tion satin, wherein was his packet hung in a baldrick of the same; a pair of yellow boots; spurs with one long prick like a cock; a little hat of yellow damask, with a plume of red feathers like a crest." (Stage directions, The Masque of Flowers, 1614.)
The introduction of coaches into England is thus recorded by Taylor the Water Poet.
"In the year 1564, one William Boonen, a Dutchman, brought first the use of coaches hither, and the said Boonen was Queen Elizabeth's coachman; for indeed a coach was a strange monster in those days, and the sight of it put both horse and man into amazement; some said it was a great crab shell brought out of China, and some imagined it to be one of the Pagan temples, in which the cannibals adored the devil; but at last those doubts were cleared and coach-making became a substantial trade." (Works, ed. 1630, p. 240.) As late as 1598 this vehicle was still looked upon as a novelty. "Now to diminish and cut this charge, as well of horses as of men, there is a new invention, and that is, she must have a coach, etc." (From a black-letter pamphlet by W. W., 1598, quoted by Rye, p. 196.)
So popular, however, became the "new invention" that in 1601 an act was introduced into the House of Lords "to restrain the excessive
