The Colonel continued experimenting both with the older coaches and a new light chariot. In 1665 Mr. Pepys was taken to see an improvement of his on a coach.
“I met my Lord Brouncker, Sir Frederick Murrey, Dean Wilkins, and Mr. Hooke, going by coach to Colonel Blunt’s to dinner.... No extraordinary dinner, nor any other entertainment good; but afterwards to the tryal of some experiments about making of coaches easy. And several we tried; but one did prove mighty easy, not here for me to describe, but the whole body of the coach lies upon one long spring, and we all, one after another, rid in it; and it is very fine and likely to take.”
A few months later Pepys saw the new chariot itself.
“After dinner comes Colonel Blunt in his new chariot made with springs; as that was of wicker, where in a while since we rode at his house. And he hath rode, he says, now his journey, many miles in it with one horse, and out-drives any coach, and out-goes any horse, and so easy he says. So for curiosity, I went into it to try it, and up the hill [Shooter’s Hill] to the heath [Blackheath], and over the cart ruts, and found it pretty well, but not so easy as he pretends.”
The Colonel persevered. At the beginning of the next year the Royal Society’s committee met again at his house to consider, says Pepys, “of the business of chariots, and to try their new invention, which I saw here my Lord Brouncker ride in: where the coachman sits astride upon a pole over the horse, but do not touch the horse, which is a pretty odde thing; but it seems it is most easy for the horse, and, as they say, for the man also.”
Others were also at work upon carriage improvement, and in 1667 the Royal Society “generally approved” of a chariot invented by a Dr. Croune. “No particulars of the vehicle are given,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “we are only told that ‘some fence was proposed to be made for the coachman against the kicking of the horse.’” In the same year, Sir William Pen possessed a light chariot in which Pepys drove out one day. This, he says, was “plain, but pretty and more fashionable in shape than any coaches he hath, and yet do not cost him, harness and all, above £32.”
All such experiments were undoubtedly in the direction of a light, swift carriage, such as was built about 1660 in Germany by Philip de Chiesa, a Piedmontese, in the service of the Duke of Prussia. Indeed, it is quite possible that Colonel Blunt either possessed, or had seen, one of de Chiesa’s carriages, which were none other than the famous and popular _berlins_.[30]