184 ROAD, TRACK, ASD STABLE 



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so slowly that these functionaries could easily go 

 ahead, when necessary, and engage apartments and 

 refreshments at the next inn where a stop was to be 

 made. They were also extremely useful in putting 

 their shoulders to the wheel, when, as often hap- 

 pened, the vehicle stuck in a rut or in some " peril- 

 ous slough." Later, in the seventeeth century, many 

 Flemish mares were imported to England for carriage 

 horses. They had more style and quality, but lacked 

 endurance, as Gervase Markham pointed out in his 

 well known work. The cream-colored coach horses, 

 which are still bred in the Queen's stables, though 

 they have seldom been used since the death of Prince 

 Albert, are descended from the same strain. In 

 France, the Xorman breed furnished the carriage 

 horses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 and one writer speaks of the " richly mottled grays " 

 that drew the coach of Richelieu. 



It is an apt illustration of the conservatism which 

 prevails in, or perhaps more correctly is an essential 

 part of, forms and ceremonies, that the state carriage 

 horse of England has always been a century or so 

 behind the times. Shire horses were used to draw 

 Queen Anne's coach, though they had been given up 

 by private persons for many years before she came to 

 the throne ; and in the same way. during the present 

 reign, the Hanoverian horse has held a place in the 

 royal stables to which he is entitled only on the 

 score of antiquity. Another similar example was to 

 be found, until lately, in the steeds that horsed the 

 chariots of the Roman cardinals. These too were of 

 Flemish origin, " of great size, as fat as prize oxen, 

 proud and prancing at starting, — all action and 

 no go." 



