58 THE HOESE OF AMERICA. 



bridle. When I was young I could have bought a nag for ten 

 pounds that would have done as much very easily." The duke's 

 masterful knowledge of the subject, as well as his special oflicial 

 relations to the king, gave him control of whatever was done or 

 attempted in the direction of improving the racing stock of Eng- 

 land. Tradition informs us that "King Charles II. sent abroad 

 the master of the horse to procure a number of foreign horses 

 and mares for breeding, and the mares brought over by him (as also 

 many of their produce) have since been called Eoyal Mares. 7 ' 

 It is very doubtful whether any such importation was ever made. 

 The question has been discussed, from time to time and even 

 recently, but nobody has ever yet discovered who was "Master of 

 the Horse," to what country he was sent or what the character of 

 the mares he brought home, or where he got them. The fair 

 presumption is that these "Eoyal Mares" were myths and that 

 they were created merely for the purpose of putting a finish on 

 certain very uncertain pedigrees, just as a trotting-horse man 

 would finish a pedigree that he knew nothing about by saying, 

 "out of a thoroughbred mare*" As a matter of course it ha& 

 always been assumed that these "Royal Mares" were of distinc- 

 tively pure Arabian blood. But, if we admit that such an im- 

 portation was really made, we must consider that it was made 

 under the direction and control of the Duke of Newcastle, the 

 king's mentor in all horse affairs, and this is sufficient proof that 

 there was no Arabian blood about the "Royal Mares." As the 

 size of the English race horse and especially his weight of bone 

 commenced to increase soon after this time, it strikes me as 

 probable that this was the wise and guiding motive of the duke in 

 making his selections of the "Royal Mares." 



When we come down a little nearer to our own times and step 

 across the border from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, 

 we are still in the realm of traditions, and many of them very 

 preposterous. The deceptions practiced in nomenclature were so 

 common as to be well-nigh universal. Everybody who owned a 

 foreign horse must have "Arabian" attached to his name. To- 

 illustrate this evil and the misleading effects flowing from it, I 

 will give two instances of the most famous horses in all English 

 history. The Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian stand 

 pre-eminent and before all others as progenitors of the English 

 race horse. The former of these two was purchased at Aleppo, 

 in Asia Minor, and brought'to England in 1711, by Mr. Darley of 



