might prevail with persons of a certain rank and description; but the opulent Merchant, and others in a similar line of family life, still were in want of a conveyance of greater capacity; a circumstance which would depress the Chairs, and gradually hasten the re-introduction of the Coaches, and which, as has been observed, took place accordingly in little more than two years. The following special commission was therefore granted by the King, A. D. 1637, wherein the number of the Coaches seems rather to have enlarged, and the management of them was placed in the department of the Master of the Horse. It runs essentially in the following words:

"That we, finding it very requisite for our Nobility and Gentry, as well as for Foreign Ambassadors, Strangers, and others, that there should be a competent number of Hackney Coaches allowed for such uses, have, by the advice of our Privy Council, thought fit to allow Fifty Hackney Coachmen in and about London and Westminster; limiting them not to keep above Twelve Horses a-piece. We therefore grant to you [the Marquis] during your Life, the Power and Authority to license Fifty Hackney Coach

men, who shall keep no more than Twelve good. Horses each, for their, or any of their, Coach and Coaches respectively. You also hereby have Power to license so many in other Cities and Towns of England as in your wisdom shall be thought necessary; with power to restrain and prohibit all others from keeping any Hackney Coach to let to hire, either in London or elsewhere. Also to prescribe Rules and Orders concerning the daily Prices of the said licensed Hackney Coachmen, to be by them, or any of them, taken for our own particular service, and in their em'ployment for our Subjects; provided such orders be first allowed by us, under our Royal Hand." *

We may observe that the article of Purveyance is here very gently touched upon, and confined to a sign-manual. Mr. Anderson supposes that there must have been many more than fifty Coaches introduced by the above allowance of twelve horses; but it seems rather to imply that no Coach-Master should engross more than six Coaches to himself. This also might be a tacit mode of preserving a supply of horses to be purveyed for the King when necessary.

One may collect from hence that private Coaches were sparingly kept, by the mention of the Nobility and Gentry.

Rymer, tom. XX. fol. 159.

Hitherto we have found the Hackney Coaches under the regulation of the Crown, or its immediate Officers; but we are now to look for them at a time when the Monarchical Government was suspended, during the Protectorate. Whether the Master of the Horse received any emolument from granting the above Licences, is not apparent; but under the Commonwealth we find that the Coaches became subject to a tax towards the expence of their regulation; for by an Act of Oliver's Parliament, A. D. 1654, the number of such Coaches, within London and Westminster, was enlarged to two hundred *. The outlying distance was also augmented to six miles round the late lines of communication, as the Statute expresses it; by which I conceive that the greatest distance was extended to nine miles, including the three prescribed,

* Anderson says three hundred, but that must be an error; for the Docquet of the Act in Scobel says, that "the number of persons keeping Hackney Coaches shall not at one time exceed two hundred." This must apply to the number of Carriages; and so Sir William Blackstone understood it. Commentaries, vol. I. 4to.

or rather enjoined, by the regulating proclamation of King Charles I. in the year 1635. By this Act of Oliver's Parliament, the government of the Hackney Coaches, with respect to their stands, rates, &c. was placed in the Court of Aldermen of London; and as, of course, this new business would require Clerks, and other officers, to supervise it, the Coach-Masters were made subject to the payment of twenty shillings yearly for every such Coach.

Here we have brought the Coaches under a Police similar to that of our own time; but it did not long remain in the hands of the Corporation; for in the year after the Restoration, the establishment was new-modelled by an Act of the 13th and 14th of King Charles II. 1661, wherein it is specified that no Coaches were to be used without a Licence,-who may be entitled to such Licences, that the number shall not exceed 400,-what shall be the rates, with penalties for exacting more

*

Each of these four hundred Coaches so

*See the Act in the Statute Book.

licensed was obliged to pay annually five pounds for the privilege, to be applied towards the keeping in repair certain parts of the streets of London and Westminster*; a very rational appropriation of such fund, for who ought so much to contribute to the amendment of the streets, as those who lived by their demolition?

"Nex Lex æquior ulla, quam," &c.

Within a few years after the Revolution (anno 5 Gul. et Mar. ch. xxii.) the number of Coaches arose to seven hundred, each of which paid to the Crown annually four pounds. This, primâ facie, one would suppose was a relief to the Coach-Masters, and that the reduction in the impost accrued from the number; but that was not the case, for every Owner, for each Coach, was constrained to pay down fifty pounds for his first Licence for twenty-one years, or forego his employment; which seeming indulgence was, in fact, paying five pounds per annum for that term; whereas, probably, the Coach-Master

* Anderson, II. 115. Journals of the House of Commons. Blackstone.