4 6 



sovereign (6 Anne, cap. 56) enacted that 

 not more than six horses or oxen might 

 be harnessed to any vehicle plying on the 

 public roads except to drag them up hills ; 

 and this latter indulgence was withdrawn 

 three years later (1710), leaving the team 

 of six to negotiate hills as they might. 

 Hackney coachmen evidently displayed a 

 tendency to evade their legal obligations 

 in the matter of size in their horses ; for in 

 1710 another Act (9 Anne, c. 16) was passed 

 to the same effect as a former law, requiring 

 hackney-coach horses to be not less than 

 14 hands in height. 



GEORGE I. (1714-1727). 



During the first seventy years of the 

 eighteenth century Eastern horses were 

 imported in large numbers ; there is in 

 existence a list of 200 stallions which were 

 sent to this country, but that number does 

 not represent a tithe of the whole. The 

 event of George I.'s reign, from a Turf 

 point of view, was, of course, the arrival, 

 in 1724, of the Godolphin Arabian, the 

 sire to which our racers of to-day owe so 

 much. George I. appears to have taken 

 little personal interest in the Turf, though 



