Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/194

182 182 indifferently mounted, and that in consequence he had to purchase large numbers of foreign horses from Hainault and elsewhere for remounts. The reign of Bichard III. does not seem to have been remarkable for the further ance 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 particu larly 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 &quot;bill for the breed of horses&quot; was passed, the preamble of which runs thus : &quot; 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.&quot; Sec tion 2 of the Act provides that no entire horse being above the age of two years, and not being of the height of 15 &quot; handf ulls,&quot; 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 &quot; driven &quot; 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 &quot;breed of good strong horses&quot; 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 four miles, four mares. The statute was not to extend to the counties of Westmoreland, Cum berland, Northumberland, or the bishopric of Durham. Henry took great pains to improve the royal stud : accord ing 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 &quot; to sell, exchange, or deliver within Scotland, or to the use of any Scottishman, any horse ; &quot; 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 &quot;to restrain the excessive and superfluous use of coaches.&quot; Prior to the introduction of carriages, horse back 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 [HISTORY. 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 of the cavalry soldier was diminished by the substitution of lighter armour, a quicker and better bred horse was thought desirable for military service. The introduction of carriages and the invention of gunpowder thus opened out a new industry in breeding ; and a decided change was gradually creeping on by the time that James I. came to the throne (1603), which commences the second epoch. James was a thorough sportsman, and his taste for racing, in which he freely indulged, caused him to think but little of the speed of even the best English horses. With the laudable motive therefore of effecting improvement in horses, he gave the then large sum of 500 guineas for an Arab stallion which had been procured from Constantinople by a Mr Markliam, since known as the &quot; Markham Arabian.&quot; This is the fir^t authentic account we have of the importa tion of Arab blood, and the Stud-Booli, says he was the first of that breed ever seen in England. The people having to do with horses at that time were as conservative in their notions as most of the grooms are now, and the &quot; Markham Arabian &quot; was not at all approved of. The duke of Newcastle, in his treatise on horsemanship, said that he had seen the above Arabian, and described him as a small bay horse and not of very excellent shape. In this instance, however, prejudice (and it is difficult to believe that it was anything else) was right, for King James s first venture does not appear to have been a success either as a race-horse or as a sire, and thus Arabian blood was brought into disrepute. The king, however, resolved to give Eastern blood another trial, and bought a horse known as Place s White Turk from a Mr Place, who subsequently held some office in connexion with the stable under Cromwell. Charles I. followed in the footsteps of James, and lent such patronage to the breeding of a better kind of horse that a memorial was presented to him, asking that some measures might be taken to prevent the old stamp of horse &quot;fit for the defence of the country&quot; from dying out. We now come to a very important period in the history of the British horse, for Charles .II. warmly espoused the introduction of Eastern blood into England. He sent his master of the horse abroad to purchase a number of foreign horses and mares for breeding, and the mares brought over by him (as also many of their produce) were called &quot;royal mures&quot;; they form a conspicuous feature in the annals of breeding. The Stud-Boole shows of what breed the royal mares really were : one of them, the dam of Dodsworth (who, though foaled in England, was a natural Barb), was a Barb mare ; she was sold by the stud- master, after Charles II. s death, for forty guineas, at twenty years old, when in foal by the Helmsley Turk. James II. was a good horseman, and had circumstances been more propitious he might have left his mark in the sporting annals of the country. In his reign, according to the Stud-Book, the Stradling or Lister Turk was brought into England by the duke of Berwick from the siege of Buda. The reign of William III. is noteworthy as the era in which, among other importations, there appeared the first of three Eastern horses to which the modern thoroughbred race-horse traces back as the founders of his lineage. This was the Byerly Turk, of whom nothing more is known than that to use the words of the first volume of the Stud-Book he was Captain Byerly s charger in Ireland in King William s wars. The second of the three horses above alluded to was the Darley Arabian, who was a