A XOBLE SAXON FARRIER. 291 



beck, in Nottinghamshire, was, at the invasion, in the pos- 

 session of a Saxon chief named Gamelhere, who was 

 allowed to retain two carucates of land in Cuckeney, on 

 condition that he shod the king's palfreys upon all the 

 feet, with the king's shoes and nails, whenever he visited 

 the manor of Mansfield ; and if he put in all the nails, 

 the king was to give him a palfrey worth four marks ; or 

 if the horse was lamed in shoeing, the chief had to supply 

 one of like value to the king. ' A Saxon nobleman unac- 

 quainted with the art of shoeing before the conquest of 

 England by William, would not have been deemed a very 

 safe agent in superintending that important operation im- 

 mediately after that event. If any reliance is to be placed 

 on the Bayeux tapestry, said to have been wrought by 

 Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror, or the Empress 

 Matilda, wife of Henry I. of England, the Normans and 

 the Saxons are in one part represented with their horses 

 shod with heavy shoes, while in another part King Harold's 

 horses have unarmed feet. 



The Normans brought many horses with them to 

 England, and it was their cavalry that enabled them to 

 defeat the army of Harold II. From a period far ante- 

 cedent to that conflict, the Normans were acquainted with 

 the mode of extending the usefulness of the horse by 

 protecting its hoofs with a metallic rim attached by nails ; 

 and on their gaining the supremacy in England, the art 

 of shoeing appears to have received marked attention. 

 William gave to Simon St Liz, a Norman nobleman who 

 had accompanied him across the channel, the town of 

 Northampton, and the whole hundred of Falkley, then 



' Thornton s Nottinghamshire, p. 447. 

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