Little wonder, then, that the great Queen used her coach only when occasions of State demanded. She journeyed to her palace at Greenwich by water, between Greenwich and her other palace of Eltham on horseback, and to Nonsuch and Hampton Court and on her many country progresses in like manner, resorting only to wheels with advancing years. How bad were even the roads especially repaired for her coming may be judged from a contemporary description of her journey along that “new highway” whose “perfect evenness” is the theme of the writer. “Her Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a base sort lifted it on with their poles.” Majesty must have been sore put to it to look majestic on such occasions, and in the bad condition of all roads at that time we find a new significance in the courtliness of Sir Walter Raleigh, who at Greenwich threw his velvet cloak upon the ground for Elizabeth to walk over.
Elizabeth was an accomplished horsewoman, and it is not surprising, under these circumstances, that she made full use of the accomplishment, continuing on all possible public occasions to appear in this manner. On longer journeys she rode on a pillion behind a mounted chamberlain, holding on to him by his waistbelt just as ladies continued to do for centuries yet to come. The curious in these things may find interest in the fact that the modern groom’s leathern waistbelt, which now serves no practical function, is merely a strange survival of that old necessity of feminine travel. The commonly-received opinion that Elizabeth objected to carriages from the supposed “effeminacy” of using them receives a severe shock from her carriage experiences, which make it quite obvious that travelling in the earliest of them was only to be indulged in by persons of the strongest frame and in the rudest health. She who mounted on her palfrey before her troops at Tilbury, when the Armada threatened, could justly claim that though but a woman she had the spirit of a King--aye, and a King of England--quailed before the rigours of a carriage-drive.