Indeed James appears to have admitted quite openly that the bare sight of the animals bored him “owing to the clumsy appearance they presented,” a view that is shared to-day by several of the more prominent of our owners of race horses.
Under the circumstances it is amusing to find the king himself inditing a ponderous treatise “for the instruction and edification of his son,” Henry, Prince of Wales, a treatise suitably enough entitled “Religio Regis: or the Faith and Duty of a Prince.”
Apparently he wrote the greater part of this work at Newmarket, for in it he alludes more than once to the races which were being held there at the time, races at which he had been present on the day he wrote.
That he deemed horsemanship to be a form of exercise of inestimable value becomes obvious as we read “Religio Regis”; but then in the reign of almost every monarch from about the beginning of the Stuart period down to the time of the four Georges great stress is laid by the various sovereigns upon the advisability that the sons of the nobles and of the aristocracy should become proficient horsemen.
The author of “The Court of King James” also is emphatic in his advice to courtiers “to be very forwardly inclined to bring up horses,” adding that such horses should be bred from the best strains only, and that no matter how great the sum expended in order to secure good strains, the money could not be looked upon as wasted.
Of the royal studs in the reign of James I., the most important probably were those at Newmarket, at Eltham, at Tutbury, Malmesbury and Cole Park, and among the manuscripts in the British Museum there may be seen to-day an interesting list of the “necessaries” which appertained to the royal stables, all classified under separate headings—geldings, cart horses, coursers, hunters, battle horses, and so on.
Remarks upon the part played by the horse in history at about this time are to be found also in Lodge's “Illustrations of British History,” where, in the third volume, we read that on 6th April 1605 there arrived at Greenwich Palace “a dozen gallant mares, all with foal, four horses, and eleven stallions, all coursers of Naples.”
These the archduke begged King James to accept as a small mark of the esteem in which the king was held by himself and his country-men.
In the historical records of almost the whole of James I.'s reign we find reference made repeatedly to race horses, also to the sport of hunting. An important fixture, as we should call it to-day, apparently was the Chester Meeting. It took place on St George's Day, and the chief race was known as “The St George's Cup.” The riders carried ten stone, and the entrance stake was half-a-crown.