ANNUAL CHARGE FOR ROYAL HORSES 257 



in France a zest for the sport that became far 

 keener than even Louis XIV. had deemed would 

 ever be possible. 



Among the more prominent of the race horse's 

 progenitors in the seventeenth century were the 

 Small Bay Arabian, imported by James I. ; Bur- 

 ton's Barb Mare ; the Helmsley or Buckingham 

 Turk, owned by the Duke of Buckingham ; and 

 of course Charles II.'s Dodsworth, a well-shaped, 

 natural Barb, though foaled in England about the 

 year 1670. 



Mention has already been made of the Royal 

 Mares, the majority of which were brought over 

 from Tangiers about the year 1669. Towards 

 the beginning of Charles II.'s reign the annual 

 charge for the horses of the king and queen 

 and those of the officers of the royal household 

 was fixed at ,£16,640 — a sum subsequently de- 

 nounced by the king's enemies as "extravagant 

 beyond belief." 



That it was a considerable charge to make all 

 must admit, yet it was not necessarily extravagant 

 beyond measure. For in an age when outward 

 ostentation imparted to the court a sort of cachet, 

 an enormous stud of horses, and those the best 

 obtainable, and in addition innumerable costly 

 trappings, were in a sense necessities — the 

 guarantee and stock-in-trade, so to speak, of a 

 court anxious to gain the world's applause and 

 approval, and indirectly the support of other 



