ii2 THE HORSE IN HISTORY 



of his reign King John vowed he would have his 

 courtiers ride none but black horses, and that the 

 sums he had to pay to enable him to gratify so 

 foolish a fad — it may have been mere vanity 

 — were quoted among the acts of extravagance 

 that later incensed his barons and led ultimately 

 to their making him sign Magna Charta. 



As the size and strength of the war horses 

 grew greater in all countries, so did the weight 

 and strength of the armour steadily increase. 

 Towards the end of the twelfth century the 

 Norman hauberk that for many years had proved 

 effective, and that even the most far-seeing of 

 the warriors firmly believed could not be im- 

 proved upon, began to make way for the heavy 

 chain mail — the most picturesque armour ever 

 adopted by any nation — which, when first intro- 

 duced, was said to render the warrior almost 

 invulnerable. 



But as time went on, and the strength of both 

 men and horses further increased, and the weapons 

 of war became more deadly still, the armour 

 again underwent a change, so that about the 

 beginning of the fourteenth century we find the 

 " perfect armour," as it had come to be called, 

 being in its turn discarded in favour of the 

 hideous plate armour that less than a hundred 

 years afterwards was adopted by practically every 

 " civilised" nation in Europe. 



A monk of Canterbury, by name FitzStephen, 



