Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/447

Rh interesting details about shoeing. Describing the first attempted invasion of Scotland by Edward II., he gives us an instance of the importance this art was assuming, and what an amount of inconvenience might be apprehended when circumstances prevented its being attended to. When the army of that king had marched as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne, the cavalry were in a miserable plight, and apparently ineffective. 'It never seased to rayne all the hoole weeke, whereby theyre saddels, pannels, and counter-syngles were all rottyn and broke, and most part of their horses hurt on their backs: nor they had not wherewith to shoo them that were unshodde.' When the troops reached Durham, however, they were obliged to rest there for two days, 'and the oste rounde about, for they coulde not all lodge within the cite, and theyre horses ivere neice shoode, and set out on theyre march to York.'

In these chronicles, embracing as they do, the latter part of the reign of Edward II., and terminating with the coronation of Henry IV., there is repeated mention of shoeing, and particularly in the wars which England was then waging on the Continent. In the great army Edward III. carried into France in 1359,—the greatest, according to Froissart, that had ever left England, we find a completeness in equipment and material which is somewhat astonishing when we look at the present condition of our army and consider its fitness for a continental war, particularly in the matter of land transport. Our warrior king appears to have omitted nothing that could render success impossible. On arriving at Calais, he