According to Florencio Janer, coaches were not known in Spain until the middle of the sixteenth century. Before that time the usual conveyance was the litter. The Madrid Armoury contains an object which is thought to have been the campaigning-litter of Charles the Fifth (Plate lxi.). The Count of Valencia de Don Juan also inclined to this belief from the circumstance that an engraving exists in the British Museum which represents a German litter of the sixteenth century, identical in all respects with this one. Probably, however, these litters were the same all over Europe. The inventory of the Dukes of Alburquerque includes, in 1560, a "cowhide litter, black, lined with black serge; also poles stained black, and harness for mules." This, together with other travelling gear, belonged to "my lady the duchess"; and it is worth noting that the litter attributed to Charles, though cased with a protective covering of whitish canvas, is also of black leather and lined with black serge, besides being evidently built for carriage by two mules. The interior contains a small armchair rising some inches only from the floor, and which, requiring him to keep his legs continually outstretched, could hardly fail to prove excruciatingly uncomfortable to the traveller. Mendez Silva says that the precise date of the introduction of coaches into Spain was 1546, and other writers do not greatly differ from him. The Alburquerque inventory includes "two four-wheeled coaches," as well as "a triumphal car with four wheels, its body painted with red and gold stripes." Vanderhamen, who says that the first coach ever seen in Spain was brought here by a servant of Charles the Fifth in 1554, adds that within a little time their use became "a hellish vice that wrought incalculable havoc to Castile." Certainly this vehicle for many years was far from popular among the Spaniards, and was assailed with special vehemence by all who lacked the income to support one. The Duke of Berganza is said to have remarked that "God had fashioned horses for the use of men, and men had fashioned coaches for the use of women"; while a priest, Tomás Ramón, declared that it was "a vast disgrace to see bearded men, with rapiers at their side, promenading in a coach." Even the governing powers thought fit to interfere. In 1550, 1563, and 1573 the Cortes demanded the total prohibition of these modish yet detested vehicles, while the Cortes of 1578 decreed four horses as the statutory and invariable number for a private carriage. A further law enacted in 1611 that coaches must be strictly private property, and not, on pain of rigorous chastisement, be lent or hired by their owner;[147] while the owner, to own or use a coach at all, required a special licence from the Crown.