feathered legs, prove it an example of a breed intimately allied to, if not identical with, the English Great Horse.
Our Frontispiece is reproduced from an engraving of a picture by Hans Burgkmair, a German artist, who lived 1473-1529. It not only affords an excellent idea of the stamp of horse ridden by armour-clad knights of the period, but also of the armour borne by the horse.
THE LAWS OF HENRY VIII.
In Henry VIII.’s reign (1509-1547) special attention was directed to the breeding of strong horses; new laws were made which sought to secure strength and stature by requiring sires and dams of a certain size and mould. Breeding was allowed only under restrictions, and a distinct element of compulsion is the enactment that all prelates and nobles (“whose wives wore French hoods or velvet bonnets”) should maintain stallions of the required standard. The law passed in 1535 (26 Hy. VIII.) runs:—
“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 like 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, being not spayed, apt and able to bear foals of the altitude or height of thirteen handfuls at least, upon pain of 40/.”
“A penalty of 40/ 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 fourteen handfuls.”
The year 1541 saw another statute (32 Hy. VIII.) This enacted 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 15 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.”