n8 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



This, most likely, was an empty boast, for what 

 could a small community, that presumably travelled 

 but rarely, know at first hand of horses bred even 

 in far distant parts of England? 



It is true that Simon de Montfort had a high 

 opinion of the horses bred at Newmarket, for he 

 tells us so in a letter written a few years before 

 his death he was killed at Evesham in 1265. 

 Presumably he rode in the hunting field some 

 of his horses that had been reared at New- 

 market, for he was as keen about hunting as 

 about soldiering. 



Historians have described him as "the great 

 patriotic baron of his period," a description that is 

 accurate if we are to judge from his acts. I believe 

 I am right in saying that Simon de Montfort was the 

 first master of foxhounds of whom mention is made 

 in British history, but upon this point I am open 

 to correction. Certainly he is the first of whose 

 life we have authentic details. On his great seal 

 attached to a deed dated 1259, and now in Paris 

 among the royal archives, he is shown galloping 

 beside his hounds, urging them on, and blowing 

 his horn. He is said to have hunted largely in 

 Leicestershire and Warwickshire, and as he lived 

 in the thirteenth century the seal referred to forms 

 most likely the first picture we have of a bond fide 

 run with foxhounds. 



In Blount's " Ancient Tenures," a volume that 

 is extremely interesting and in some respects 



