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considered of great advantage ; weight of wool and early maturity 
being now of the first importance. 
The Norfolk Cart Horse has, I suppose, now almost disappeared. 
Marshall speaks of the race as, in his time (about 1780), “almost 
entirely worn out.” They were a “ small brown-muzzled breed, light 
boned, but stood hard work and hard keep in a remarkable manner.” 
As to the origin of the Norfolk and Suffolk Trotting Horses, now 
commonly known by the older name, “Hackneys,” Mr. Euren ventures 
a suggestion that “it may be that the Norsemen, when they settled 
in this district, brought with them the irorthern active, hardy, 
clean-limbed horses, such as are yet capital trotters in North 
Europe, and that these horses, crossed with the descendants of 
Roman Horses, established the type.”* There is no doubt, however, 
that whatever their origin, the influences of soil and climate were 
largely instrumental in the development of the Norfolk Hackneys. 
Their famous trotting qualities are of no modern origin, for 
Mr. Euren, in his remarks on the early history of the Norfolk 
Trotting Horse, calls attention to a letter from Margaret Paston, 
written about the year 1465, to her husband. Sir John Paston, 
in which she tells him “ there be bought for you three horses 
at St. Faith’s fair, and all be trotters, right fair horses.” There is 
also an Act, passed in the thirty-third year of the reign of 
Henry VIII. (1542), which, in order to maintain the breed 
of saddle horses, provides that every person of wealth and 
quality should maintain Trotting Stallions, in number according 
to his wealth, and esijecially enacts that no Cart Horse 
or Sumpter Horse should be reckoned for the purposes of the Act 
as a Trotting Horse. And when we consider that our ancestors 
possessed no other means of locomotion, we can quite appreciate 
the wisdom of an Act which insures the continuance of a race of 
Horses so serviceable both in times of jjeace and war. 
There is plenty of evidence extant as to the great staying powers 
of the old Norfolk breeds, both of Plackneys and Cart Horses, and 
Marshall, whilst regretting that by injudicious crossing the latter 
valuable race should have been lost, adds : “ Had the original 
Norfolk breed [of Cart Horse] been crossed with these [the Suffolk 
* “The Hackney Horse : as it is, and as it was” (‘ Live Stock Journal 
Almanac, 1874,’ p. 52). 
