“I made a present to the King,” Sully writes, “of six beautiful horses richly caparisoned, and the Sieur of St Antoine as their keeper.” The Sieur of St Antoine, who after being equerry to Prince Henry became equerry to Charles I., is represented in the famous Vandyck picture of King Charles in armour, in the picture now in the National Gallery.
VAN DYCK'S FAMOUS PICTURE, NOW IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, OF CHARLES I ON HORSEBACK
It was about the year 1641 that the Duke of Buckingham greatly helped to improve the breed of horses by importing the famous Helmsley Turk and the almost equally famous Morocco Barb. It is curious to read that the importation of these horses was at first looked upon with grave suspicion by a great body of the principal horse breeders in this country, and by others interested in the horse and its development.
To what the antagonism was owing one can hardly say for certain. One report has it that some among the duke's personal enemies—he had many enemies—were determined to do all in their power to injure him by wrecking any scheme in which he presumably was interested. The sums he paid for these horses were considerable, but the excellent effect the good blood had upon the breed fully repaid him for the incidental outlay, also for the great trouble to which he had been put to secure such excellent stallions.
Shortly before this some English officers serving in the Dutch army had introduced horse racing into Holland, and the popularity of the new sport began to spread there quickly. Soon a number of race meetings came to be organised, and in a short time Dutch emissaries were sent over to England for the express purpose of purchasing blood stock here.
Being comparatively ignorant of horses—ignorant, that is to say, of the requirements essential in a racing stallion—these emissaries were at first cheated in the most barefaced manner by some of the very men who only a short time before had been their guests in Holland!
Later, however, they succeeded in importing some very valuable blood stock, and in several respects the race meetings they presently organised were better arranged than many of the English meetings of that period.