S/iaa'espeaa'e'^ Horse 37 



for when, in 158S, in Elizabeth's reign, England was threatened by the Spanish Armada, 

 there was a scarcity of horses. With all the enthusiasm that pervaded the nation, the queen 

 was only able to muster 3,000 cavalry, which Blundeville, who wrote a book on horsemanship 

 at that epoch, says were " very indifferent, strong, heavy, slow draught-horses, or light and 

 weak." 



Shakespeare had a very good notion of what a war-horse or weight-carrying roadster 

 should be, but the animal he provides for Adonis was neither thorough-bred nor fit to carry 

 a man in the first flight over Leicestershire. He might have borne the Earl of Essex grandly 

 at a tournament, or satisfactorily in hunting a buck in a great park, but would have had 

 no chance in a modern fox-hunt over on ox-feeding county, or in a Grand National Steeple- 

 chase. As Shakespeare was never out of England, he must have seen the animal he 



describes. 



" Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long. 

 Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide, 

 High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, 

 Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.'"* 



Although the shaggy fetlocks show that Shakespeare's horse was half-bred, his " small 

 head and nostril wide " and his " thin mane " prove that he had " quality," perhaps derived 

 from some Spanish ancestor, some Barb sire introduced under the reign of Queen Mary by her 

 Spanish husband, or some Syrian Arab, the prize of a Crusader. 



Gervase Markham,f a very accomplished writer on several rural subjects, writing in the 

 time of James I., described all the European horses of that period, and there is interna) evidence 

 that he had at any rate travelled in France and Spain. 



The time of Gervase Markham may therefore be taken as a standpoint for summing 

 up the condition of the English horse before the production of the thoroughbred race-horse, 

 which was not effected until nearly a hundred years later. Ploughing and the heavy draught 

 of agriculture were carried on chiefly by oxen. Goods and merchandise were conveyed from 

 one part of the country to another almost entirely by pack-horses of an active breed, the 

 use of which had not been entirely discontinued in the West of England at the commencement 

 of this century. The Devonshire pack-horse was one of the boasts of that county within 

 living memory. Carriages hung on rude springs were one of the luxuries of the wealthy; 

 and hack carriages, to the disgust of Thames watermen, had been to some extent established 



• "Venus and Adonis," Canto L. 



t " Containing all the arts of horsemanship, as much as it is necessary for any man to understand, whether he be horse- 

 breeder, horse-ryder, horse-hunter, horse-runner, horse-ambler, horse-farrier, horse keeper, coachman, smith, or saddler. Together 

 with the discovery of the subtil trade or mystery of horse-coursers, and an explanation of a horse's understanding, or how to 

 teach them to do tricks like Bankes his curtail. Newly imprinted, corrected, and augmented, with many worthy secrets 

 not known before." 



The first bock, and all the others, are dated 1617, but, curiously enough, the second is dated 1616. Each has the 

 same title-page— a rude wood block, representing in five circles as many shapeless brutes, described as "The Neapolitan 

 horse for service; the Barbarie running-horse; the English ambling gelding," all with long tails; and the "English hunting- 

 horse," with his tail tied up. Each of the eight books has two separate dedications, the first being addressed, " The most 

 high and mightie Charles Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, York, Albanie, Rothsay, &c." In the second dedication, 

 "to the three great columbes of this empire, the nobilite, the gentrie, and yeomanrie of Great Britaine," he says that it is an 

 enlargement of "that small treatise on horsemanship which about sixteen years agone (when my experience was but youngly 

 fructified) I brought forth into die world. A cooie thereof being corruptly taken, and covetously offered to the priming 

 without my knowledge, I thought as good to publish it myself with his natural wantes as to let it come abroad by otliers 

 deformities." 



