HEAVY HOKSES 175 



position of the equine race in this country in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 

 expresses himself as follows: " Our horsses moreover are high, and although 

 not commoulie of such greatnesse as in other places of the maine, yet 

 if you respect the esinesse of their pase it is hard to saie where their 

 like are to be had. Our cart or plough horses (for we use them indif- 

 ferently) are commonlie so strong that five or six of them (at most) will 

 draw three thousand weight of the greatest tale with ease for a long 

 journie, although it used to be not a load of common usage — which con- 

 sisted onlie of two thousand, or fiftie foot of timber, fortie bushels of 

 white salt, or six and thirtie of bail, or five quarters of wheat — experience 

 dailie teacheth, and (as) I have elsewhere remembered. Such as are 

 kept for burden will carie four hundred weight commonlie, without any 

 hurt or hindrance." An ability to move about under such a weight must 

 have been thought a sine qua non in the case of the charger of the period, 

 for, as Sir Walter Gilbey has pointed out, the armour carried by horse 

 and man about that period must have scaled quite that amount. As 

 an instance, there is the armour which is credibly believed to have belonged 

 to the Duke of Suffolk, one of the numerous brothers-indaw of King 

 Henry VIII, now lying on view in the museum of the Tower of London, 

 the weight of the various portions being as follows : man's armour, 99 lbs. 

 9 ozs. ; horse's armour, 80 lbs. 15 ozs., which, added to the weight of the 

 rider and his accoutrements, would have brought the figures up to very 

 nearly if not quite the amount alluded to by Holinshed as being the 

 ordinary burden for the charger of the Elizabethan era. 



Some extremely interesting allusions are contained in the book pub- 

 lished by Thomas Blundeville of Newton Flotman, Norfolk, in 1566, 

 as the author was evidently a practical judge of horses, and succeeded in 

 collecting for his work a good deal of very useful information to lay before 

 the readers of his Breeding of Horses and Art of Riding. As may 

 naturally be expected, the " Great Horse " occupied a good deal of his at- 

 tention, and he commences by referring to the fact that " some men have 

 a breed of Great-Horses meete for the war and to serve on the field ". 

 This breed Blundeville describes as " though not finely, yet strongly made, 

 he is of great stature ", and he offers some interesting descriptions of both 

 the Flanders and the Almaine or German heavy horses, with which he 

 evidently associates the English animals. Blundeville commences by 

 referring to the similarity which in many points existed between the two 

 breeds, and then proceeds to describe their points as follows: — "The 

 Flanders horse in his shape and disposition differeth in a maner nothinge 

 from the Almayne horse, saving that for the most parte he is of a greater 

 stature and more puissant. The mares also of Flanders be of a greate 



