These Commissioners grossly abused the authority placed in their hands, wringing bribes from the unfortunate persons who applied for licenses, and carrying out their task with so little propriety that in 1663 they were indicted and compelled to restore moneys they had wrongfully obtained. In regard to this it is to be observed that one of the 400 hackney coach licenses sanctioned by the Act was a very valuable possession. We learn from a petition submitted by the hackney coachmen to Parliament that holders of these licenses, which cost £5 each, sold them for £100. The petition referred to is undated, but appears to have been sent in when William III.’s Act to license 700 hackney coaches (passed in 1694) was before Parliament. The bitterness of the watermen against Sedan chairs seems to have died out by Pepys’ time, but it was still hot against the hackney coaches, as a passage in the _Diary_ sufficiently proves. Proceeding by boat to Whitehall on February 2, 1659, Samuel Pepys talked with his waterman and learned how certain cunning fellows who wished to be appointed State Watermen had cozened others of their craft to support an address to the authorities in their favour. According to Pepys’ informant, nine or ten thousand hands were set to this address (the men were obviously unable to read or write) “when it was only told them that it was a petition against hackney coaches.” COACHES WITH “BOOTS.” From _Coach and Sedan_ (see page 30), we obtain a quaint but fairly graphic description of the coach of this period:— “The coach was a thick, burly, square-set fellow in a doublet of black leather, brasse button’d down the breast, back, sleeves and wings, with monstrous wide boots, fringed at the top with a net fringe, and a round breech (after the old fashion) gilded, and on his back an atchievement of sundry coats [of arms], in their proper colours.” [Illustration: COACH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH’S LADIES. Showing near-side “Boot.”] The “boots” were projections at the sides of the body between the front and back wheels, as shown in the drawing of the coach occupied by Queen Elizabeth’s ladies; and there is much evidence to support the opinion that these boots were not covered. Taylor in _The World Runnes on Wheeles_ describes the boot with picturesque vigour:— “The coach is a close hypocrite, for it hath a cover for any knavery and curtains to veil or shadow any wickedness; besides, like a perpetual cheater, it wears two boots and no spurs, sometimes having two pairs of legs in one boot, and often-times (against nature) most preposterously it makes fair ladies wear the boot; and if you note, they are carried back to back like people surprised by pirates, to be tied in that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea.”