“Go—call a Coach; and let a Coach be called: Let him that calls the Coach, be called the Caller! And in his calling, let him no thing call, But Coach! COACH!! COACH!!!” _Chrononhotonthologos._ Both horse-litters and early wheeled carriages seem to have had some pretensions towards comfort. They afforded protection against the inclemency of the weather; there had been certain rude attempts at suspension, and the soft cushions helped to minimise the unpleasant joltings to which every carriage was liable. When, however, the renaissance of carriage-building occurred, people seem to have been but little more progressive than they had been centuries before. There were, as I have already hinted, still two factors which militated against a speedy adoption of such vehicles, more comfortable though they undoubtedly were, as now began to be made—the state of the roads, and the dislike of anything bordering upon the effeminate. The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not only in England, but in every European country. As one writer of the sixteenth century complains, the roads, “by reason of straitness and disrepair, breed a loathsome weariness to the passenger.” Nor is this writer a solitary grumbler: there are numerous complaints. In 1537 Richard Bellasis, one of the monastery-wreckers, was unable to proceed with his work: “lead from the roofs,” he reports, “cannot be conveyed away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and deepe that no carriage [cart] can pass in winter.” Indeed, no one seems to have looked after the roads with any care, either in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. Yet there were, in this country, repeated bequests for their preservation. Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, a sufferer himself, left one hundred marks to be bestowed on the highways in Craven, and the same sum on those of Westmorland. John Lyon, the founder of Harrow School, gave certain rents for the repair of the roads from Harrow and Edgware to London. This was in 1592, and Lyon’s example was speedily followed by Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse. There was, indeed, legislation of a kind, but in general the roads were in a terrible condition, and for a long time, so far as men were concerned, the saddle remained triumphant.