"Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, "




HAMMERCLOTH
Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \Ham"mer*cloth`\ (?; 115), n. [Prob. fr. D. hemel
heaven, canopy, tester (akin to G. himmel, and perh. also to
E. heaven) + E. cloth; or perh. a corruption of hamper
cloth.]
The cloth which covers a coach box.