42 The Book of t/ze Horse. 



and laboursome toyle, with heates and cold, but the running-horse must dispatch his business 

 in a moment of time. Have as near in proportion as the former, only he may have a longer 

 chine, so that his side be longer, he will take a larger stroke, especially on light earths; and if 

 his limmes be more slender and his joints more loose, and not so short at the pastern, he may 

 be very excellent and swift for a course." 



These lean-headed, flat-limbed, fine-haired hunters and running-horses formed a class com- 

 pletely apart from the prancing destriers maintained for daily amusement in the riding-school 

 which was a.ttached to every great house. In these schools the young gentlemen of the period 

 practised equestrian feats, some of which are still essential to a cavalry education, but the most 

 difficult and useless are only to be seen in circus exhibitions of the haute ^cole. They prepared 

 themselves to make a gallant figure in riding at the ring, in processions and parades of 

 ceremony, and to hold their own in duels on horseback, or in the single combats into which 

 cavalry actions, as long as fire-arms played only a secondary part in war, resolved themselves. 

 The trained war-horse was expected to take as much part as his rider — in every encounter 

 striking with his fore and kicking with his hind legs — making balotadcs, croupadcs, and caprioles. 



But while great noblemen indulged in the amusements of the manege, and had the ex- 

 clusive right to hunt the stag, wild or parked, the English yeomanry and wealthy farmers — a 

 class who existed at that time in no other European State — indulged in hunting the badger, 

 the fo.x, and the hare, in matches, races, and in " wild-goose chases," for proving the speed and 

 stoutness of their horses, with as much freedom and enthusiasm as their feudal superiors ; so 

 that the cultivation of good horses did not depend, as in other countries, on the patronage of 

 kings and great noblemen, but was pursued by cultivators who were also owners of the soil, 

 throughout the length and breadth of the land. 



Almost all modern writers on the subject concentrate their narratives on what was done 

 by kings and Acts of Parliament, and seem to overlook the steady improvement in the breed 

 of riding-horses that took place generation after generation, through the passion of Englishmen 

 of all ranks for hunting, and, to speak plainly, for gambling, in the way of wagers, on the 

 speed and stoutness of their horses. 



According to Markham, the fox, in the time of Elizabeth and James, was, as a beast 

 of chase, put on the same low level as the badger, and pursued only in woods, "where a horse 

 can neither conveniently make his way or tread without danger of stumbling." More highly 

 esteemed was hunting the wild stag, which, however, as well as the parked deer, was nominally 

 the exclusive privilege of kings and very great nobles. For park hunting rectangular rides 

 were cut through the woods, up and down which the cavaliers and their dames cantered com- 

 posedly, after the fashion practised in our own times in PVance and Germany — a fashion which was 

 •revived, with the costume and all the splendour of the days of Louis XIV., by the Emperor 

 Napoleon III. 



But hunting the wild stag or the moorland hare required a horse of a very different 

 character from the ambling palfreys used within enclosed parks. Markham sa)s, " When he (a 

 stag) is at liberty he will break forth his chase four, five, and six miles ; naj-, I have m)-self 

 followed a buck better than ten miles forthright, from the place of his rousing to the jilace of 

 his death, beside all his turnings and windings and cross passages." Evidently old Gervasc was 

 a keen sportsman, and kept his horses in pretty good condition. He goes on to observe that 

 as stag-hunting is in season between April and September, and as it is "most swift and violent" 

 when the sun is hottest and the ground hard, it is not fit for training young horses, but for 

 those of staid years and long practice. There was " a certain race of little horses in Sct)tlan ' 



