Queen Elizabeth, herself an admirable horsewoman, was as fully imbued with the necessity for encouraging the breeding of horses as her father, Henry VIII., and she lost little time in dealing with the whole subject after her accession. Energetic measures were evidently much needed, if we may accept the statements made by Sir Thomas Chaloner, in a Latin poem written when he was ambassador at Madrid, in 1579. He observes that if Englishmen chose to devote attention to breeding, with all the advantages their country offered, they could rear better horses than they could import. England, he averred, had none but “vile and ordinary horses,” which were suffered to run at large with the mares. In the first year of her reign Elizabeth renewed Henry VIII.’s Act forbidding the export of horses to Scotland. Her next important step was taken in the fourth year The Queen evidently considered the laws she found on the statute book all that were necessary to ensure attention to the interests of horse-breeding; for she refrained for many years from fresh legislation, contenting herself with Royal Proclamations in which she prescribed limits of time for her subjects to supply themselves with horses according to She made some changes in the existing laws, notably that passed in the thirty-second year of Henry VIII.’s reign, concerning the stature of horses in specified shires. That law applied among other counties to Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon, Northampton, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk; 8 Eliz., c. 8, passed in 1566, exempted the Isle of Ely and “other moors, marshes and fens of Cambridgeshire,” and the above-mentioned counties from operation of the Act because “the said moors, of their unfirmness, moysture and wateryshnes” could not bear such big horses without danger of their “mireyng, drowning and peryshinge.” She also (31 Eliz. 12) passed another “Acte to avoyde horse stealinge,” the chief feature of which was to forbid anyone unknown to the toll-taker to sell a horse in the market unless the would-be seller could produce “one sufficient and credible” witness to vouch for his respectability. The evil had grown to the proportions of a Queen Elizabeth’s reign saw important changes. The application of gunpowder to hand-firearms destroyed the protective value of heavy armour, and with heavy armour gradually went the horse required to carry it. The disappearance of the Great Horse as a charger was very slow, however. In 1685 the Duke of Newcastle published his famous work, The Manner of Feeding, Dressing and Training of Horses for the Great Saddle, and fitting them for the Service of the Field in time of War. The book was probably of little use to posterity, for by that time the day of the Great Horse as a charger was very near its close, if not quite at an end. The introduction of coaches was another mark of social progress; and light horses, Arab, Barb and Spanish, were in demand to improve our native breeds. Until 1580, when carriages came into use in England, saddle horses were used by all of whatever degree. Though the side saddle had been introduced in Richard II.’s time, ladies still rode frequently on a pillion behind a gentleman or man-servant. Queen Eliza The Queen was an ardent supporter of the Turf and kept racehorses at Greenwich, Waltham, St. Albans, Eaton, Hampton Court, Richmond, Windsor and Charing Cross. Racing had become a popular amusement in the earlier years of Elizabeth’s reign, and her participation in the sport was probably due in great measure to her conviction that it must prove beneficial to the breeding industry. The Roodee at Chester appears to have been one of the first public racecourses; the townspeople gave a silver bell to be run for. Racing was well established in Scotland at an earlier date; in 1552, during Edward VI.’s reign, there were races with bells as prizes. There were races at Salisbury in 1585, Queen Elizabeth retained her love of sport and the physical ability to indulge it to an advanced age. It is said that in April, 1602, being then in her sixty-ninth year, she rode ten miles on horseback and hunted the same day. Following the example set in Edward VI.’s reign, Sir Philip Sydney engaged two Italian experts named Prospero and Romano, to teach riding; the Earl of Leicester, the Queen’s Master of the Horse, also had among his suite an Italian horseman, named Claudio Corte, who wrote a book on the art of riding, which was published in London, in 1584. Thomas |