60 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH HORSE. 



stallions from being turned out into any common pasture. This, at no great 

 distance of time, necessarily led to the castrating of all but a very few of the best 

 stallions, and then, on comparing the powers and work of the mare with that of 

 the gelding, she soon began to be accounted more valuable — more service was 

 exacted from her — she was taken more care of, and the general breed of horses 

 was materially improved. 



Polydore Virgil, who flourished in this reign, confirms the statements already 

 made, that " the English horses were seldom accustomed to trot, but excelled in 

 the softer pace of the amble. 



Henry VII. was an arbitrary monarch and seemed to be too fond of prohibi- 

 tory acts of parliament; but so far as the horse was concerned they were most of 

 them politic, although tyrannical. 



Succeeding monarchs acted on the same principle, and by prohibiting exporta- 

 tion, and encouraging a numerous and good breed of horses, by public rewards 

 and recompences, every necessary incitement was afforded rapidly to improve 

 the breed. 



Henry VIII., a tyrannical and cruel prince, but fond of show and splendour, 

 was very anxious to produce a valuable breed of horses ; and the means which 

 he adopted were perfectly in unison with his arbitrary disposition, although 

 certainly calculated to effect his object. He affixed a certain standard, below 

 which no horse should be kept. The lowest height for the stallion was fifteen 

 hands, and for the mare thirteen hands. Those whose local interests were injured 

 loudly complained of this arbitrary proceeding. The small breed of Cornish 

 horses was in a manner extinguished. The dwarfish but active and useful 

 inhabitants of the Welsh mountains rapidly diminished, the Exmoors and the 

 Dartmoors were compelled to add an inch to their stature, and a more uniformly 

 stout and useful breed of horses was produced. 



The monarch was determined to effect and to secure his object. At " Michael- 

 mastide" the neighbouring magistrates were ordered to " drive" all forests and 

 commons, and not only destroy such stallions, but all " unlikely tits," whether 

 mares, or geldings, or foals, which they might deem not calculated to produce a 

 valuable breed. 



By a singular coincidence, the year of his reign, 1540, which found him thus 

 arbitrarily employed in the domestic improvement of his people, or rather in 

 the accomplishment of his favourite objects — the splendour of his tournaments 

 and the magnificence of his pageantries — was that in which he accomplished 

 another tyrannical, but master-stroke of policy, — the suppression of the 

 monasteries*. 



He next had recourse to a sumptuary law in order more fully to accomplish 

 his object, and, appealing to the pride of those who were concerned, he had no 

 difficulty in this matter. Every archbishop and duke was compelled, under 

 certain penalties, to keep seven trotting stallions for the saddle, each of which 

 was to be fourteen hands high at the age of three years. 



There were very minute directions with regard to the number of the same 

 kind of horses to be kept by the other ranks of the clergy and nobility, and the 

 statute concludes by enacting, that every person having benefices to the amount 

 of one hundred pounds yearly, and " every layman, whose wife shall wear any 

 French hood or bonnet of velvet," shall keep one such trotting stallion for the 

 saddle. 



These enactments, tyrannical as they appear to us, were quietly submitted to 



* There is a singular entry in the Journals est billa education* equorum procerioris 



of the House of Lords, which shows how much statures, et communi omnium consensu, ne- 



they had this horse husiness at heart : — mine discrepante, expedita." 

 u Hodie (15th Junii, 1540) tandem lecla 



