Richard II. was fond of horses and did not neglect the interests of breeding; though he on one occasion displayed his regard in a fashion which to modern minds is at least high-handed. There was a scarcity of horses in the early years of his reign, and prices rose in conformity with the law of supply and demand. Richard, considering only the needs of his knights, issued a proclamation (1386) forbidding breeders to ask the high prices they were demanding. This proclamation was published in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire.

Passing mention may be made of an Act which was placed on the Statute Book in 1396. In those days all travelling was performed on horseback, and the equivalent of the coach or jobmaster of much later times was the hackneyman, who let out horses to travellers at rates of hire fixed by law. The hackneymen were in the very nature of their business liable to be imposed upon by unprincipled persons, who would demand horses from them without tendering payment, on the false plea that they were royal messengers journeying in haste on business of the State. Not infrequently, too, the hirer or borrower was none other than a horse-thief, who rode the animal into some remote country town, and sold him to whoever would buy. Richard II.’s Act of 1396, aimed at suppression of these practices, laying penalties upon anyone found guilty of them; and it further called upon the hackneymen to help themselves by placing a distinctive mark on their horses. Any animal bearing such a mark might be seized by the hackneyman if he found it in possession of another, and no compensation could be claimed by the person from whose custody it was taken.

The earliest account of a race that we can trace (apart from the sports at Smithfield) refers to the year 1377, the first of Richard’s reign. In that year the King and the Earl of Arundel rode a race[4] (particulars of conditions, distance, weights, &c., are wanting!), which it would seem was won by the Earl, since the King purchased his horse afterwards for a sum equal to £20,000 in modern money.

For nearly a hundred years after the deposition of Richard II., the available records throw little or no light upon our subject. The Wars of the Roses (1450-1471) were productive of results injurious alike to agriculture, stock breeding, and commerce. During a period when horses for military service were in constant demand, and were liable, unless the property of some powerful noble, to seizure by men of either of the contending factions, it was not worth any man’s while to breed horses, still less to try to improve them. The fifteenth century, therefore, or at least a considerable portion of it, saw retrogression rather than progress in English horse-breeding.