A few lines written on a 16th-century pay slip could put paid to the notion that England, rather than Scotland, was the first to make a great leap forward in transportation. For millennia the bone-jolting cart was the height of wheeled luxury – but then came the joy of horse-drawn carriages, with genuine suspension to soften the road.
Historian John Harrison recently uncovered a document at National Archives of Scotland which suggests that a horse-drawn carriage had been transported from France to Scotland by 1552 and was kept at Stirling Castle. The arrival of this Continental novelty would have been a big flouncy feather in the cap for the kingdom, as it jockeyed with England to prove it was a full part of the modern European mainstream, up with all the latest trends.
The full article can be read here
The Scots did it First!!
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