Coaching days and coaching ways . andcourtiers and statesmen, who made at different times intheir august and calculating lives the town of Salisburytheir headquarters, cracked their mediaeval old pleasan-tries in the quaint old streets, caracoled along them, notin coaches and four, but on such gallant steeds and socaparisoned, as our eyes are feasted with on Lord MayorsDay, gorgeous without and within, resplendent with vel-vet, and cloth of gold, and ermine, and stiff embroidery. First perhaps among the royal visitors to Salisbury wasRichard the Second, who was here immediately beforehis exped
Coaching days and coaching ways . andcourtiers and statesmen, who made at different times intheir august and calculating lives the town of Salisburytheir headquarters, cracked their mediaeval old pleasan-tries in the quaint old streets, caracoled along them, notin coaches and four, but on such gallant steeds and socaparisoned, as our eyes are feasted with on Lord MayorsDay, gorgeous without and within, resplendent with vel-vet, and cloth of gold, and ermine, and stiff embroidery. First perhaps among the royal visitors to Salisbury wasRichard the Second, who was here immediately beforehis expedition to Ireland, where he should clearly neverhave gone. But this visit does not seem to have been asuccess. There was, I fear, not enough largesse aboutduring the last of the Plantagenets stay, not enoughtournaments and junketings, and conduits runningrhenish, and cakes and ale ; for the good inhabitantsseem to have been impressed so little with what was tobe got out of Richard, that they a short time after THE EXETER ROAD 119. W§gm «*? c Quadrangle of House, Exeter, expressed their thanks for his visit, by, with almost indecent alacrity, espousing the cause of Henry. Perhaps though it was the other way, and the disap- i2o COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS pointment of the good men of Salisbury at Richardsvisit was caused by contemplation—not of how littlethey got out of Richard, but of how much Richard gotout of them. For the kind king had an amiable inclina-tion towards charging his subjects with his outings ;and as his household consisted of ten thousand per-sons, three hundred of whom were cooks, and as thisenormous train had tables supplied them at the kingsexpense ; some good quarters of an hour were spent bythe purveyors, whose action was one of the chief reasonsof public discontent, and who, no doubt, gave Salisburygood reason for recollecting their activity. The next arrival of importance at Salisbury was oneof the four quarters of Jack Cade, a fifteenth centurypol
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