The French word _Haquenée_[350] implies a common horse for all purposes of riding, whether for private use or for hire; generally an ambler, as distinguished from the horses of superior orders, such as the _palfrey_ and the _great horse_. The former of these are often called _pad-nags_, and were likewise _amblers_; while horses for draught were called _trotting-horses_[351]: so that the _Haquenée_ was in fact, and in his use, distinct from all the rest, and inferior in rank and quality. This term for an ambling-nag occurs in Chaucer[352]. Thus we obtained our _Haquenée_ or _Hackney Horses_ long before we had any Coaches to tack to them; and the term had likewise, at the same time, made its way into metaphor, to express any thing much and promiscuously used. Thus Shakspeare, who never lived to ride in a _Hackney Coach_, applies the word _Hackney_ to a common woman of easy access[353]: and again, in the First Part of Henry IV. (Act iii. Sc. 4), the King says to the Prince of Wales, [350] See the French Lexicographers. [351] Northumberland Household Book, p. 127. [352] The Romaunt of the Rose. [353] Love's Labour's Lost, Act ii. Sc. 2. "Had I so lavish of my presence been, So common-_hackneyed_ in the eyes of men, So stale and cheap to vulgar company," &c. Now Shakspeare died in the year 1616; whereas Hackney Coaches were not known, in the Streets at least, till about the year 1625[354]. [354] Mortimer's Pocket Dictionary. Though the term _Haquenée_ is French, it is not used in France for Coaches of a like kind; yet, after we had adopted the word as applied to horses of the common sort, it was easy to put them in harness, for the service of drawing, and the convenience of the Inhabitants of the Metropolis; whereby the word _Hackney_ became transferred to the whole Equipage, then in want of a differential name; whereof the Coach, being the more striking part, obtained the name by pre-eminence.