For the idea used to be—and it has not yet quite died out—that a high temper must primarily be the outcome of high feeding. We read that upon one occasion Henry VII. commanded that a horse he was to ride in a public procession be left unfed for twenty-four hours, and as no reason is assigned for the order we are justified in conjecturing that he must have felt inwardly nervous, possibly that he feared the animal might, if fed as usual, prove to be what we call to-day “a handful”!
In other respects the horses of some four hundred years ago would seem to have been treated at any rate with ordinary humanity.
CHAPTER III
Inauguration and development of the Royal Stud—Exportation of horses declared by Henry VIII. to be illegal—Sale of horses to Scotsmen pronounced to be an act of felony—Riding matches become popular—Ferdinand of Arragon's gift of horses to Henry VIII.—Henry's love of hunting—King Henry stakes the bells of St Paul's on a throw of the dice—Some horses of romance—Horse-breeding industry crippled in Scotland
THE accession of Henry VIII. to the throne, in 1509, marked the beginning of a great development in the breeding and rearing of valuable horses, for that erratic monarch, whatever his failings may have been—and that he had a few failings we have reason to know—was at heart a sportsman in the true meaning of the now frequently misused term.
We read that soon after ascending the throne “he took steps to arrange for the importation from Italy, Spain, Turkey and elsewhere, at regular intervals, of the best stallions and some of the best mares procurable.” That done, he set to work to establish at Hampton Court the Royal Stud which later was to become so famous, and among the many horses he received as gifts—the majority from men anxious to keep in favour with a monarch so all-powerful—were the famous mares “perfect in shape and size” that Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, sent over in 1514, a gift to which he soon afterwards added “a Barb worth its weight in silver” which he declared he had taken great pains to secure.
That Henry was deeply gratified is obvious from his remark that he “had never ridden better trained horses,” and that “for years he had not received such an agreeable present.”