Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/190

 "There are certain noble markets wherein great plenty of horses and colts are bought and sold, and whereunto such as have need resort to buy and make their necessary provision of them, as Ripon, Newport Pond, Wolfpit, Harboro', and divers others. But, as most drovers are very diligent to bring store of these into these places, so many of them are too-too lewd in abusing such as buy them. For they have a custom, to make them look fair to the eye, when they come within two days' journey of the market to drive them till they sweat, and for the space of eight or twelve hours, which being done they turn them all over the backs in some water, where they stand for a season, and then go forward with them to the place appointed, where they make sale of their affected ware, and such as by this means do fall into many deseases and maladies. Of such outlandish [foreign] horses as are daily brought over unto us I speak not, as the jennet of Spain, the courser of Naples, the hobby of Ireland, the Flemish roile and the Scottish nag, because that further speech of them cometh not within the compass of this treatise, and for whose breed and maintenance (especially of the greatest sort) King Henry the Eighth erected a noble studdery, and for a time had very good success with them, till the officers, waxing weary, procured a mixed brood