To come down to later times, Mr. Bridges Adams in _English Pleasure Carriages_ (1837) refers to a coach presented by the King of Hungary to King Charles VII. of France (1422-1461), the body of which “trembled.” Mr. George Thrupp considers that this probably indicates a coach-body hung on leather straps or braces, and was a specimen of the vehicle then in use in Hungary. At Coburg several ancient carriages are preserved: one of those built in 1584 for the marriage ceremony of Duke John Casimir, the Elector of Saxony, is hung on leather braces from carved standard posts which, says Mr. Thrupp, “are evidently developed from the standards of the common waggon. The body of this coach is six feet four inches long and three feet wide: the wheels have wooden rims, but over the joints of the felloes are small plates of iron about ten inches long.” In regard to these iron plates it will be remembered that the wheels of the coach represented in the “Flemish Chronicle” of the first half of the fourteenth century referred to on pp. 8-9, is furnished with complete iron tires. Neither this vehicle, nor that of Queen Elizabeth, a sketch of which is given on p. 17 are furnished with braces of any kind. It would not be judicious to accept these drawings as exactly representing the construction of the carriages, but if the artist has given a generally accurate picture it is difficult to see how or where leather braces could have been applied to take the dead weight of the coach body off the under-carriage. STEEL SPRINGS INTRODUCED. Mr. Thrupp states that steel springs were first applied to wheel carriages about 1670,[3] when a vehicle resembling a Sedan chair on wheels, drawn and pushed by two men, was introduced into Paris. This conveyance was improved by one Dupin, who applied two “elbow springs” by long shackles to the front axle-tree which worked up and down in a groove under the seat. The application of steel springs to coaches drawn by horses was not generally practised until long afterwards: in 1770 Mons. Roubo, a Frenchman, wrote a treatise on carriage building, from which we learn that springs were by no means universally employed. [3] See page 84. When used, says Mr. Thrupp, “They were applied to the four corners of a perch carriage and placed upright, and at first only clipped in the middle to the posts of the earlier carriages, while the leather braces went from the tops of the springs to the bottoms of the bodies without any long iron loops such as we now use; and as the braces were very long we find that complaints were made of the excessive swinging and tilting and jerking of the body. The Queen’s coach is thus suspended. Four elbow springs, as we should call them, were fastened to the bottom of the body, but again the ends did not project beyond the bottom, and the braces were still far too long; and Mons. Roubo doubts whether springs were much use.”