The law of 1535 (26 Henry VIII.) declares:—
“For that in many and most places of this realm, commonly little horses and nags of small stature and value be suffered to depasture, and also to cover mares and felys of very small stature, by reason whereof the breed of good and strong horses of this realm is now lately diminished, altered and decayed, and further is likely to decay if speedy remedy be not sooner provided in that behalf.
“It is provided that all owners or fermers of parks and enclosed grounds of the extent of one mile in compass shall keep two mares, apt and able to bear foals of the altitude or height of 13 handfuls at least, upon pain of 40s.
“A penalty of 40s. is imposed on the Lords, Owners, and Fermers of all parks and grounds enclosed, as is above rehearsed, who shall willingly suffer any of the said mares to be covered or kept with any Stoned Horse under the stature of 14 handfuls.”
This Act applied only to enclosed areas, and therefore would not affect the wild ponies in any appreciable degree: but six years later another Act was passed (32 Henry VIII., c. 13) which provided that—
“No person shall put in any forest, chase, moor, heath, common, or waste (where mares and fillies are used to be kept) any stoned horse above the age of two years, not being fifteen hands high within the Shires and territories of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Essex, Kent, South Hampshire, North Wiltshire, Oxford, Berkshire, Worcester, Gloucester, Somerset, South Wales, Bedford, Warwick, Northampton, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Salop, Leicester, Hereford and Lincoln. And furthermore, be it enacted, that if in any of the said drifts there shall be found any mare, filly, foal, or gelding that then shall be thought not to be able nor like to grow to be able to bear foals of reasonable stature or not able nor like to grow to be able to do profitable labours by the discretions of the drivers aforesaid or of the more number of them, then the same driver or drivers shall cause the same unprofitable beasts ... every of them to be killed, and the bodies of them to be buried in the ground, as no annoyance thereby shall come or grow to the people, those near inhabiting or thither resorting.”
This enactment was of a more far-reaching character than its forerunner. The “shires and territories” enumerated were those in which greatest attention was paid to the breeding of Great Horses; “profitable labours,” in those times, could only mean military service, agricultural work, and perhaps pack transport, for any of which purposes the woodland ponies were useless. How far the law proved effectual is another matter: laws more nearly affecting the welfare of the subject were less honoured in the observance than the breach in the remoter parts of the kingdom in those times.
In 1566, when Elizabeth was on the throne, Thomas Blundeville, of Newton Flotman, wrote a book on Horses and Riding; and prefaced it by an “Epistle dedicatorie” to Robert Lord Dudley, Master of the Horse, which begins:
“It would be the means that the Queen may not only cause such statutes touching the breeding of Horses upon Commons to be put in execution: but also that all such parks within the Realme as be in Her Highnesse hands and meet for that purpose might not wholly be employed to the keeping of Deer (which is altogether without profit), but partly to the necessary breeding of Horses for service [i.e., military service] whereof this Realme of all others at this instant hath greatest need.”
It would appear, therefore, that Henry’s laws had become a dead letter, or something very like it, within twenty-five years of its finding place on the Statute Book. It was afterwards repealed in respect of certain counties by Queen Elizabeth and James I. (for particulars see p. 26 and p. 33, “Horses Past and Present.”)