In spite of the protests of the Thames watermen and their friends, hackney-coaches grew in popular favour. Until 1634, they stood for hire in the yards of the principal inns, but in that year Captain Baily, a retired mariner, made an experiment. He had four superior coaches built, and stationed them for hire at the Maypole in the Strand, where St. Mary’s Church now stands. The cab rank at the side of St. Mary’s Church is, therefore, the oldest in England. Baily’s drivers, attired in livery, were instructed as to the charges they should make for driving people to various parts of the town. So successful was this venture that other hackney-coachmen began to take up their stand at the same place and carry passengers at Captain Baily’s rates. Soon the rank became so crowded that the practice of driving slowly along the streets plying for hire was begun by hackney-coachmen who could not find room for their vehicles at the stand. Garrard mentions this innovation in a letter to Lord Strafford:-- “I cannot omit to mention any new thing that comes up amongst us, though never so trivial: here is one Captain Baily, he hath been a sea-captain, but now lives on the land, about this city, where he tries experiments. He hath erected, according to his ability, some four hackney-coaches, put his men in livery, and appointed them to stand at the Maypole in the Strand, giving them instructions at what rates to carry men into several parts of the town, where all day they may be had. Other hackney-men seeing this way, they flocked to the same place, and perform their journeys at the same rate; so that sometimes there are twenty of them together, which disperse up and down, that they and others are to be had everywhere, as watermen are to be had by the waterside. Everybody is much pleased with it; for, whereas, before, coaches could not be had but at greater rates, now a man may have one much cheaper.” Charles I. did not, however, regard hackney-coaches with favour, and endeavoured to check Captain Baily’s enterprise by granting to Sir Sanders Duncomb the sole right to let on hire sedan chairs, which, until then, were unknown in England. The patent stated:-- “Whereas the streets of our cities of London and Westminster and their suburbs are of late so much encumbered with the unnecessary multitude of coaches, that many of our subjects are thereby exposed to great danger and the necessary use of carts and carriages for provisions much hindered: and Sir Sanders Duncomb’s petition representing that in many parts beyond sea, people are much carried in chairs that are covered, whereby few coaches are used among them: wherefore we have granted to him the sole privilege to use, let, or hire a number of the said covered chairs for fourteen years.”