Hackney carriage a 1662 Act of Parliament establishing the Commissioners of Scotland Yard to regulate them. Licences applied literally to horse-drawn carriages, later modernised as hansom cabs (1834), that operated as vehicles for hire. The 1662 act limited the licences to 400; when it expired in 1679, extra licences were created until a 1694 act imposed a limit of 700, which was increased by later acts and abolished in 1832. There was a distinction between a general hackney carriage and a hackney coach, a hireable vehicle with specifically four wheels, two horses and six seats, and driven by a "Jarvey" (also spelled
Hackney horse under saddle, not harness. Later with improvements in roads, the Hackney was also used in harness, and he was then a riding and driving horse of high merit. Robert and Philip Ramsdale, father and son, took the Norfolk horses Wroot's Pretender and Phenomenon to Yorkshire, where they bred them with Yorkshire trotting mares. In July 1800, the celebrated Hackney mare, Phenomenon, was backed to trot 17 miles in 56 minutes for a bet of £400, which she did in 53 minutes. In 1832, one of Phenomenon's daughters, the 14 hands Phenomena, trotted 17 miles in only 53 minutes. During the