In 1474, the Emperor Frederic III. came to Frankfort in a close carriage; and as he remained in it on account of the wetness of the weather, the inhabitants had no occasion to support the canopy which was to have been held over him, while he went to the council house and returned. In the following year, the same emperor visited that city in a very magnificent carriage. In 1487, on occasion of the celebration of the feast of St. George at Windsor, the third year of Henry VII., the queen and king went in a rich chaise; they were attended by twenty-one ladies. In the description of the splendid tournament held by the Elector of Brandenburg, at Ruppin, in 1509, Beckmann says, he reads of a carriage all gilt, which belonged to the Electress; of twelve other coaches, ornamented with crimson; and of another, belonging to the Duchess of Mecklenburgh, which was hung with red satin. In the Northumberland household book, about this period, is an order of the duke for the chapel stuff to be sent before in my lord’s chariot. At the coronation of the Emperor Maximilian, 1562, the Elector of Cologne had twelve carriages. In 1594, when John Sigismund did homage at Warsaw, for Prussia, he had in his train thirty-six coaches, with six horses each. Count Kevenhiller, speaking of the marriage of Ferdinand II. with a princess of Bavaria, says, “The bride rode with her sisters in a splendid carriage studded with gold; her maids of honour in carriages hung with black satin, and the rest of the ladies in neat leather carriages.” Mary, Infanta of Spain, spouse of Ferdinand III., rode, in 1631, in a glass carriage, in which no more than two persons could sit. The wedding carriage of the first wife of the Emperor Leopold, who was a Spanish princess, cost, with the harness, 38,000 florins. The coaches used by that emperor are thus described:--“In the imperial coaches no great magnificence was to be seen; they were covered over with red cloth and black nails. The harness was black, and in the whole work there was no gold. The panels were of glass, and on that account they were called the imperial glass coaches. On festivals the harness was ornamented with red silk fringes. The imperial coaches were distinguished only by their having leather traces; but the ladies in the imperial suite were obliged to be content to be conveyed in carriages, the traces of which were made of ropes.” At the magnificent court of Ernest Augustus, at Hanover, there were in 1681, fifty gilt coaches, with six horses each. So early did Hanover begin to surpass other cities in the number and splendour of its carriages. The first time that coaches were introduced into Sweden was towards the end of the sixteenth century, when John of Finland, among other articles of luxury, brought one with him on his return from England.