82 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book 11. 



his Journal* terms "a sturring-horse." It seems pro- 

 bable that these horses were selected from the royal 

 stud at Fontainebleau.'l' 



Sir Jaques Granado, the equerry, met his death 

 in his vocation in the year 1552, being accidentally 

 thrown from his horse in the privy garden at White- 

 hall, in the presence of Queen Mary and King Philip, 

 and killed on the spot.J 



Notwithstanding Holinshed's aspersions, it is very 

 likely the encouragement given by Henry VI I L was 

 conducive to, and actually produced very salutary re- 

 sults in, the cultivation of the English horse. The 

 royal studs may have deteriorated as he asserts, but 

 there can be no doubt that many of the most approved 

 and valued strains continued to be bred from by 

 noblemen and gentlemen throughout the country, such 

 as Sir Nicholas Arnold, otherwise Edward VI. would 

 not be able to eulogize the number and superiority of 

 the horses he saw at the musters in 1551. Writing 

 on the 20th of December in that year to his friend 

 Barnaby Fitzpatrick, he tells him the musters were 

 well armed, " and so horsed as was never seen, and, I 

 dare say, so many good horses, and so well armed 

 men. ^ 



* In the king's journal or diary (now preserved in the British Museum 



MS. Cotton Nero C. x.) the following entry occurs under date January 



27, 1 55 1-2 ; "Paris arrived with horses, and shewed how the French king 



, had sent me [a present of] six cortalles, tow Turkes, a barbary, tow 



genettes, a sturring horse, and tow litle muyles, and shewd them to me." 



t Henry II. to Edward VI. from Fontainebleau, December 4, 1551. 



X Machyn's Diary, p. 135. Ibid., p. 356. 



§ Barnaby Fitzpatrick was the elder son of an Irish chieftain, who, 

 after the suppression of the rebellion of the Geraldines in 1537, made his 



