We may approximately estimate the value of horses of a particular stamp at about this time from an inventory that was drawn up in 1572 of the effects of the second Earl of Cumberland of Skipton Castle.
Therein we find a stoned horse called Young Mark Antony valued at £16; another horse, Grey Clyfford, at £11: Whyte Dacre, at £10; Sorrell Tempest, £4; White Tempest and Baye Tempest, each at £5; Baye Myddleton, £1, and so on. Some mares and their followers are also mentioned, and lastly ten cart horses.
Many fictitious stories have been woven around Suleiman, the favourite charger of the Earl of Essex, but they are not of sufficient interest to place on record. In Elizabeth's reign a number of barbs, also many Spanish horses descended from barbs, were obtained from captured foreign vessels, and these the queen looked upon for the most part as her personal perquisites.
Consequently about the middle of her reign an order was issued that all captured horses must without exception be sent direct to the queen, the infliction of a severe penalty being threatened if the order should be disregarded. A number of these animals were subsequently sent as gifts to the more faithful of her nobles, and all the recipients sent in return “expressions of extremest gratitude.”
There is a diversity of opinion as to what constituted “the staple article of food” of horses in the sixteenth century, though of course hay was used largely. Bishop Hall throws some light upon the subject when he mentions that thoroughbred stallions when largely in demand were given eggs and oysters.
Reference to eggs and oysters in this connection is made elsewhere, so we may conclude that the custom of thus feeding stallions was not an uncommon one, at any rate in the time of Elizabeth.
Horse bread has already been mentioned, but I have not come upon any direct allusion to oats being used to feed horses upon at this period.
Several of the writers in Elizabeth's reign openly bemoaned the development of horse racing, urging that trouble and disaster followed in its train, but their moans were for the most part stifled in the clamour of general approbation.
Among those who spoke strongly in condemnation of horse racing was the rather eccentric Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Late in life he wrote—to the amusement of his friends and relatives—a complete history of his own career, in which volume he again reverts to his pet aversion by declaring that among the exercises of which he disapproved were “the riding of running horses, there being much cheating in that kind.”