NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF HORSE-SHOEING. 
473 
we perceive both Saxon and Norman horses with unequivocal 
marks of shoes and hobnails at their feet. Henry de Ferrers, who 
bore six horseshoes in his shield, was one of the Norman in¬ 
vaders, and, it is believed, was entrusted with the inspection of the 
king’s farriers. These armorial bearings are, it is true, older than 
the regular establishment of heraldry, but most likely they were, 
together with the family name, signs of office. The proper names 
of Marshall and Smith are similarly typified by hammers, tongs, 
anvils, and horseshoes. 
At the battle of Hastings, however, it does not appear that the 
Saxon cavalry mustered in any force to oppose the Normans, and 
consequently the opinion respecting the ignorance of horse-shoeing 
in England at that period may be admitted, under the qualification 
that this practice was not as yet commonly understood or adopted, 
with the more probability; since, even to the present time, it is only 
applied to the fore-hoofs of agriculturists’ horses in many parts of the 
continent, and in some is still altogether disregarded. 
In the days when a barbarous extravagance was often taken for 
magnificence, a horse in base latinity denominated Clapponus, de¬ 
rived perhaps from the German Klepper, was occasionally shod 
with silver. Du Cange, copying Bartholomeus Scriba, makes the 
word to mean a horseshoe, with the following quotation from the 
above writer’s Annal. Gennenses ad ann. 1230, “ unde optimus 
equus compararetur, et exparte sua prsesentaretur communi Ganuse, 
co-opertus optimo auro et ferri pedatus clapponis argenteis; qui 
equus, sive desterius, emptus fuit et ductus percivitatem Ganuse 
in signum memorise cum clapponis argenteis et panno aureo co- 
opertus.” 
It is related of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, one of the most 
wealthy princes of the eleventh century, that going to meet Beatrix, 
his intended bride, his horses were shod with silver, which was al¬ 
lowed to be cast off, in order to be appropriated by the multitude. 
This was A.D. 1038. At a much later period, James Hayes, after¬ 
wards Lord Doncaster, an English ambassador, is related to have 
acted in a similar manner on his public entry into Paris. 
“ Six trumpeters and two marshals, in tawny velvet liveries, 
completely suited, laced all over with gold (richly and closely 
laid), led the way: the Ambassador followed, with a great train 
of pages and footmen in the same rich livery, encircling his horse. 
And some said (how truly I cannot assert) the Ambassador’s horse 
was shod with silver shoes, lightly tackt on; and when he came 
to a place where persons or beauties of eminency were, his very 
horse prancing and curvetting, in humble reverence threw his shoes 
away—which the greedy understanders scrambled for, and he was 
content to be gazed on and admired till a Farrier, or rather the 
