40 
Welsh Ponies and Cobs. 
unfortunately omitted to hand down to posterity any clue as to 
their height. He spoke of them in terms of unqualified 
admiration, of their docility as chariot horses, of their activity 
as riding horses, and of their general superiority all round — 
and there he ended. 
To those who do not underrate the claims of long descent, 
it is interesting to recall that horses of various breeds, and used 
for various purposes, were recognised as institutions and 
articles of value in the Laws of Howel, the Good Prince of 
Cwmru in the tenth century. 
In the Editions of Laws, that he handed down to us, entitled 
“ Leges Wallicae, ” the small ponies were left ominously 
unmentiontd. Was it that they were deemed unworthy of 
notice, or were similar ideas entertained of them as in a later 
Tudor period, for Henry VIII. gained almost as much 
posthumous notoriety from his attitude towards ponies as he 
earned by his methods of wifely treatment. Animals of the 
larger types, weight-carrying armour bearers, and prancing 
war horses that “scent battle afar” reigned supreme in his 
regal mind, and occupied his all-conquering thoughts. 
The self-supporting little pony on the hill was in his 
opinion but a blot upon creation. On the indictment of not 
maintaining a “ reasonable stature ” His Majesty pronounced 
against them a sentence of annihilation, which, however, does 
not appear to have been carried out. What opinion Howel the 
Good may have entertained towards the lesser animal we do 
not, and never shall now, know. He brought, however, a wide 
range of intellect to bear exhaustively, and to good purpose, 
on the larger animals. In conjunction — we read — with an 
assembly very representative in appearance, consisting as it did 
of 120 prelates and 836 deputies from the Coinmots, he drew 
up and codified an exhaustive set of laws bearing on the 
subjects of horse-breeding, keeping and selling, which were 
subsequently approved by the Pope. 
Prince Howel discoursed of three estates of the realm 
Equine. First there was the Palfrey, an animal reserved more 
for the delectation of patrician patrons, their pastimes and 
their pageants, for knights in tourneys, or as ambling hacks 
dedicated to the use of the lords and ladies gay. An old 
sixteenth century chronicler (Blundeville) once wrote, “ Some 
have a breed of ambling horses to journey and travel by the 
way. Some perhaps againe a race of swift runners to runne 
for wagers, or to gallop the bucke and such exercises of 
pleasure. But the plaine countryman would perchance have 
a breed only for draught and burden.” How amblers or swift 
runners worked or strove does not concern our theme. It is 
the Nag that carried the yeoman, or conveyed the goods and 
