With regard to the pictures that are said to have been drawn from life in those days, if they are true to life it becomes obvious that some three centuries ago it was not customary for race riders, or “tryers,” to stand in their stirrups while riding races, as they do to-day and most certainly did in the last century and the century before it. This is strange, for some of the earliest of our writers who touch incidentally upon the subject of race riding are rather emphatic in declaring that the jockey should get rid of all “dead” weight, and of course it is chiefly by standing in the stirrups that “dead” weight can be neutralised.
James I. would seem to have paid more attention to the theory of training horses he intended to run than any of his predecessors did, though this is not great praise, so ignorant of the fundamental principles of scientific training were the horse owners of about that period.
Upon slight provocation horses were freely bled, just as human beings were bled or “leeched” less than a hundred years ago. Indeed we read of one horse that was bled while in the hunting field, owing to its having proved too restive for its owner to ride with comfort (!); while another was driven into a leech pond in order that the leeches might suck off “the goodlie warts” with which its belly and thighs were studded.
So far as I have been able to ascertain, about a century and a half ago the leech cure was deemed quite the best for warts. Yet perhaps we are wrong to think or to speak contemptuously of the ignorance of our forefathers. Who can say that in years to come our descendants may not speak as contemptuously of us—their ancestors—because we fired horses, and because we drenched them with physic for various ailments?
Indeed there are already veterinary surgeons who aver that to fire a horse under any circumstances is to commit a grave blunder, and that firing as a general practice ought emphatically to be abandoned.
CHAPTER II
First races of importance run at Newmarket—Races in Hyde Park—The Helmsley Turk and the Morocco Barb—Racing introduced into Holland—Importation of Spanish stallions into England—Prince Charles's riding master, the Duke of Newcastle—Increasing cost of horses—Marshal de Bassompierre; his loss through gambling, £500,000 in a year; Sir John Fenwick—Sir Edward Harwood's pessimism—Cromwell's Ironsides—Armour discarded—The opposition to stage coaches; Mr Cressett's theory; Charles II. favours their adoption
