THE early history of Newmarket is more or less wrapped in mystery, or rather in confusion; in other words, the writers who have dealt with “the inauguration of Newmarket racing,” as one of them terms it, in many instances contradict one another so flatly that the truth can be arrived at only by conjecture or by inference.

Apparently the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the ill wind that indirectly benefited Newmarket so far as its horses were concerned, for there is no doubt that many of the horses rescued from drowning when the great vessels of the Armada were wrecked were sent direct to Newmarket, “where great surprise was expressed by all who beheld them at their exceeding swiftness.”

From this one would naturally conclude that interesting races were run on Newmarket Heath towards the close of the sixteenth century; yet elsewhere we read that the first races of importance run at Newmarket took place in 1640, and that the round course was not made until about the year 1666, while a third historian goes so far as to declare that a gold cup run for at the Newmarket Spring Meeting of 1634 affords per se the earliest irrefutable record of such an occurrence, based on contemporary data.

Yet from statements set down in an earlier chapter we have already seen that horse racing of a sort must have taken place at Newmarket quite a long time before this. In point of fact, in almost every historical record of Newmarket that I have come upon I have found either direct or indirect allusion to the renown of the neighbourhood of Newmarket for the horses that were bred or trained there.

The horses brought ashore from the Spanish vessels probably were among the best that Spain at that time possessed, and several attempts were made by the Spanish to recover some of them. It is known that towards the close of the sixteenth century the Spanish were making determined efforts to breed faster horses than they had previously bred, yet it is surprising that the horses they had brought with them upon their famous expedition should have been so swift, for they must have been animals of far heavier type than the animals they would in a general way breed for racing.

The Spaniards of three centuries ago, we must of course remember, were renowned for their horsemanship far more highly than their descendants of to-day are.

In the reign of Charles I. horse races were run in Hyde Park, a track having been laid down there with great care. This meeting was immensely popular, and “the inhabitants of London and those parts near London assembled in their thousands to watch the running horses,” and in most instances to squander large sums.

“The Park first became under Charles I. the fashionable society rendezvous,” Mrs Alec Tweedie tells us in her interesting volume, “Hyde Park: Its History and Romance.” “Its greatest attraction, maybe, was the racing in the Ring. The occasions when organised meetings took place were special scenes of gaiety, and were evidently thought important events, as even among the State Papers there is preserved the agreement for a race that took place there.”

In later years an attempt was made to revive the Hyde Park race meeting, but the attempt was vigorously opposed by the mass of the residents in the neighbourhood, and by many others as well.

A report of a race in Hyde Park appears in a copy of The London Post, but is undated. As The London Post ceased to exist after the year 1640, this race was run probably a year or two before that date. The report is said to be the first detailed account of a horse race ever published in a newspaper.

“I made a present to the King,” Sully writes, “of six beautiful horses richly caparisoned, and the Sieur of St Antoine as their keeper.” The Sieur of St Antoine, who after being equerry to Prince Henry became equerry to Charles I., is represented in the famous Vandyck picture of King Charles in armour, in the picture now in the National Gallery.

It was about the year 1641 that the Duke of Buckingham greatly helped to improve the breed of horses by importing the famous Helmsley Turk and the almost equally famous Morocco Barb. It is curious to read that the importation of these horses was at first looked upon with grave suspicion by a great body of the principal horse breeders in this country, and by others interested in the horse and its development.

To what the antagonism was owing one can hardly say for certain. One report has it that some among the duke's personal enemies—he had many enemies—were determined to do all in their power to injure him by wrecking any scheme in which he presumably was interested. The sums he paid for these horses were considerable, but the excellent effect the good blood had upon the breed fully repaid him for the incidental outlay, also for the great trouble to which he had been put to secure such excellent stallions.

Shortly before this some English officers serving in the Dutch army had introduced horse racing into Holland, and the popularity of the new sport began to spread there quickly. Soon a number of race meetings came to be organised, and in a short time Dutch emissaries were sent over to England for the express purpose of purchasing blood stock here.

Being comparatively ignorant of horses—ignorant, that is to say, of the requirements essential in a racing stallion—these emissaries were at first cheated in the most barefaced manner by some of the very men who only a short time before had been their guests in Holland!

Later, however, they succeeded in importing some very valuable blood stock, and in several respects the race meetings they presently organised were better arranged than many of the English meetings of that period.

In 1637 we find the Duke of Newcastle appointed Governor to Prince Charles—later to become King Charles II.—with special injunctions to teach him to ride well.

The duke's volume on equitation, published at Antwerp in 1658, contains particulars of the prince's progress in the art of horsemanship, from which we may gather that Prince Charlie was an exceptionally apt pupil—“a horseman by nature,” he has been termed.

So emphatically was this the case that in comparatively a few years he professed himself able to ride any horse that anyone might choose to bring to him, an assertion in which the duke supported him.

It was not long after this that the duke persuaded his royal pupil to import from Spain a number of exceptionally fine sires, for, as he said, Spanish stallions were quite unsurpassed, and in his opinion no other sort of stallion ought to be admitted into this country.

The duke himself has been described as “an iron horseman,” but the exact meaning of the phrase is not quite clear. He had, according to some writers, an “iron” seat on a horse, while according to others he had “iron” hands—the latter a questionable compliment.

Probably an “iron” nerve is what they really meant, for we know that the Duke of Newcastle was both a finished and a fearless horseman, two important qualifications that do not necessarily go together. We are further told that in teaching the prince to ride he never spared him, a statement easily believed when the duke's hard and resolute nature, added to his known determination to succeed at any cost in every task he undertook to accomplish, are borne in mind. Ordered to train the prince into a skilful horseman, he had at once set to work to do it to the best of his ability.

Some say that as a boy Prince Charlie looked, when in the saddle, as if he had been born there, and through life this natural seat upon a horse stood him in good stead.

In addition to being a graceful rider, he had a very strong seat, so that presumably he possessed the precious gift that to-day we call “hands.”

An eighteenth-century writer, who appears to have had access to private manuscripts or documents to do with King Charles II.'s private life, avers that the king never, as we should express it, pulled a horse about. Even tempered with his horses, he seldom or never ill-treated them. They appeared to respond instinctively to his every touch, to understand what he meant by the varying inflection in his voice, and to divine, as if by magic, what their master wished them to do. Also he never outrode a horse under any circumstances—never, as we should say, rode a horse off its legs.

He preferred long stirrup leathers to short, but then in his day most men did.

Also it is said of him that he never would look twice at a horse that had bad quarters or indifferent withers.

Altogether it seems clear that, though he had a natural aptitude for horsemanship, he must have been carefully and very thoroughly coached in all the points of a horse, as well as in all that appertained to the management, training and stabling of horses of every kind.

Horses had risen in price during Charles I.'s reign. In the reign of Charles II. they rose higher still.

Thus about the year 1635—that is to say towards the middle of Charles I.'s reign—300 and 400 pistoles was considered a moderate sum to pay for a well-broken young horse.

“And the Marquis of Seralvo told me,” writes the Duke of Newcastle, “that a Spanish horse called Il Bravo, and sent to the Arch-Duke Leopold, his master, was held as much as a Mannor of a Thousand Crowns a year, and that he hath known horses at 700, 800, and 1000 pistoles.”

Elsewhere we find indisputable evidence that between the beginning of Charles I.'s and the end of Charles II.'s reign sums varying from 400 to 700 pistoles must often have been paid for saddle horses, while for race horses the prices were considerably in excess of these sums.

It is amusing to read that the duke spoke in terms almost of contempt of the Barb, for it shows that in one respect at least he must have been prejudiced in much the same way that some of our modern owners and trainers of thoroughbreds are prejudiced.

Yet he was firmly convinced that many of the horses imported from such countries as Germany, Denmark and Holland were well suited for harness work and for the plough.

In face of this, and in face also of his strong bias in favour of Spanish stallions, it is surprising to hear that he deemed the English horse to be “the best horse in the whole world for all uses whatever, from the cart to the manage,” and that he even considered some of them to be “as beautiful horses as can be anywhere, for they are bred out of all the horses of all nations.”

Equally enthusiastic upon the subject of the English horse and its merits, and upon its superiority over the horses of other nations, was Marshal de Bassompierre, who has something to say about them in the interesting memoirs of his embassy in England in 1626.

Thus after telling us that during his residence in this country he received from some of the high officers of state, also from the king himself, a present of fine horses, he goes on to mention incidentally that it was at about this period that English thoroughbreds were introduced into France for the first time.

This is interesting, inasmuch as certain writers of an earlier epoch state definitely that English thoroughbreds were to be seen in parts of France in their day.

Bassompierre, who had been in England in Elizabeth's reign, is likely to have known the true facts. In addition to being “addicted to horses,” he was passionately fond of gambling, and the latter hobby is said to have cost him in a single year some £500,000.

A family notorious early in the Stuart era for its devotion to the Turf was the Fenwick family, so much so that several of its members are described as having run “quite out of their fortunes” in their futile attempts to transform two or three small fortunes into one large one. The sensational story of Sir John Fenwick's trial, followed by his execution on Tower Hill in 1697, establishes a sort of landmark in the history of the public executions of the seventeenth century.

During the first half of the same century horse fairs were organised throughout England, and year by year they became events of greater importance, many hundreds of men and women of all ranks travelling from far-distant parts of the country in order to attend them. The scenes of ribaldry by which many of these fairs were followed would not be tolerated now. Among the more important of the fairs were those held at Ripon, Melton, Pankridge and Northampton, but many of the others were almost equally fashionable.

It was in the reign of Charles I. that Sir Edward Harwood presented the famous petition, or memorial, in which he explained in forcible language that “good and stout horses for the defence of the kingdom” would soon be to all intents at a premium owing to the scant attention that was then being paid to the breeding of such animals, adding that he doubted whether, if some 2000 great horses should be wanted at short notice, it would be possible to find so many in a fit condition to do battle.

The French horses of the same stamp, he went on to say, were in almost every way superior to ours, and so emphatic was he upon this last point that he openly declared that if some 2000 of the best of our great horses were to be set face to face in battle with an equal number of the Frenchmen's horses, our troops would to a certainty be routed with heavy loss.

Seeing how earnestly Harwood spoke, the king, as we are told, expressed sorrow and great amazement at what he heard, and at once inquired the reason of the English horses' alleged inferiority.

Then it was that Sir Edward made his point. With considerable bluntness he told the king that the decline of the great horse was due chiefly to the spread of racing and hunting, and to the growth, consequent thereon, in the number of race meetings that were being organised, and in the assemblage of persons who attended them.

For, as he justly pointed out, so long as the attention of the principal body of the nobility and of the wealthy landed proprietors was centred upon the breeding almost wholly of light and swift horses, it was not possible to suppose that time would be found to attend also to the breeding and rearing of the powerful animals that alone were fit to carry men-at-arms.

Upon hearing this, Charles declared, no doubt in all good faith, that he would take steps to revive the flagging interest in the production of good war horses, but in the end nothing practical was done.

That the king himself took interest in the great horse we are led to infer from the fact that upon the big seal he is shown riding astride one. In Vandyck's portrait of Oliver Cromwell we see Cromwell riding rather a light-coloured great horse, a point worthy of note inasmuch as we know that from about that time onward the term “great” horse was almost always taken to mean a black horse of this particular stamp.

Oliver Cromwell's world-renowned Ironsides were not, of course, mounted on great horses. On the contrary, though the Ironsides proved themselves to be by far the most powerful cavalry seen in England down to that time, their strength was due not to their weight, but to their remarkable mobility.

The dismay the Ironsides spread amongst the foe is said to have astonished the cavaliers themselves as much as it surprised the enemy.

For it must be borne in mind that the Ironsides did not wear armour. Instead they were protected merely by light buff coats, so that naturally they were able to ride far lighter and consequently more active, horses.

Probably it was the good work done by Cromwell's cavalry that marked the turning-point in the life of the old rÉgime by driving out of the field not only the great horses that until then had been deemed wholly indispensable, but also by sounding the death-knell of armour that for two centuries had been growing steadily heavier and more ponderous.

For many years, however, a body of the English military authorities metaphorically clung doggedly to the clumsy horses to which they had so long been accustomed, and to the clumsy armour as well, declaring—as some of their successors do to-day—that the innovation of a mobile force must soon prove unsatisfactory and ultimately be disbanded.

Instead, exactly the reverse happened.

By slow degrees the armour was discarded, while the great horses, as we are told, were relegated to the coach, the waggon and the plough.

Among those who adhered longest to the theory that England must inevitably lose her prestige if the great horse were ousted from her army for good and all was the Duke of Newcastle of that period. Laughed at for his pains, and spoken of by the younger generation as a man not able to see ahead of the times, he yet stood firmly by his opinion almost to the last. As the years went on, and the younger generation in their turn grew retrospective and pessimistic, no doubt they too were laughed at by their sons, and thus history continues to repeat itself even to the present day.

At about this period many of the “good” roads in England were in reality little better than broad cart tracks, so that heavy horses were largely in demand. In consequence of this the prices paid for a good team of horses were in many instances out of all proportion to the animals' true worth. By this time, too, public stages were already being started on the highroads, and the competition this gave rise to soon sent up by leaps and bounds the value of great horses well broken to harness.

Of these stages the first was started probably about the year 1670, and its weight when empty must have been enormous, every part being made of solid timber bound with strips of iron. The “speed” at which it travelled—so far as one can gather from the early descriptive records of the progress of the pioneer stage—must have been approximately three or four miles an hour, upon an average, or even less.

An excellent reproduction of the early type of the English great horse is to be seen in Dublin in the famous statue of William III. on horseback. The type of horse shown is probably the exact type that was popular not merely in William III.'s reign, but during the greater part of the century before he ascended the throne.

True, in that statue the king is garbed like an ancient Roman, the reason being—I take the following statement from several Irish jarveys, and disclaim all responsibility for its alleged accuracy—that King William adored a foreigner and tried always to look like one! It was, indeed, a jarvey who remarked as we drove past: “Sure, and it is in hunting kit he should be, and on one of Pat Mecreedy's hundred-guinea leppers.” He appeared to be convulsed with mirth at the bare thought that the hero of the Boyne should have been depicted mounted upon a cart horse.

Some even among our historians, however, have averred that this horse is wrongly proportioned. Personally I incline to the belief that the animal is in every detail true to life, and not many years ago the late Viscount Powerscourt declared that he himself had seen used in parts of Holland horses that in every respect resembled this animal of King William's statue.

Is it not likely, therefore, that William III. may have been in the habit of riding a Dutch horse, and that the sculptor copied this horse quite faithfully?

Certainly if the pictures of the period are to be trusted for accuracy, soon after the overthrow of James II. by William of Orange there were horses in plenty of almost exactly this type to be seen in England. Also the harness that was worn by many of the Dutch horses shown in the pictures resembled the harness that was in use among followers of William III., more especially the parts we mean to indicate when we speak of a horse's trappings.

Even the bridles greatly resembled one another in some instances.

Bearing directly upon the story of the horse in history are the descriptions that have been handed down to us of the almost frantic opposition that met the introduction of the stage coach soon after the middle of the seventeenth century.

In some respects these descriptions recall vividly to mind the rabid antagonism some two centuries later to the introduction of the steam engine, not to speak of the objections that are still raised by a proportion of the community to the general adoption of automobilism.

Prior to the introduction of the stage coach into England a four-wheeled carriage with a long, low body had been employed to convey the general public from one part of the country to another, and when the stage coach first arrived many of our wiseacres were quick to prophesy that the death-knell of the nation's greatness had in consequence been sounded!

Perhaps one of the stoutest of the opponents of reform in this respect was a certain Mr Cressett, of Charterhouse, who in the year 1662 openly and in very straightforward language affirmed that the adoption of the stage coach must “entirely ruin the country,” and who in that year wrote a vigorous tract, in which he explained entirely to his satisfaction—also, apparently, to the satisfaction of his partisans—that the amount of harm the introduction of road coaching must inevitably cause to the community at large would be enormous.

His remarks, too voluminous to reprint in extenso, contain in one place the observation that “by this rapid mode of travelling”—at the period in which he wrote it took approximately three days to get from London to Dover, even in fine weather—“gentlemen will come to London upon the slightest pretext, which but for these abominable coaches they would not do but upon urgent necessity.”

Nor would the impending evil, in his opinion, end there, for, lashing himself gradually into a fury, he went on to maintain that “the gentlemen's wives” would come too, and that no sooner would they find themselves in London than they would “get fine clothes, go to plays and treats, and by these means get such a habit of idleness and love for pleasure that they would be uneasy ever after.”

Poor Mr Cressett!

Surely he must have been an ancestor, or at the least some early relative, of the notorious Mr Wightman who, just before the first London and Brighton railway was laid down, wrote a book in which he “proved” beyond refutation that no locomotive steam engine could by any possibility be propelled at a speed greater than about half the speed of the fastest of the coaches then on the road!

We smile indulgently at all this now, yet, when all is said, have we changed so very greatly since those dark and peculiar ages—since the epoch that we now refer to so complacently as “the good old times”? (sic).

The narratives of the remarkable experiences of many of the travellers in those early coaches would make up almost enough letterpress to fill a volume. For from the very outset the public stages became the unlawful prey of half the rascals with which a vast tract of the whole of England at that time teemed. Coaches were plundered almost daily, and while sometimes blood was spilt intentionally, often this happened rather by accident.

Charles II., who used his influence to help on the development of the stage coach, appears at times to have become frankly impatient with the ultra-conservatism of the bulk of his nobility and of the aristocracy who strove hard to check the progress of the new form of locomotion.

Whatever Charles's shortcomings may have been—and we know that he had many—he had enough of nous to be able to foresee the enormous advantages that would be derived from the general adoption of the public stage.

Consequently he encouraged the importation of stallions and the breeding of animals of the stamp best adapted for coach work.

Himself a finished whip, most likely, he desired that all his nobles should emulate his example by learning to drive well, though driving in those days was a form of amusement comparatively seldom indulged in by the well-to-do, who, as we are told, preferred being driven by postillions.

Before Prince Charles's proclamation, however, the ten years of the Commonwealth's sway had to intervene, during which time the horse's progress in this country suffered a set-back from the effects of which it did not immediately recover.

The beginning of the horse's decline in public favour may be said to have dated from 4th January 1651, on which day a report was drawn up—to be soon afterwards presented to Parliament—demanding that horse races, hunting, hawking matches and football playing be at once suppressed, the plea in favour of this radical reform being that frequently political meetings were convened by enemies of the Commonwealth under the veil of race meetings and similar social gatherings.