Charles I. inherited, to some extent, his father’s taste for the Turf, and combined therewith a love of the manÉge, due to his own accomplished horsemanship. The interest in racing was now so general, and the inducement to breed light and swift horses for the purpose so great, that other classes of horse were neglected, to the alarm of the more far-seeing among the King’s subjects. So seriously was the tendency to breed only light horses regarded, that Sir Edward Harwood presented a memorial to Charles, in which it was pointed out that there was a great deficiency in the kingdom of horses of a useful type, and praying that steps should be taken to encourage the breeding of horses for service, and racing discouraged. Charles would seem to have been conscious that excessive attention to breeding light horses was a national question; at all events, that animals of a more generally useful stamp were scarce; for in 1641 he granted licenses for the importation of horses, enjoining the licensees to import coach horses, mares, and geldings not under 14 hands, and between the ages of three and seven years.
In November, 1627, Charles issued his Proclamation forbidding the use of snaffles, except for hunting and hawking (“in times of Disport”), and requiring all riders to use bits. His motive was, no doubt, a desire to encourage the manÉge, which was then considered the highest form of horsemanship. The King and the Queen had separate establishments, and each kept a large number of horses, including racehorses. The English system of stable management had made such advances at this time that Marshal Bassompierre, the French Ambassador in London, refers to it in his memoirs, and recommends that English methods be followed in France. The same writer speaks, too, of the superiority of English horses.
The hackney-coach question came up again in this reign, and Charles issued a Proclamation dealing with the subject in January, 1636. He forbade the use of coaches in London and Westminster unless they were about to make a journey of at least three miles; and he required every owner of a coach to keep four horses for the King’s service. We may conjecture that his prohibition of hackney coaches was not the outcome of a desire to encourage horsemanship; for about eighteen months later he granted to his Master of the Horse, James, Marquis of Hamilton, power to license fifty hackney coachmen in London and the suburbs and convenient places in other parts of the realm. This license, granted by Proclamation in July, 1637, suggests favouritism, as according to a contemporary publication[10] there were in 1636 over 6,000 coaches, private and public, in London and the suburbs: surely more than were needed, as some 10,000 odd hansoms and four-wheelers meet London’s normal requirements to-day.
Thomas D’Urfey’s song,[11] “Newmarket,” which is thought to have been written in the reign of Charles I., shows that Newmarket was then, as now, regarded as the headquarters of the Turf.
