The Earl of Rosebery's Committee. 249 



COLONEL G. A. MAUDE, C.B., CROWN EQUERRY. 



In answer to a question from H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Colonel Maude said, " Formerly 

 all the (royal) work was done by coaches and chariots, now there are broughams and clarences ; 

 for these we buy smaller horses. We have nothing under 16 hands in the town carriages. 

 The smaller horses are much more durable ; in fact, if it were not for the look of the thing, 

 they would draw the big coaches much better than the bigger Clevelands. The smaller horses 

 are more fashionable, more are bred, and therefore they are more easily obtained ; they are 

 much less likely to become roarers than larger horses. We hardly ever had an instance of 

 a harness-horse not over 15 hands 3 inches becoming a roarer, whereas almost all our big bay 

 horses end by being so. We never buy foreign horses for the Queen's stables if we know it, 

 but we do sometimes. They are as harness-horses very inferior. I have seen some as 

 nice Prussian saddle-horses as any bred in this kingdom, but the Mecklenburg harness-horse 

 which is sometimes imported is a very bad animal. . . . Since Hanover has been inde- 

 pendent of England we breed our cream-colours in England. We have imported no stallions, 

 and breed in-and-in ; but, extraordinary to say, they are getting larger. We keep four 

 breeding-mares ; the produce never has a bit of white. We never sell any." 



William Shaw, another witness before the same committee, who has been for " thirty-six 

 years an entire horse leader in certain districts of Yorkshire," and for the last seventeen years 

 in the East Riding, said, " There has been a great change since I began. It was the old- 

 fashioned coach-horses that were in vogue at that day — the old-fashioned Clevelands. At the 

 end of five years, beginning from 1S36, my custom fell off by more than two-thirds; there 

 was a change in the trade, a new fashion in horses came up. The London gentlemen then 

 wanted a first-class fashionable horse, that stepped up higher. Formerly a big coach-horse, 

 now a blood-horse, is wanted, with high-stepping action. Seventeen years ago I began to 

 lead a roadster, and continued for eleven years, then I took a blood-horse. A blood-horse 

 is all the go to-day, and I would have nothing else." 



MR. JOSHUA EAST. 



" We have over a thousand carriage-horses (all geldings) at work on jobs. We are obliged 

 to purchase about three hundred horses a year to keep our stock up. We sell about that 

 number by auction at St. Martin's Lane, without reserve. We do not lose above two and a 

 half per cent, by deaths. . . . Seeing that the best Yorkshire mares had gone to Germany, 

 on the persuasion of my German friends, I went after them. They were nice handy horses 

 to buy ; they were broken, which ours were not. The German horse was more ornamental 

 than ours, and ;^lO to ^^15 cheaper. He had good action, and was capital to sell, but he 

 was like Peter Pindar's Jew's razors — he was worth nothing to use. If you got him to 

 Brentford you would never get him farther. . . . They were the worst brutes I ever saw, 

 and I should soon have lost all my customers if I had stuck to them, so I got rid of them 

 all. ... At this moment we have three hundred horses lying by not earning a shilling, 

 that we may have them ready when we want them in next May or June. Our horses vary 

 in size, from 15 hands 2 inches to 16 hands 2 inches. We like them bred from a thorough- 

 bred horse and a half-bred mare." 

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