CROMWELL'S IRONSIDES 233 



With considerable bluntness he told the king that 

 the decline of the great horse was due chiefly to 

 the spread of racing and hunting, and to the 

 growth, consequent thereon, in the number of 

 race meetings that were being organised, and in 

 the assemblage of persons who attended them. 



For, as he justly pointed out, so long as the 

 attention of the principal body of the nobility and 

 of the wealthy landed proprietors was centred 

 upon the breeding almost wholly of light and 

 swift horses, it was not possible to suppose that 

 time would be found to attend also to the breeding 

 and rearing of the powerful animals that alone 

 were fit to carry men-at-arms. 



Upon hearing this, Charles declared, no doubt 

 in all good faith, that he would take steps to re- 

 vive the flagging interest in the production of good 

 war horses, but in the end nothing practical was 

 done. 



That the king himself took interest in the great 

 horse we are led to infer from the fact that upon 

 the big seal he is shown riding astride one. In 

 Vandyck's portrait of Oliver Cromwell we see 

 Cromwell riding rather a light-coloured great 

 horse, a point worthy of note inasmuch as we 

 know that from about that time onward the term 

 "great" horse was almost always taken to mean 

 a black horse of this particular stamp. 



Oliver Cromwell's world-renowned Ironsides 

 were not, of course, mounted on great horses. 



