EARLY HORSE RACING IN BRITAIN 77 



Most likely she was attached to them, however, 

 only because they helped her so materially in 

 her raids upon her enemies. To pretend that 

 "the sturdy queen," as one historian nicknames 

 her, harboured anything in the least approaching 

 a sympathetic or a sentimental affection for any 

 particular horse would be the acme of all that is 

 grotesque. 



Haydn has the misplaced gallantry to allude to 

 Boadicea as "the heroic queen." That her good 

 fortune in possessing horses with considerable 

 staying power enabled her to win her great 

 victory at Verulam is now common history. 

 Therefore we read with the more interest that 

 " this relentless queen destroyed London and 

 other places, slaughtering many Romans, but 

 at last she was overcome near London, by Suet- 

 onius, and she ended by committing suicide." 



In the second century A.D. the Arabs probably 

 had not begun to breed horses, for at that time 

 we do not hear of Arab horses being held in the 

 high esteem with which they later came to be 

 regarded by the British nation. 



Yet even before this, or towards the middle of 

 the first century A.D., the sport of chariot racing 

 had become immensely popular, and the sums 

 spent upon organising the races, training the 

 horses that were to be entered for competition, 

 and in purchasing prizes to be bestowed upon the 

 victors, may justly be said to have been enormous 



