The number of books about horses which have been printed is very large; a good authority states that the total is upward of four thousand volumes; and therefore another seems almost superfluous. Yet from that early book of Wynkyn de Worde, printed in A.D. 1500, Thomas Blundeville’s in 1566, the Duke of Newcastle’s in 1658, and the work by Sir Wm. Hope, Kt., Deputy Lieutenant of Edinburgh Castle, published in 1717, to the host of books on horses which have appeared during the last twenty years, there is not one which can be said to render full justice to the peculiarly English breed whose history it is proposed to examine.

By the exercise of care and judgment Englishmen have achieved many triumphs as breeders of domestic animals; and none of these, perhaps, are more conspicuous than the establishment of the two types of horse—the race horse and heavy draught horse; breeds differing as widely one from the other as the greyhound differs from the mastiff. Each horse is in its own way almost perfect; the former having been brought to the highest state of development for speed, the latter to the highest development of strength; and it would be difficult to maintain that one is more beautiful than the other. Many volumes have been written on the racehorse, and innumerable lives and fortunes have been devoted to perfecting the breed; and if little has been written concerning the draught horse, it will be possible to show that for generations before our time no little attention has been bestowed also upon his improvement.

The aim of the following pages is to set out in convenient form some facts relating to the heavy horse as it existed during the early and middle ages, long before it was brought into general use for farm work and for drawing heavy loads. Exceptional historic interest attaches to this breed; for its lot has been closely interwoven with that of the people of Britain from the earliest times. It is not a little curious to reflect that the animal which formed the very backbone of our ancestors’ independence—on which our forefathers depended for their strength and prowess in the Art of War, is the animal on which we depend to carry on the operations of Agriculture and Commerce—the arts of peace. It must not be forgotten that the use of the horse in agriculture is comparatively modern. In England until the middle ages the work of the farm and almost all heavy draught work was performed by oxen. These animals were in common use for farm work until the latter half of the last century. Arthur Young in his General View of the Agriculture of Lincolnshire, written in 1799, mentions a farm he visited where he saw “two (oxen) and a horse draw home in a waggon as good loads of corn as are common in Suffolk with three horses.” He says further, “about Grantham many oxen have been worked, but all have left off; once they were seen all the way from Grantham to Lincoln, now scarcely any; a pair of mares and one man will do as much work as four oxen and two men.... On the Wolds most farmers have some oxen for working, leading manure, corn and hay.” When horses began to be employed by ordinary occupiers of land they were animals by no means remarkable for strength and substance; “stots” and “affers,” as these were called, were of a stamp distinct from the “Strong” or “Great” horses which in those days were bred and reserved for purposes neither agricultural nor commercial.

The early foundation stock from which investigation proves that our modern Shire horses are descended was brought to a high state of perfection for its special purpose, not only by the judicious introduction of foreign blood, but by wise enactments of the Legislature. We find in the old Statute Books numerous Acts of Parliament which supported private skill and enterprise in the endeavour to improve an animal on which, it may fairly be said, the safety of the nation in no small measure depended.

The facts which it is proposed to set before the reader are, for the most part, the fruit of careful research among old records; and it must be added that figures worked in tapestry, rude paintings of incidents and illustrations which sometimes occur in these records, have frequently been more helpful than the manuscripts themselves. The artist perpetuates what the writer from sheer familiarity ignores; and for this reason the works of old painters have been laid under contribution in the present survey of the Great Horse breed.