fare, and exposed to the rigour of the seasons, he was probably the little hardy thing we yet see him; but in the marshes of the Nen and the Witham, and on the borders of the Tees and the Clyde, there would be as much proportionate development of frame and strength as we find at the present day.” After the occupation of the country by the Romans, it appears that the horses of their cavalry were crossed with the native mares, and thus there was infused into the breed new blood, consisting probably of strains from every quarter from which Roman remounts were procured. As to the effect of this cross we are not, however, in a position to judge. We are also quite uncertain as to the extent to which the Jutes and Saxons may in their turn have again introduced a new breed of horses into England; and even to the close of the Anglo-Saxon period of English history allusions to the horse are still very infrequent. The horsthegn we know, however, was from an early period a high court official; and from such a law as that of Athelstan prohibiting the exportation of horses except as presents, it may be inferred that the English breed was not only much valued at home but also in great request abroad.[1]
The period of the Norman Conquest marks an important stage in the history of the British horse. William the Conqueror’s own horse was of the Spanish breed, and others of the same kind were introduced by the barons on their estates. But the Norman horses included many varieties, and there is no doubt that to the Conquest the inhabitants of Britain were indebted for a decided improvement in the native horse, as well as for the introduction of several varieties previously unknown. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger de Bellesme, a follower of William I., afterwards created earl of Shrewsbury, imported some stallions from Spain into England; their produce was celebrated by Drayton the poet. It is curious to notice that agriculture seems to be the last use to which the horse has been put. The earliest suggestion that horses were used in agriculture is derived from a piece of the Bayeux tapestry, where a horse is represented as drawing a harrow. This, however, must have been an exceptional case, for we know that oxen were used until a comparatively late time, and that in Wales a law existed forbidding horses to be used for ploughing.
In 1121 two Eastern horses are said to have been imported,—one of them remaining in England, and the other being sent as a present by King Alexander I. to the church of St Andrews, in Scotland. It has been alleged that these horses were Barbs from Morocco, but a still more likely theory is that they existed only in name, and never reached either England or Scotland. The crusades were probably the means of introducing fresh strains of blood into England, and of giving opportunity for fresh crossings. The Spanish jennet was brought over about 1182. King John gave great encouragement to horse-breeding: one of his earliest efforts was to import a hundred Flemish stallions, and, having thus paved the way for improving the breed of agricultural horses, he set about acquiring a valuable stud for his own use.
Edward III. was likewise an admirer of the horse; he procured fifty Spanish horses, probably jennets. At this time there was evidently a tendency to breed a somewhat lighter and speedier horse; but, while the introduction of a more active animal would soon have led to the displacement of the ponderous but powerful cavalry horse then in use, the substituted variety would have been unable to carry the weight of armour with which horse and rider were alike protected; and so in the end the old breed was kept up for a time. With the object of preserving to England whatever advantages might accrue from her care and skill in breeding an improved stamp of horses, Edward III. forbade their exportation; they consequently improved so rapidly in value that Richard II. compelled dealers to limit their prices to a fixed maximum. In the ninth year of his reign, Edward received from the king of Navarre a present of two running horses, supposed to have been valuable. The wars of 1346 checked the improvement of horses, and undid much of what had been previously accomplished, for we read that the cavalry taken into France by Edward III. were but indifferently mounted, and that in consequence he had to purchase large numbers of foreign horses from Hainault and elsewhere for remounts. The reign of Richard III. does not seem to have been remarkable for the furtherance of horse-breeding; but it was then that post-horses and stages were introduced.
Our information on the whole subject is but scanty down to the reign of Henry VII., who continued the enactment against the exportation of stallions, but relaxed it in the case of mares above two years old. His object was to retain the best horses in the country, and to keep the price of them down by limiting the demand and encouraging the supply. In his reign gelding is believed to have had its origin, on account of numerous herds of horses belonging to different proprietors grazing together, especially in time of harvest. Henry VIII. was particularly careful that horse-breeding should be conducted on right principles, and his enactments, if somewhat arbitrary, were singularly to the point. In the thirty-second year of this reign, the “bill for the breed of horses” was passed, the preamble of which runs thus:—“Forasmuch as the generation and breed of good and strong horses within this realm extendeth not only to a great help and defence of the same, but also is a great commodity and profit to the inhabitants thereof, which is now much decayed and diminished, by reason that, in forests, chases, moors and waste grounds within this realm, little stoned horses and nags of small stature and of little value be not only suffered to pasture thereupon, but also to cover mares feeding there, whereof cometh in manner no profit or commodity.” Section 2 of the act provides that no entire horse being above the age of two years, and not being of the height of 15 “handfulls,” shall be put to graze on any common or waste land in certain counties; any one was to be at liberty to seize a horse of unlawful height, and those whose duty it was to measure horses, but who refused to do so, were to be fined 40s. By section 6 all forests, chases, commons, &c., were to be “driven” within fifteen days of Michaelmas day, and all horses, mares and colts not giving promise of growing into serviceable animals, or of producing them, were to be killed. The aim of the act was to prevent breeding from animals not calculated to produce the class of horse suited to the needs of the country. By another act (27 Henry VIII. chapter 6), after stating that the “breed of good strong horses” was likely to diminish, it was ordered that the owners of all parks and enclosed grounds of the extent of one mile should keep two mares 13 hands high for breeding purposes, or, if the extent of the ground was 4 m., four mares. The statute was not to extend to the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland or the bishopric of Durham. Henry took great pains to improve the royal stud: according to Sir Thomas Chaloner—a writer in the reign of Elizabeth—he imported horses from Turkey, Naples and Spain.
Queen Elizabeth is reputed to have been an accomplished horsewoman, and to have indulged in riding late in life. In the first year of her reign she revived an act passed by Henry VIII. making it felony “to sell, exchange or deliver within Scotland, or to the use of any Scottishman, any horse”; this, however, was very naturally repealed by James I. Carriages were soon after introduced, and the use of them speedily became so fashionable that a bill was brought in “to restrain the excessive and superfluous use of coaches.” Prior to the introduction of carriages horseback was the means of locomotion, and Queen Elizabeth rode in state to St Paul’s on a pillion; but even after carriages were used, horseback was held to be more dignified, for James I. and his judges rode on horseback to Westminster Hall. One advantage of the introduction of carriages was that it created a demand for a lighter and quicker sort of horse, instead of the ponderous animal which, despite all attempts to banish him, was still the horse of England—the age of chivalry having been the first epoch of the British horse.
Gunpowder, too, was invented; and now that the weight
- ↑ Some fragments of legislation relating to the horse about this period may be gleaned from Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (fol., London, 1840), and Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (fol., London, 1841).
