Richard's grief and rage at hearing that Bolingbroke had chosen Roan Barbary, of all horses, upon which to ride to Westminster when he went there to be crowned, has many times been described, Shakespeare himself referring to the incident in King Richard II. in the well-known line, “When Bolingbroke rode on Roan Barbary, that horse that thou so often hast bestrid.” Roan Barbary was a tall horse, well shaped and well schooled, but of uncertain temper. The king “could do with the steed whate'er he wished,” but some of the grooms hardly dared approach to groom it “lest he sideways kick them.”
It is interesting to note here that the history of early times, when it touches upon horses—which it does frequently—alludes upon many occasions to the partiality of particular horses for certain persons, and to their equally marked dislike for certain other persons.
The inference naturally would be that these particular horses were partial to the men who treated them humanely and disliked those who ill-treated them. If the early historians are to be believed, however, the horses' likes and dislikes for various persons were irrespective of the way they had been treated by such persons.
Particularly does this appear to have been the case with Roan Barbary, for we are assured that all who had charge of him, or to do with him in any way, treated him invariably “with kindness and great cordiality” (!) the king having issued strict orders that they should.
In the British Museum there may be seen to-day a French metrical history of the deposition of Richard II. which informs us that the king owned “many a good horse of foreign breed.”
Mr J. P. Hore, the well-known authority, is of opinion that “the thoroughbred English horse was characteristic of the nation” in the reign of Richard II., and adds that “horses were then recognised and their praises sung.”
There is no doubt that between 1377 and 1399 the interest taken in horses in this country by persons of almost every class developed rapidly. The agricultural community in particular had by then begun to turn its attention seriously to the rearing of a better stamp of horse, and we know that Chaucer, who lived from 1328 to 1400, tells us that his famous monk had “full many a daintie horse in stable.”
Chaucer's interesting references to the various sorts of horse in use in the fourteenth century are numerous, and they serve to show that persons of different rank rode horses of different stamp. Thus on that fine April morning when the motley party of pilgrims set out from the Bell at Southwark upon their hasty journey we find the Knight mounted on a big and powerful horse—naturally a knight wearing armour needed such a beast to carry him—whereas the steed ridden by “the Clerk of Oxenford” was “as leane as any rake.”