“Their first invention,” says a character in this dialogue, “and use was in the Kingdome of _Hungarie_, about the time when _Frier George_, compelled the Queen and her young sonne the King, to seeke to _Soliman_ the Turkish Emperour, for aid against the Frier, and some of the Nobilitie, to the utter ruine of that most rich and flourishing Kingdome, where they were first called _Kottcze_, and in the _Slavonian_ tongue _Cottri_, not of _Coucher_ the French to lie-downe, nor of _Cuchey_, the Cambridge Carrier, as some body made Master _Minshaw_, when hee (rather wee) perfected his Etymologicall dictionarie, whence we call them to this day _Coaches_.”
It is also to be noted that the first English coaches, so called, were probably not suspended at all, but merely upholstered carts for reclining—in fact nothing more than the old chariots. In the second half of the sixteenth century, practically every pleasure carriage in England, though not on the Continent, was called a _coach_ or a _carroche_. Consequently it is difficult to give a date for the importation of the first real coach into this country. Indeed, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty precisely when carriages of the suspended type were first made. Such early accounts as exist are at once fragmentary and obscure, and the few illustrations little better than caricatures with a perspective reminiscent of that in Hogarth’s famous example of false drawing. It can only be repeated that the hammock slung from the four posts of a waggon, such as we have seen existed amongst the Anglo-Saxons and possibly was also in use in parts of Europe, may have provided the idea of permanent suspension as a means to comfort, and that such scanty evidence as there is goes to prove that the carriages exported from Hungary towards the end of the fifteenth century seem to have been the first _coaches_ to be built.
So early as 1457 there is mention of such a carriage, given by Ladislaus, King of Hungary, to the French King, Charles VII. The Parisians who saw it described it as “branlant et moulte riche.” What this “trembling” carriage was like there is no means of discovering, but it certainly suggests an attempt at suspension, and may perhaps be taken for the earliest coach to be recorded by history. This obviously was Hungarian, and Hungary is again mentioned in the same connection by Stephanus Broderithus, who relates that in 1526, “when the archbishop received intelligence that the Turks had entered Hungary, not content with informing the King of this event, he speedily got into one of those light carriages which from the name of the place we call kotcze, and hastened to His Majesty.” And apparently these light carriages were actually used for military purposes, Taylor avowing that “they carried soldiers on each side with cross-bowes,” this being the best purpose to which he considered the coach had ever been put or was likely to be put in the future. All this is clear enough, but Beckmann, in his _History of Inventions_, mentions another circumstance which strengthens the evidence: “Siegmund, Baron de Herberstein, ambassador from Louis II, to the King of Hungary, says in his _Commentarie de rebus Moscoviticis_, where he occasionally mentions some travelling-stages in Hungary: ‘The fourth stage for stopping to give the horses breath is six miles below Taurinum, in the village of Cotzi, from which both drivers and carriages take their name, and are generally called cotzi.’”[20]