Riding and Driving

by Edward L. Anderson; Price Collier

This is accounted for by the fact that horses in England even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century were held in low esteem at home, where they were valued at about fifty shillings each. The better class of horses in England at this time were brought from Barbary or from Flanders. The well-known saying, "The gray mare is the better horse," arose from the recognized superiority of the gray mares from Flanders over the English horses of that date.

Even as late as 1700, dogs harnessed to small trucks did most of the teaming in the narrow and badly paved streets of the English towns, and were by no means uncommon in London for many years after that time.

One may judge of the condition of the roads, and the difficulties of transportation, by the charges. Seven pounds sterling a ton was charged for transportation from London to Birmingham; and twelve pounds sterling a ton from London to Exeter. Coal in those days was unknown except in the districts where it was mined, owing to the fact that the transportation of coal over the roads as they then were in England, would have made the price prohibitive.

The demand for the better class of horses in England at the time of the earlier importations of these animals to America, was mainly for the army, and for heavy horses to pull the carriages and heavy travelling coaches of the nobility and gentry. Such horses as were needed for these purposes were pretty generally imported from Barbary and Arabia, and from Flanders.

There seems to have been, however, a native horse in Great Britain; for Cæsar notes the fact that the Britons drove war-chariots.

William the Conqueror, who represents to England genealogically what the Mayflower represents to America, gave to a certain Simon St. Liz, a Norman friend of his, the entire town of Northampton and the whole hundred of Falkley, then valued at £40 a year, "to provide shoes for his horses."

From 1066 to the close of the twelfth century there was renewal and improvement of the British horse by importations from the continent, and also by stray animals brought back by the Crusaders under Richard and others; but such improvements of the native breed as these importations imply were of small importance, and without system or aim of any kind.

During the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, important legislation looking to the care and breeding of horses was passed, and when James I., who was fond of racing, came to the throne, he bought from a Mr. Markham an Arabian stallion, afterwards always known as the "Markham Arabian," paying for him what was for those days the extravagant amount of five hundred guineas.

This purchase by King James marks the beginning of high-class breeding in England. From then on, down through the reigns of Charles I., Charles II., and William III., not to mention Oliver Cromwell who raced horses with the same enthusiasm that he sang psalms, many horses were imported, much interest was taken in racing and breeding, and for the last three hundred years, from 1603, when James came to the throne, till now, England has been the home of, probably, the best horses in the world, and nothing pleases her people as a whole more than to have the reigning sovereign win the Derby.

The first volume of the English Stud Book, then known as the "Match Book," was published in 1808, and from then on we have had a more or less orderly sequence of breeding history, and the English thoroughbred race-horse, the progenitor at one time or another of the best types of horses in this country, became a recognized standard of horse.