658 
ON HORSE-SHOES. 
land in Cuckeney, county Nottingham, of the king, mcapUe , 
for the service of shoeing the king’s palfreys, upon four feet, 
with the king’s nails, or shoeing materials, as oft as he should 
be at his manor of Mansfield; and if he put in all the nails, 
the king should give him a palfrey of four marks ; or he was 
to have the king’s palfrey, giving him five marks of silver, as 
the jury, 3 Edw. Ill, found the service ;* * * § as he was also, if he 
lamed the horse, pricked him. or shod him strait, &c., inclaudet , 
or includet , as it was found 23 Edw. I, not so agreeably.f 
We learn from the e Plac. Cor.,’ 13 Edw. I, that “ Henry de 
Averyng held the manor of Morton, in the county of Essex, 
in capite of our lord the king, by the sergeantry of finding a 
man with a horse, value ten shillings, and four horse-shoes, 
one sack of barley, and one iron buckle, as oft as it may 
happen that our lord the king should go with his army into 
Wales, at his own proper expense, for forty days.”{ 
The above notices manifest the importance attached to 
farriery by our early monarchs. The oldest horse-shoes with 
which we are acquainted are of small size, nor must we look 
for large ones until the commencement of the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury, when the stout Flemish breed of horses began to be 
imported into this country. The earliest figure of a mediaeval 
horse-shoe that I have been able to find is of the time of 
Henry III, and occurs upon the seal of Walter Marshall, 
seventh Earl of Pembroke, who died in the keep of Goodrich 
Castle, in 1246. It is represented as formed of a bar of equal 
breadth throughout, with calkins at the heels, and pierced 
on each side with four square holes for the nails. Within 
the shoe is shown one of the long nails used in attaching it 
to the foot (see fig. 3).§ On a seal of the time of Edward 
III, belonging to the corporation of Gloucester, there is on 
each side of the king’s head a horse-shoe, and also several 
nails. Guillim, speaking of the horse-shoe as an armorial 
ensign, says, “ This bearing of horse-shoe in armoury is very 
ancient, as the arms of Robert Ferrers, Earl Ferrers, testi- 
fieth, who lived in the time of King Stephen, and who bore 
for his arms, argent; six horse-shoes, sable.” 
The figure of a horse-shoe was painted on a wooden shield, 
against which the burgesses and yeomen used to tilt on foot, 
the rules of chivalry not admitting any person under the 
* ‘Esc./ 3 E. Ill, p. 108.; 
f Thornton’s ‘Nottinghamshire/ p. 447. 
X Meyrick’s ‘Critical Inquiry/ vol. i, p. 11. 
§ The original matrix is in the collection at Goodrich Court. Sir S. It. 
Meyrick informed me that it “was struck up by the iron shoe-heel of a 
boy while trying the extent he could jump.” 
