One is of £1326, 1s. 8d. for gold and silk laces and fringes delivered for the King’s service in the stables in 1633; another for £374, 12s. 11d. for gold and silver fringe for making a “caroch” for the Queen “against May Day, 1636”; and a third account of £168, 7s. 8d. for suits and cloaks for the footmen, coachmen, and postillions of the Queen “against May Day.” As the coaches gained favour the horse-litter gradually died out. When Queen Henrietta Maria’s mother came from France to visit her in 1638, she entered London in a litter embroidered with gold and borne by two mules, but her journey from Harwich had been accomplished by coach. Evelyn also says that he used one in 1640, when he took his aged father from Bath to Wootton. There is one more mention of the litter in Charles II.’s reign, but with so many wheeled vehicles coming into daily use, no wonder this means of locomotion ceased. However, the coaches did not altogether bring joy to the traveller. Evelyn, in his _Character of England_, published in 1659, is full of indignation at the reception the coach riders endured at the hands of the populace. “Arrived at the metropolis of Civility, London, we put ourselves in coach with some persons of quality, who came to conduct us to our lodging, but neither was this passage without honour done to us: the kennel-dirt, squibs, roots, and ram-horns, being favours which were frequently cast at us by the children and apprentices, without reproof. Civilities that, in Paris, a gentleman as seldom meets withal, as with the contests of carmen, who in this town domineer in the streets, o’erthrow the hell-carts (for so they name the coaches), cursing and reviling at the nobles. You would imagine yourselves amongst a legion of devils and in the suburbs of hell. “I have greatly marvelled at the remissness of the magistrates and the temper of the gentlemen; and that the citizens, who submit only upon them, should permit so great a disorder; rather joining in the affronts, than at all chastising the inhumanity.” By the middle of the seventeenth century a regular system of stage-coaches seems to have been installed. In 1661 the journey between London and Oxford occupied two whole days. A coach called “The Flying Dutchman” was also put upon the road, which accomplished the journey in thirteen hours, but for some reason or other, we find that in 1692 the distance again occupied two days. In 1682 the trip between London and Nottingham required four days in winter.