THE SADDLE-HORSE 45 



The Mexicans and others put huge and cruel contrivances into 

 their horses' mouths, apparently regarding the severest bit as- 

 the best ; the Englishman chiefly uses a common double bridle,, 

 or perhaps only a simple snaffle. 



English hacks of the present day are drawn from a few 

 well-recognised sources, but the horses in general use in 

 England during the sixteenth century appear to have been 

 gathered from all quarters of Europe and from some districts 

 of Africa as well. Information on the subject is given at 

 length in a remarkably quaint and interesting old black-letter 

 book, published in 1597, and written by 'Maister Blundeuill 

 of Newton Flatman, in Norffolke,' to quote the superscription ; 

 and ' Maister Blundeuill ' is clearly an authority, for he seems 

 to have been employed about the Court of Elizabeth, and he 

 dedicates his work * to the Right Honorable and his Singular 

 Good Lord, the Lord Robert Dudley, Earle of Leicester, Baron 

 of Denbigh, Knight of the Honerable Order of the Garter, and 

 Maister of the Queenes Maiisties horses and one of her 

 Highnesse Priuy Councell,' to whom 'Thomas Blundeuill 

 wisheth perfect felicitie.' The observations of such a man 

 as this are well worth note, and it is an extraordinary thing 

 that the record of a book by the right-hand man in stable 

 matters of Queen Elizabeth's famous Master of the Horse 

 (or one of them, for the Earl of Worcester was also her M. H.) 

 should have become so obscure that in few bibliographies that 

 deal with the subjects of horses and equitation, though they 

 contain the names of nearly every volume in connection 

 with horses that has been published in any language since the 

 of Kimon of Athens, circa 430 B.C. (Xenophon's 

 was fifty years later), is there any mention ot 

 Thomas Blundeuill. This being so, it is almost certain that 

 the book will be absolutely unknown to the reader, and 

 comments on it may prove of interest. 



Blundevill we must at any rate supply the ' v ' so as to 

 modernise his name for the sake of convenience was quite 

 unprejudiced, and the ' nation of horsemen ' theory is perhaps 



