i8 



A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



The ll'fiilf Irish Jlobby of the Fourteenth Century. 

 y*> om a MS. in the Bi itisk Museum . 



roan-coloured Courser, 

 from Tolney, price; 

 twenty marks ; one 

 brown bay Courser, 

 price twenty-five marks ; 

 one roan Courser, from 

 Cranbourn, price 



/io 135. 3d 



and others. A Harleian 

 Manuscript also reveals 

 the fact that there were 

 fine horses in Ireland 

 during this reign. The 

 author, in describing 

 Richard II.'s campaign in Wicklow, tells of Art MacMurchacla, a " fine large " chief- 

 tain who called himself" King of Leinster," and rode " a horse without housing or 

 saddle, said to have cost him 400 cows," which must have been as active as his owner 

 for the accompanying picture shows him charging gaily down a mountain side towards 

 a formidable water jump, on the other side of which are waiting the Earl of Gloucester 

 and his officers, apparently for a friendly conference. This high-priced animal very 

 probably represented the value of imported stock, and may well have been an 

 ancestor of those Irish " hobbies " so celebrated in the stud of the Karl ot 

 Kildare some time afterwards, and repeatedly used ever 

 since. 



The animals used in war had of course been worked 

 off in the French campaigns with almost as much freedom, 

 comparatively speaking, as has been the case during the 

 year 1900 in South Africa; and mares it may be noted 

 were never used by knights in armour. The Old Knight's 

 horse is described by Chaucer as " good, albeit he was not 

 gay," and the peculiar shoes shown in the illustration 

 deserve notice, as well as the brand upon the creature's 

 flanks. But the same writer lets out one illuminating hint 



when he says of his monk : " full many a daintie horse had T / u Knot's Horse. 



he in stable" ; and the picture in the Ellesmere Manuscript From ike Eiiamere Chaucer. 



