18 RECORDS OF THE CHASE 



will dash him on the,' sides, and so he shall run till he 

 be weary and that he stand still for weariness. Then 

 take the horse and lead him to a stable and lay litter 

 enow under him and clothes enow upK)n him, and then 

 lift up his feet and smite upon them with a stone, 

 on every foot, and then keep him with little meat 

 three days after, and every day twice or three 

 times come to him and lift up his feet, and knock 

 on them with a stone, and see that he be well curried 

 and wiped, and he will be more tame ever after than 

 any horse that is tame of his own kind." 



To rouse an idle horse by such means was certainly a 

 barbarous custom, of which, in modem days we have 

 no parallel. It was establishing a ' raw ' with a 

 vengeance. But the Society for the Prevention of 

 Cruelty to Animals was not then in existence. 

 Children were very probably numerous, and maternal 

 affection at a discount. What effect the sight of a young 

 urchin might • have upon a horse which had been so 

 tortured, must be left to the imagination to conceive. 



The process of taming a wild horse was, no doubt, 

 effective. A dumb jockey with spurs would be a novelty 

 in the nineteenth century, and we have good reason to 

 rejoice that the march of civilisation, refinement, 

 and humanity has introduced measures by which the 

 most noble of our domestic animals, the horse, can be 

 rendered subservient to our use by kind, instead of 

 harsh or cruel, treatment. 



A journey on horseback two hundred and fifty years 

 ago, from Edinburgh to London, ere roads were in a 

 convenient state for travelling, must have been an 

 undertaking attended with many irksome anticipations 

 and realities ; yet it was one which a monarch was 

 destined to perform. Even royalty might have been at 

 a loss how to render it agreeable. The fertile mind of 

 King James the First, and his courtiers, devised the 

 means; and we find in the account of the journey that 

 his Majesty enjoyed the diversion of hunting. Having 

 advanced as far as Newark, he proceeded to Belvoir 



