From this and similar statements it has been inferred that the hounds Henry hunted with ran some artificial line, that otherwise the horses could not have been stationed “beforehand along the line of country he meant to take.” The probability, however, is that the king's horses were stationed at different points all over the country to be hunted, for it seems impossible that the king, heavy man though he undoubtedly was, could alone have ridden eight or ten horses to a standstill in a single day's hunting!
Indeed in Henry III.'s reign the men who hunted regularly most likely rode more than one horse a day, just as most hunting men do now. At that period the sport was, of course, very different from our modern foxhunting, and from the descriptions of it that have been handed down to us there is reason to believe that plenty of Henry's nobles hunted not because they were fond of the sport, but because they deemed it diplomatic to appear to be wholeheartedly as devoted to the chase as the king himself most certainly was.
Yet the king apparently was not hoodwinked as easily as he may have appeared to be, or feigned to be, for upon more than one occasion he availed himself of opportunities to make some of his sycophants look remarkably ridiculous in public.
In this connection an interesting little story is narrated of Sir Miles Partridge, a knight who figured rather largely in Henry VIII.'s reign. Apparently Sir Miles had more than once writhed in silence beneath the king's gibes, though all the while impatiently awaiting an opportunity to retaliate in a dignified way.
The opportunity came at last, when the king, in a merry mood, suggested to the knight that he should dice with him. This happened at about the time when the monasteries were being dissolved, and Henry's coffers were in consequence unusually well replenished. At first the king won persistently; then suddenly his luck deserted him, with the result that in the end he lost control of his temper and with an oath shouted at Sir Miles that he would stake upon a single throw of the dice the great bells of St Paul's against a hundred sovereigns.
The dice were thrown, and Sir Miles won, and the bells, described by a chronicler of the period as “the greatest peal in England,” were taken away and melted down, to the knight's unfeigned delight.
It is said that the king never forgave Sir Miles Partridge for this. Later Sir Miles was charged with some criminal offence and imprisoned, and in 1551 he was beheaded on Tower Hill.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the horse continued to figure largely in romance, and thus it comes that we find horses, fictitious and otherwise, playing important rôles in the works of fiction of the principal authors of about that period.
Ariosto's immortal narrative of “Orlando Furioso,” written towards the close of the fifteenth or in the beginning of the sixteenth century, has given us “the little vigilant horse,” Vegliantio, called Veillantif in the French romance, where Orlando appears as Ronald.
Then we have “the horse of the golden bridle,” Orlando's remarkable charger, Brigliadoro, whose speed equalled Bajardo's; also Sacripant's steed, Frontaletto, “the horse with the little head,” that was capable of doing many extraordinary things. Sacripant, who was King of Circassia, and a Saracen, held secret consultations with Frontaletto, and the horse could understand its master's every word.