BATTLE FLATS. 287 



mens found in Belgium. Mr Roach Smith informs 

 me that no particular account of the find reached 

 him. 



We have evidence that, in the time of Harold, horses 

 must have been generally shod for service in the field. 

 Dart,' in Piis History of York, says that at Battle Flats, six 

 miles east of that city, the scene of the conflict between 

 Harold and the Danes under Tostig (a.d. 1066), 'the 

 farmers in ploughing frequently turn up a very small sort 

 of horse-shoes, which would only fit an ass or the least 

 breed of northern horses ; ' and Camden,^ in speaking of 

 the ancient village of Aldby, remarks : ' Aldby may have 

 been a Roman before it was a Saxon villa. Stanford 

 bridge has the name of Battle Bridge in writings after the 

 Conquest, such as the instrument containing Oswis' trans- 

 lation, but it now keeps its antient name, and has no 

 memorial of the battle except a piece of ground on the 

 left hand of the bridge called Battle Flats, in plowing 

 which of late years they find pieces of swords, and a sort 

 of small horse-shoes that could only fit an ass or the 

 smallest breed of northern horses, but are proofs of the 

 antiquity of shoeing in England.' 



It is much to be regretted that no description can be 

 found of these articles. 



In the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of an early date, we 

 have additional proof that horses wore shoes. In the ac- 

 companying illustration (fig. Ill, next page) of a riding 

 Saint, copied from an illuminated manuscript (Tiberius C. 

 6. fol. 1 1.) in the Harleian collection of the British Mu- 

 seum, and belonging, it is surmised, to the nth century, 



' Eboracum, p. 84. " Britannia, vol. iii. p. 69. 



