14 INTRODUCTION. 



anachronism, in placing the most conspicuous female 

 character of his fine composition sideways on her 

 steed. That the lady should have been depicted 

 riding in the male fashion, might, it strikes us, 

 have been inferred, without any historical research 

 on the subject, from the poet's describing her as 

 having, on her feet, 



" a paire of spurres sharpe." 



Neither the original example of Ann of Bohemia, 

 nor that, in later days, of Elizabeth, as female eques- 

 trians, however extensively followed, had sufficient 

 force, entirely to abolish, among our countrywomen, 

 the mode of riding hke the other sex. In the time of 

 Charles the Second, it appears, from a passage in the 

 Duke of Newcastle's great work on Horsemanship, to 

 have still, at least partially, subsisted. Another writer 

 of the seventeenth century, w^hose manuscripts are pre- 

 served in the Harleian collection, speaks of it, as having 

 been practised, in his time, by the ladies of Bury, in 

 Suffolk, when hunting or hawking; and our venerable 

 contemporary, Lawrence (a voluminous writer on the 

 horse), it is worthy of remark, states, that at an early 

 period of liis own hfe, two young ladies of good family, 

 then residing near Ipswich, in the same county, " were 

 in the constant habit of riding about the country, in 

 their smart doe-skins, great coats, and flapped beaver 

 hats." 



