Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/455

 and Se?itiments. 435 conveyance from place to place, though we now more often meet with pi6tures of carriages 5 but, though evidently intended to be very gorgeous, they are of clumfy conflruftion, and feem only to have been ufed by princes or great nobles. I give two examples from a fuperbly illuminated manufcript of the French tranflation of "Valerius Maximus," in the great national library in Paris (No. 6984), executed in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The firft (cut No. 273) is a royal car, in which a throne has been placed for the king, who fits in it in Hate. His guards lead the horfes. The form of the carriage is very fimple ; it is a mere cart on wheels, without any fprings, and has a covering fup- ported on two large hoops, which are ftrengthened by crofs-bars refembling the fpokes of a wheel. In the fecond example (cut No. 274), the car- No. 274. TuUia Riding ever her Father's riage bears fome refemblance to a modern omnibus. It is intended to reprefent the incident in Roman hiftory, where the unfilial Tullia caufed her charioteer to drive over the body of her father, Servius Tullus, who had been llain by her hutband Tarquin the Proud. The ladies appear to fit on benches infide the carriage, while the driver is mounted on the horfe neareft to it. Thefe carriages M retained the name of carts, although they appear to have been ufed chiefly on fiate occafions. Riding in them mull have been very uneafy, and they were expofed to accidents. When Richard II. made his grand entry into London, a ceremony defcribed by Ricliard de Maidftone in Latin verfe, the ladies of the court rode