CHAPTER I

The Conqueror's cavalry—Horse fairs and races at Smithfield—King John's foolish fad—The Persians and their horses—Relics of Irish art; what they indicate—Simon de Montfort the first master of foxhounds—The king's right to commandeer horses—Sir Eustace de Hecche; Battle of Falkirk—Marco Polo and white horses; curious superstitions—Edward III. and Richard II. encourage horse breeding—Battle of Crecy

The beginning of William the Conqueror's reign marks a turning-point in the story of the horse's influence upon the British nation, also, incidentally, in the general development of the horse.

Roger de Bellesne, Earl of Shrewsbury, who is said to have been an accomplished horseman—as fine horsemanship was understood in those days—obtained leave of the king to import from Spain a number of stallions of great value.

These stallions, indeed, were said at the time to be “the best procurable in Spain,” and we are told that when King William beheld them he displayed great delight, at the same time “expressing his approval in a very forcible way.”

The king himself apparently was not a finished horseman; yet he had a strong liking for horses, possibly in the same way that “he loved the great deer of the forests as though he had been their father”(!) Most likely he was too heavily built a man to make a graceful rider, though it is said that upon the arrival of Lord Shrewsbury's stallions he went on horseback to inspect them, and, as we know, towards the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century the poet Drayton praised very highly the progeny of these same horses.

Naturally this importation of valuable stallions greatly improved the breed of horses in Britain, and from the time of the Conquest onward the improvement was distinctly noticeable.

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Though some historians tell us that the Anglo-Saxons rode on horseback, others maintain that they did not ride. There can be no doubt, however, that they did not fight on horseback. The well-known scene on Bayeux tapestry that represents the battle of Hastings shows us Harold fighting on foot when the arrow strikes him in the eye.

A comparatively modern historian has tried to disprove the popular story of the Normans shooting their shafts high into the air so that in their descent these shafts might pierce the heads of the enemy, but the old narrative is still believed by the great body of modern students.

King William's warriors were, of course, almost all mounted—of that there cannot be a doubt. Had they not been the Saxons would most likely have won the day, even though the enemy was clad in mail. Also it should be remembered that the cavalry brought over by King William was practically of the stamp that some three centuries earlier had resisted very firmly the Moslem attack at Poictiers. The chargers were of the same stock, and therefore it may with truth be said that the famous Norman Conquest and the great and important events that followed it in the history of this country were directly due to the simple fact that the Normans possessed war horses and knew thoroughly how to manage them.

Of precisely what stamp the Normans' chargers were that were imported at this time cannot be said for certain. Without doubt, however, they were tall and heavily built animals, for the armed men they had to carry were all of very great weight.

For ten, or possibly twelve centuries a breed of great horses had been multiplying largely in the northern and western regions of Europe, so the inference is that the cavalry of the Normans must have been of that breed.

Also the saddles they are represented as wearing were extremely massive and presumably of great weight. Those shown on the Bayeux tapestry have a deep curve which must have made them difficult to fall out of, and we are told by Giraldus that saddles almost exactly similar, and provided with stirrups, were in use in Ireland a century or so later. The riders at that time wore high boots, prick spurs, and hauberk.

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A monk of Canterbury, William Stephanides, writing early in the reign of Henry II., alludes to various kinds of horses used in Great Britain, and among these there undoubtedly were some of the stamp that the Normans imported.

“Without one of the London city gates,” he tells us, “is a certain smooth field”—no doubt the site known to-day as Smithfield—“and every Friday there is a brave sight of gallant horses to be sold. Many come from the city to buy or look on—to wit, earls, barons, knights and citizens. There are to be found here managed or war horses (_dextrarii_), of elegant shape, full of fire and giving every proof of a generous and noble temper; likewise cart horses, horses fitted for the dray, or the plough, or the chariot.”

From other sources we are able to gather that at this time there must have been many war horses in England, and that they were for the most part animals of great size and strength. Consequently the cavalry of the period were extremely unwieldy. On the other hand we know that the rest of the horses distributed throughout the country were but little bigger than cobs, and we read that though attempts were made to mount men-at-arms on some of them all such attempts had soon to be abandoned, the horses being “oppressed by the weight of the armour and the heavy accoutrements.”

Probably this was the reason such strenuous efforts were presently made by the various reigning monarchs, and by the parliaments that were in power between the reign of Henry II. and the reign of Elizabeth, to breed bigger and heavier horses, “great horses” as they came to be called, and are often termed still.

Some of the Latin records of the Mediæval age contain interesting allusions to these great horses, _dextrarii_ and _magni equi_ they were called. The horses of this stamp do not appear to have been very intelligent animals, but their physical strength was colossal, and in selecting them particular attention was paid to their power of endurance, or, as we call it to-day, their staying power.

Apparently Henry II. and Richard I. were partial to chestnut and dark brown stallions, but King John, and later Queen Elizabeth, preferred black. Indeed we are told that in the beginning of his reign King John vowed he would have his courtiers ride none but black horses, and that the sums he had to pay to enable him to gratify so foolish a fad—it may have been mere vanity—were quoted among the acts of extravagance that later incensed his barons and led ultimately to their making him sign Magna Charta.

As the size and strength of the war horses grew greater in all countries, so did the weight and strength of the armour steadily increase. Towards the end of the twelfth century the Norman hauberk that for many years had proved effective, and that even the most far-seeing of the warriors firmly believed could not be improved upon, began to make way for the heavy chain mail—the most picturesque armour ever adopted by any nation—which, when first introduced, was said to render the warrior almost invulnerable.

But as time went on, and the strength of both men and horses further increased, and the weapons of war became more deadly still, the armour again underwent a change, so that about the beginning of the fourteenth century we find the “perfect armour,” as it had come to be called, being in its turn discarded in favour of the hideous plate armour that less than a hundred years afterwards was adopted by practically every “civilised” nation in Europe.

A monk of Canterbury, by name FitzStephen, who in the reign of Henry II. was secretary to the famous Archbishop à Becket, refers incidentally to some rather primitive horse races which took place at Smithfield towards the end of the twelfth century, and in doing so he quaintly tells us that “the jockeys, inspired with thoughts of applause, and in the hope of victory, clap spurs to the willing horses, brandish their whips, and cheer them with their cries!”

Reference is made to these races in several other of the early documents, and though they are among the first horse races of which descriptions have been handed down to us, it seems clear that they attracted a great concourse of spectators and gave rise to much reckless wagering. That the animals entered were all practically untrained is made apparent.

King Richard I. is said to have been a good judge of a horse and to have owned a number of swift-running steeds. Upon one or two occasions he endeavoured to establish horse racing as a national pastime, but the country was not yet ripe for it, and his attempts met with but scant encouragement.

It is said that his courtiers strove to serve their royal master by having recourse to threats in those districts where the introduction of horse racing was opposed, but all to no purpose.

King John, upon ascending the throne, devoted much time to hunting and similar sports, and valued good horses so greatly that in some instances he insisted that the fines he was so fond of extorting should be paid in horses instead of in money.

Then, following in the footsteps of William the Conqueror, he imported a number of stallions, among them many of the Eastern breed, and on the pastures in Kent where the town of Eltham and the village of Mottingham now stand he established the famous stud from which so many of the horses owned in after years by Queen Elizabeth were directly descended.

Worthy of mention here is the coincidence that the early days of some of the most celebrated thoroughbreds of recent times were spent in the very paddocks where King John's foals and imported horses were disporting themselves some seven centuries earlier.

On the subject of the great horses of the Middle Ages it is interesting to read that while British rulers were striving to breed animals which would be both bigger and stronger than their predecessors, the Persians in their country were endeavouring to breed and rear horses on lines precisely similar, and with the same objects in view.

How successful the attempts of the latter proved may be gathered from the fact that, in the centuries that followed, the Persian horses became renowned the world over for their immense strength, though the animals of this particular breed never became famous for their speed.

Indeed the chief victories won by the Persians in their terrific encounters with the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were due in a great measure to the superior size and strength of the Persian war horses, though, of course, the fact that the Turks had only their shields with which to protect themselves must have helped the Persians materially.

Perhaps some of the most interesting and accurate representations of the horses of about this period are those to be found in parts of Ireland among the remains of Irish art. These remains, rather let us call them relics, are almost matchless, and they represent horses driven in chariots, and some mounted by riders.

Thus three horsemen in addition to two chariots with horses harnessed are to be seen on the two panels of the plinth of the historic North Cross at Clonmacnoise in King's County. The wheels of these chariots have eight spokes, and the relic is believed by the foremost of our antiquaries to date back to the tenth century.

A panel almost similar, dating back approximately to the same period, is to be seen on an upright cross in a street in the town of Kells, in County Meath, and on this cross not only are horsemen shown, but in addition a hunting scene is clearly depicted.

Relics such as these help to demonstrate that the interest taken in horses by the people of Great Britain, just before and just after the Conquest, was shared by the natives of Ireland, though not until several centuries had elapsed did the Irish show signs of becoming the thoroughly horse-loving nation that they are to-day.

It is true that from a very early period they were fond of most kinds of outdoor pursuits that need daring in addition to the exercise of skill upon the part of those anxious to become proficient at them. Also it is true that the horse has from first to last had much to do with the moulding of the Irish character.

The horse's immediate bearing upon the history and progress of Ireland begins, however, at a later date, and in the same manner the importation of great horses, and the establishment of what must have been the precursors of our modern stud farms, occur later in Ireland's history than in England's.

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With the accession of Henry III. we find upon the throne a king keenly interested in all that had to do with horses, and devoted to the chase as well as to “stirring contests between competing horses.” For authentic particulars of the contests in which these “competing horses” took part we may search the ancient records almost in vain. Apparently the few race meetings organised were, to say the best we can of them, not of great importance, not excepting those in which the king and his nobles were directly interested. To afford opportunities for wagering was, so far as one can gather, their principal _raison d'être_, and such rules of racing as did exist most likely were almost wholly disregarded.

In this respect the king would seem not to have been much more particular than his subjects, though, as already said, information obtainable upon the subject is of the scantiest, and is at best unreliable.

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In the history of Henry III.'s reign there occurs what we may take to be the first direct reference to “a village named Newmarket,” in Cambridgeshire. As I have already pointed out, the tribe that dwelt on Newmarket Heath in very early times and was known as the Iceni apparently was interested in horses and to some extent bred horses, so it is not astonishing to learn that in the thirteenth century the people then living in Newmarket and the neighbourhood still carried on the traditions of the Iceni, even to boasting openly that steeds bred upon the Heath could not be rivalled for speed “the world over.”

This, most likely, was an empty boast, for what could a small community, that presumably travelled but rarely, know at first hand of horses bred even in far distant parts of England?

It is true that Simon de Montfort had a high opinion of the horses bred at Newmarket, for he tells us so in a letter written a few years before his death—he was killed at Evesham in 1265. Presumably he rode in the hunting field some of his horses that had been reared at Newmarket, for he was as keen about hunting as about soldiering.

Historians have described him as “the great patriotic baron of his period,” a description that is accurate if we are to judge from his acts. I believe I am right in saying that Simon de Montfort was the first master of foxhounds of whom mention is made in British history, but upon this point I am open to correction. Certainly he is the first of whose life we have authentic details. On his great seal attached to a deed dated 1259, and now in Paris among the royal archives, he is shown galloping beside his hounds, urging them on, and blowing his horn. He is said to have hunted largely in Leicestershire and Warwickshire, and as he lived in the thirteenth century the seal referred to forms most likely the first picture we have of a _bonâ fide_ run with foxhounds.

In Blount's “Ancient Tenures,” a volume that is extremely interesting and in some respects amusing, we are told that “In the reign of King Edward I. Walter Marescullus paid at the crucem lapideam six horseshoes with nails for a certain building which he held of the king _in capite_ opposite the stone cross.”

This recalls to mind that in the reign of Henry III., and even later, horseshoes and horseshoe nails were frequently taken in lieu of rent. Whether or no horseshoes were of exceptional value does not appear, but we are led to suppose that they must have been from the fact that in 1251 a farrier named Walter le Brun, who lived in the Strand, in London, was granted a plot of land in the parish of St Clements “to place there a forge, six horseshoes to be paid to the parish every year for the privilege.”

In after years the same plot was granted to the Mayor and citizens of London, who, it is said, still render six horseshoes to the Exchequer annually.

According to the Statutes, 25, Edward I., c. 21; and 36, Edward III.