162 HUNTING. 



two years and under fifteen hands high should be ' put in any 

 forest, chace, moor, heath, common, or waste within the shires 

 of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Buckingham, Huntingdon, 

 Essex, Kent, South Hants, Berks, North Wilts, Oxford, Wor- 

 cester, Gloucester, Somerset, Wales, Bedford, Warwick, Not- 

 tingham, Lancaster, Salop, Leicester, or Lincoln, nor under 

 fourteen hands in any other county.' It ordained also that 

 ' all commons and other places shall, within fifteen days after 

 Michaelmas, be driven by the owners and keepers, ard if there 

 be found in any of the said drifts any mare not able to bear 

 foals of reasonable stature, or to do profitable labour, in the 

 discretion of the majority of the drivers, they may kill and bury 

 them.' The Archbishops and Dukes were each to keep seven 

 entire trotting horses, no one of which was to be under fourteen 

 hands high ; and every clergyman whose living was worth a 

 hundred pounds yearly, or whose wife could afford a bonnet of 

 velvet, was to keep one such horse. By a subsequent Act all 

 owners of inclosed grounds to the extent of one mile were 

 ordered to keep two mares thirteen hands high (hand/nils was 

 the old expression) for breeding purposes ; where the grounds 

 were four miles in extent, four such mares were to be kept. The 

 counties of Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Northumberland, 

 and the bishopric of Durham, were exempted from these laws, 

 all violations or neglect of which were strictly punished ; or, at 

 any rate, ought to have been if the officers did their duty. 

 Henry is also said to have imported fresh blood from Turkey, 

 Naples, and Spain, all famous for their breed of horses in those 

 days. Nevertheless the result does not seem for all his care to 

 have been worth very much. In 1588, when England was 

 looking out from her cliffs for the coming of the great Armada, 

 only three thousand cavalry could be mustered, though Catholic 

 and Protestant alike forgot their quarrels as they rallied to their 

 Queen's call. And these horses were, according to a contem- 

 porary, 'very indifferent, strong, heavy, slow draught- horses, or 

 light and weak.' 



Markham was writing only a quarter of a century later, 



