Pepys always delighted in being in the fashion. He would not be in advance of it, and not, if he could help it, behind. The fact, then, of his setting up a carriage of his own is sufficient to show how largely the moneyed classes had begun to go about on wheels. But better evidence still is found in the establishment, May 1677, of the Worshipful Company of Coach and Harness Makers, whose arms still bear representations of the carriages in use at that period. The armorial bearings of the Coach-makers are, when duly tricked out in their proper colours, somewhat striking. Stated in plain terms, done into English out of heraldic jargon, they consist of a blue shield of arms with three coaches and a chevron in gold, supported on either side by a golden horse, harnessed and saddled in black studded with gold; with blue housings garnished with red, and fringed and purfled in gold. The horses are further adorned with plumes of four feathers in gold, silver, red, and blue. A crest above displays Phœbus driving his chariot, and the motto beneath declares that “After clouds rises the sun.” The hackney-carriages of London in 1669, the year following Pepys’ establishment of his own private turn-out, numbered, according to the memoirs of Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who travelled England at that time, eight hundred. The age of public vehicles was come. CHAPTER II THE HORSEMEN “The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity.”--_Pennant_, 1739.