16 Introduction. 



of Richard the second's reign, observes, "Likewise, 

 noble ladies then used high heads and cornets, and 

 robes with long trains, and seats, or side-saddles, 

 on their horses, by the example of the respectable 

 Queen Ann, daughter of the King of Bohemia, 

 who first introduced the custom into this kingdom : 

 for, before, women of every rank rode as men do." 

 (T. Rossn, Hist. Be. Aug. p. 205.) In his beau- 

 ful illustrative picture of Chaucer's Canterbury 

 Pilgrims, Stothard appears to have committed an 

 anachorism, 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 

 equestrians, however extensively followed, had 

 sufficient force, entirely to abolish, among our 

 countrywomen, the mode of riding like the other 

 sex. In the time of Charles the second, it ap- 

 pears, from a passage in the Duke of Newcastle's 

 great work on Horsemanship, to have still, at least 



