An apparently trivial incident such as this helps to show how thoroughly in earnest the men of fortune must have been who early in the sixteenth century devoted much time and attention to the breeding and rearing of valuable horses. It has been alleged that the Marquis of Mantua made his initial present of horses to King Henry solely in order to ingratiate himself in royal favour; but the anxiety he clearly displayed upon several occasions when gifts of horses were sent to Henry by men of rank and fortune leads to the belief either that Gonzaga must have been of a jealous nature, or else that he was inordinately proud of his own stud and extremely desirous that its high reputation should be maintained.
The value of the two horses sent over by Ferdinand is said to have been approximately 100,000 ducats. That would seem to be an impossible sum to have paid in a period when money was worth many times more than it is to-day; but when we read that both horses were richly caparisoned (regio ornatu) we may well suppose that the sum named included also the cost of trappings.
Under the circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Ferdinand of Arragon—Ferdinand the Catholic, as he was popularly called—should have been deemed insane by a great body of his subjects when it became known that he had sent so extravagant a gift to King Henry, his son-in-law.
So prevalent, indeed, was this impression, that reasons were at once put forward to account for the alleged lack of intellect. Thus the incident of his having been poisoned two years before by his new queen, Germaine de Fois, was mentioned amongst possible causes, the serious illness that followed having proved almost fatal.
Particulars of this attempt upon the life of Ferdinand the Catholic are to be found in one of the letters of Peter Martyr, though the writer of the letter does not seem to think that any insanity with which the king may have been afflicted towards the close of his life can have been due to the cause assigned. Indeed in one of these letters he directly attributes the king's death to over-indulgence in hunting and matrimony, either of which, as he says, is liable to hasten dissolution in a man over sixty years of age!
Not content with the very large and valuable stud that he now possessed, Henry found it necessary in 1518 to send “a Bolognese gentleman” out to Italy to choose still more horses for him there, special instructions being given to him that the best animals he could find in Italy must be bought at once, irrespective of cost, and shipped across to England without undue delay—an order that the Bolognese gentleman “obeyed implicitly and to the king's great satisfaction as well as to his own.” There may well be a hidden meaning in the last words!
We do not hear anything more that is of interest and that has to do with Henry's stud until the year 1526, when we read that “eighteen of the finest of his horses were sent by King Henry VIII. as a gift to Francis I.” The reason he sent so many is not stated, nor are we told if these were chargers, race horses or great horses.
After that the sending of gift horses apparently became an established custom amongst men of rank and of wealth, as well as amongst potentates, so much so that persons of quality vied one with another in sending gifts of valuable horses to their friends.
The last present of the sort received by Henry VIII. consisted of twenty-five Spanish horses sent to him by the emperor, Charles V., in 1539.
Hunting is known to have been one of Henry's favourite amusements, and in a despatch dated 10th September 1519, written by Giustinian when Venetian Ambassador to England, we are informed that when Henry hunted he invariably rode several horses, or, in the words of the despatch, “never took that diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he caused to be stationed beforehand along the line of country he meant to take.”