SOME HORSES OF ROMANCE 163 



of his temper and with an oath shouted at Sir 

 Miles that he would stake upon a single throw of 

 the dice the great bells of St Paul's against a 

 hundred sovereigns. 



The dice were thrown, and Sir Miles won, and 

 the bells, described by a chronicler of the period 

 as "the greatest peal in England," were taken 

 away and melted down, to the knight's unfeigned 

 delight. 



It is said that the king never forgave Sir Miles 

 Partridge for this. Later Sir Miles was charged 

 with some criminal offence and imprisoned, and in 

 1 55 1 he was beheaded on Tower Hill. 



In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the 

 horse continued to figure largely in romance, and 

 thus it comes that we find horses, fictitious and 

 otherwise, playing important roles in the works of 

 fiction of the principal authors of about that period. 



Ariosto's immortal narrative of " Orlando 

 Furioso," written towards the close of the fifteenth 

 or in the beginning of the sixteenth century, has 

 given us "the little vigilant horse," Vegliantio, 

 called Veillantif in the French romance, where 

 Orlando appears as Ronald. 



Then we have " the horse of the golden bridle," 

 Orlando's remarkable charger, Brigliadoro, whose 

 speed equalled Bajardo's ; also Sacripant's steed, 

 Frontaletto, "the horse with the little head," that 

 was capable of doing many extraordinary things. 

 Sacripant, who was King of Circassia, and a 



