This Proclamation, so long as it was observed, must have put a considerable check to the use of these Carriages; nor can I think it could operate much in the King's favour, as it would hardly be worth a Coach-Master's while to be at so great a contingent charge as the keeping of Four Horses to be furnished at a moment's warning for his Majesty's occasional employment. We are to construe this, then, as amounting to a prohibition, on account of the certain expence which must follow an uncertain occupation. The nature of this penalty, as I may call it, was founded on the Statute of Purveyance, not then repealed. But there was another co-operating cause that suspended the use of Coaches for a short time, which was the introduction of the _Hackney Chairs_, which took place a very little while before the Proclamation. They arose from the incommodities stated in the Royal Edict, and, no doubt, tended in some measure towards the suppression of the Hackney-Coaches; till by degrees being found incompetent to answer all their seemingly intended purposes, we shall see the Coaches, in about _two_ years time, return into the streets, and resume their functions. But to proceed with the History of the _Chairs_. At the critical time, then, when Government was devising measures to prevent the increase of _Coaches_ as much as possible, for the reasons alleged in the Proclamation, there stepped in a Knight, by name Sir Saunders Duncombe, a Gentleman-Pensioner, and a travelled man, who proposed the introduction of _Chairs_, after the model he had seen abroad[361]. This was in the year 1634; when Sir Saunders obtained an exclusive Patent for the setting them forth for hire, dated the first day of October, for the term of _fourteen_ years. The number is not specified, but left perhaps indefinite, it being impossible to say what would be necessary in a new device of this sort, tending to be beneficial to the introductor, as well as convenient to the Publick. The tenor of the Grant, omitting the words of course, runs thus: "CHARLES, &c. [361] He was knighted, together with fourteen other Gentlemen of the Band, by King James, in Scotland, 1617; as appears from a Catalogue of Knights, published by J. P. Esq. 1660.