48 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



shoulders." It matters nothing if the gentleman is deep in the back ribs or plain 

 and coarse, with most suspicious hocks. His portrait is authenticated by a higher 

 court, and we are very little concerned in questions of his breeding. 



It is fortunately just about the same time as the Markham Arabian was brought over 

 that a really intelligent and intelligible description was written of the breed of horses 

 on which Englishmen had chiefly to depend up to the middle of the seventeenth 

 century. Both Mr. Gervase Markham and Mr. Michael Barrett, the authorities to 

 which I refer, seem perfectly contented with the home stock, and as determined as 

 their successors have usually been to resist new-fangled theories. 



" For swiftness," writes Markham, " what nation hath brought forth that horse 

 which hath exceeded the English ? When the best Barbaries that ever were in 

 their prime, I saw them overrunne by a black hobble at Salisbury ; yet that hobbie 

 was more overrunne by a horse called Valentine, which Valentine, neither in hunting 

 or running was ever equalled, yet was a plainbred English horse, both by syre and 

 dame. Again for infinite labour and long endurance, which is to be desired in our 

 hunting matches, I have not seen any horse to compare with the English. He is of 

 tolerable shape, strong, valiant, and durable." 



It is worth noting that the phrase " hunting matches " here used is common about 

 this time, and evidently refers to those races across country which implied jumping- 

 power and endurance as well as speed, and were therefore the prototypes of the 

 steeplechase. Sir George Chaworth, writing to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1607, 

 reports that " Lord Haddington, and all his favorytes, followers, and paraketts goe 

 shortly to Huntingdon, to a match of hunting that he hath there against my lord of 

 Sheffeeld's horse. And well maye he afforde to lose such a match ; yea better then 

 so poore a man as I to be at cost to trayne and dyet my horse to win one." It has 

 been said, with what truth I do not yet know, that " wildgoose chases " had the same 

 meaning in the passage from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy": "Riding of 

 great horses .... horse races and wildgoose chases, which are disports of 

 greater men, and good in themselves, though many gentlemen by such means gallop 

 themselves out of their fortunes." 



The " black hobbie " so highly commended by Markham may well have been 

 descended from the famous stud bred by Barnaby Fitz Patrick, who died as Baron of 

 Upper Ossory in 1581, and achieved a place in more solemn chronicles by slaying 

 Kory O'More. The actual horse here mentioned was possibly " The Hobbie of 

 Mister Thomas Carlenton's," recorded in 1617, "and at this houre the most 



