These two fanciful descriptions explain very clearly what the “boot” was and how occupied. The “monstrous width” referred to in _Coach and Sedan_ confirms the statement by Taylor that sometimes “two pairs of legs” occupied it, the proprietors of the legs sitting back to back. “No trace of glass windows or perfect doors seems to have existed up to 1650” (Thrupp), so we can well understand that the passengers who were obliged to occupy the boot of a stage coach (for these as well as hackney coaches were so built) on a prolonged journey would have an exceedingly uncomfortable seat in cold or wet weather. It was no doubt an open boot which was occupied by the writer of the curious letter quoted by Markland. Mr. Edward Parker is addressing his father, who resided at Browsholme, near Preston, in Lancashire; the letter is dated November 3, 1663:— “I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe ways pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye. Ye company yt came up with mee were persons of greate quality as knights and ladyes. My journey’s expense was 30s. This traval hath soe indisposed mee yt I am resolved never to ride up againe in ye coatch. I am extreamely hott and feverish; what this may tend to I know not, I have not as yet advised with any doctor.” Sir W. Petty’s assertion that the splendour of coaches increased greatly during the Stuart period recalls a passage in Kennett’s _History of England_. George Villiers, the great favourite of James I. who created him Duke of Buckingham, had six horses to draw his coach (“which was wondered at then as a novelty and imputed to him as a mast’ring pride”). The “stout old Earl of Northumberland,” not to be outdone by the upstart favourite, “thought if Buckingham had six, he might very well have eight in his coach, with which he rode through the city of London to the Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration.” The first coaches were drawn by two horses only; love of display led to the use of more for town use, but the deplorable condition of the country roads justified the use of as many as quagmires might compel. How much a coach weighed in these early days we do not know: Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, writing in 1817, says, “now travelling carriages frequently weigh above a ton;” and as carriages had undergone vast improvements by that date, we are justified in concluding that those of a hundred or a hundred and fifty years earlier weighed a great deal more. CARRIAGES IN HYDE PARK. During the Commonwealth (1649-1659), it was the fashion to drive in “the Ring” in Hyde Park. The Ring is described by a French writer,[7] as two or three hundred paces in diameter with a sorry kind of balustrade consisting of poles placed on stakes three feet from the ground; round this the people used to drive, in Cromwell’s time, at great speed, as appears from a letter dated May 2, 1654, from a gentleman in London to a country friend, quoted by Mr. Jacob Larwood in his _Story of the London Parks_, (1872):—