30 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book I. 



portance was attached to the royal studs, and to 

 those kept up by the great barons and ecclesiastics 

 throughout the country. These examples could 

 be largely multiplied if it were necessary to adduce 

 further proofs of the antiquity and the cultivation 

 of Eastern strains to temp. Richard II.* And there 

 is no doubt, at this particular epoch, the thoroughbred 

 English horse (" Eques Britannicus ") was characteristic 

 of the nation. They were recognized, and their praises 

 sung, abroad, where their owners invariably carried 

 off the Mantle f with them ; while at home they must 

 have been equally known to fame, although their 

 victories have found no recorder, or if recorded the 

 chronicles have perished. 



* Cursor Equus, Coicrsier. Will. Malmesbury, lib. 2. de Gestis Ang. 

 cap. 6 : Equos Cursores plurimos, cum phaleris fulvum, ut Maro ait, 

 mandentes sub dentibus aurum (a.d. 926). 



Guntherus, lib. 7. Ligurini : 



Non tamen aut galea muniri tempera curat, 

 Aut Cursoris equi, quo prtelia semper agebat, 

 Officio fungi, etc. 



See in Conseuetudine Andegavensi, art. 47, et Cenomanensi, art. 55. 



Custodes Equicii Regis. — Abbr. Rotul., torn, i., p. 234, b. Suth., rot. 

 loetp. 273, b. Essex, rot. 12 et torn, ii., p. 53, b. 71, b. 97, b. etc. Equi 

 jumenta et Equita, p. 257, b. Ebor, rot. 5. Custodia equorum, jumen- 

 torum, pullanorum et Equicii, ibid., p. 211, b. Ebor., rot. 23. Equos, 

 equas, et pullanos de Equitio, Dom. Reg. Oxon., rot. 11, p. 131. — 

 Collection of expenses, etc., of the royal studs, etc. in P.R.O. 



t The usual prize given on the Continent for horse-races, about this 

 period, was a mantle of silk, cloth, or rich stuff. See Petrarch's reference 

 to English horses. For description of the races at Milan, Florence, 

 Pisa, etc., etc., see " Memoirs of Sir John Hawkwood," Lond. 1780 — 1782, 

 No. IV. The horses brought by English pilgrims to the Holy Land in 

 the fourteenth century were much prized by potentates in "foreign" parts 

 " beyond the seas." Some interesting references to horse-racing in Spain 

 about this period, when the Peninsula was the home of the thoroughbred 

 barb, will be found in the Chevalier de Bourgoame's Travels, ch. iii., 

 ed. Paris, 1803. 



