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Under royal encouragement and patronage the Turf soon took its place as a national institution. Races were held at Croydon, Theobalds on Enfield Chase, and Garterly in Yorkshire, among other places, and of each of the meetings named the King was the President. James's most important studs were stabled at Newmarket, Middle Park, Eltham, Malmesbury, Nutbury and Tetbury. During this reign a silver bell and bowl were among the prizes offered at the Chester Races; the races for these were now run on St. George's Day, and the trophies then came to be known by the name of England's patron saint. Horses were regularly trained and prepared for these "bell courses;" the usual weight carried was 10 stone, and riders went to scale before starting.

In Scotland it would appear that betting on races was carried on to an extent that called for legislative interference; for in 1621 the Parliament at Edinburgh passed an Act which required any man who might win over 100 marks in twenty-four hours "at cards, dice, or wagering on horse races," to make over the surplus to the kirk for the benefit of the poor.

The hackney-coach question came up again in this reign, and Charles issued a Proclamation dealing with the subject in January, 1636. He forbade the use of coaches in London and Westminster unless they were about to make a journey of at least three miles; and he required every owner of a coach to keep four horses for the King's service. We may conjecture that his prohibition of hackney coaches was not the outcome of a desire to encourage horsemanship; for about eighteen months later he granted to his Master of the Horse, James, Marquis of Hamilton, power to license fifty hackney coachmen in London and the suburbs and convenient places in other parts of the realm. This license, granted by Proclamation in July, 1637, suggests favouritism, as according to a contemporary publication there were in 1636 over 6,000 coaches, private and public, in London and the suburbs: surely more than were needed, as some 10,000 odd hansoms and four-wheelers meet London's normal requirements to-day.

THE COMMONWEALTH .

Owing what he did to his cavalry, it was only to be expected that he should devote attention to the matter of remounts. He imported many Arabs, Barbs, and other horses suitable for the lightly armoured troops which had now replaced the knighthood of former days; he also took measures to encourage the breeding of horses for hunting and hawking, sports in which he himself indulged.

At what date stage-coaches began to supersede the old waggons, which were the only means of journeying in England in Queen Elizabeth's time, is not known. In the year 1610, a Pomeranian speculator was granted a royal patent for fifteen years to run coaches and waggons between Edinburgh and Leith; but not until the end of the Commonwealth do we find definite mention of a stage coach in England in the diary of a Yorkshire clergyman. This diary shows that stage coaches and waggons were then plying between London and Coventry, London and Aylesbury, London and Bedford, and on other roads.

It is highly improbable that there existed any horses of the coaching stamp at this period; on the contrary, the wretched condition of the roads until late in the eighteenth century, and the time occupied on a journey, indicates that animals of the Great Horse breed were used to drag the ponderous vehicles through the mud.

He was keenly alive to the importance of encouraging horsemanship; sharing, perhaps, the view held by many persons at this period that the general use of stage coaches and carriages was likely to lead to loss of proficiency in the saddle. He established a riding school, placing in charge Major Foubert, a French officer, whom he invited to England for the purpose. At the same time he recognised that travelling on wheels would increase in popularity, and took such measures as he might to prevent the breed of horses from degenerating. His Act of 1694 , granting licenses to 700 hackney coaches, four-wheel carriages, now called cabs, in London and Westminster, contains a clause forbidding the use of any horse, gelding or mare under 14 hands in hackney or stage coach.

The increasing numbers of people who travelled by stage coach had brought the highwayman into flourishing existence, and 4 of Wm. and M. c. 8, to encourage the apprehension of these gentry, gave the taker of a highwayman the horse, arms, and other property of the thief. In the tenth year of his reign another Act was passed which made horse stealers liable to the penalty of branding on the cheek; this enactment, however, was repealed in 1706 by Queen Anne , who substituted burning in the hand for a penalty which declared the sufferer's character to all who saw him.

William, by legislation, endeavoured to procure improvements in the public highways, whose condition in many parts had become dangerous "by reason of the great and many loads which are weekly drawn through the same." The records of subsequent years, however, showed that the state of the roads continued to leave much to be desired.

QUEEN ANNE .

In the later years of her reign the Queen's interest in racing became still more apparent; she gave her first Royal gold cup, value 60 guineas, in 1710; and yet more plates: further, she ran horses in her own name at York and elsewhere.

The science of travel had gone back rather than forward, for in 1715 the post from London to Edinburgh took six days, whereas in 1635 it took three. At this time, and until 1784, the mails were carried by boys on horseback; and between the badness of the roads, the untrustworthiness of the boys, and the wretched quality of the horses supplied them, the postal service was both slow and uncertain. The Post Office still held the monopoly of furnishing post-horses at a rate of threepence a mile, and its control over its subordinates was of the slightest.

The omission of reference to oxen in this connection may indicate that for draught purposes on the highways they were going out of use.

A 5-year-old was to carry 10 stone. A 6-year-old " " 11 stone. A 7-year-old " " 12 stone.

Any horse carrying less was to be forfeited and his owner fined ?200. Every race was to be finished on the day it began, that is to say, all heats were to be run off in one day. The Act went even further. It declared that matches might be run for a stake of under ?50, only at Newmarket and Black Hambleton in Yorkshire, under a penalty of ?200 for disobedience. Prizes elsewhere were to be of an intrinsic value of at least ?50, and entrance money was to go to the second horse.

So drastic a measure as this could not long be upheld in a free and sport-loving country; and it is without surprise we find the Government, five years later, withdrawing from a position which must have made it excessively unpopular. The next law opens with the announcement that, whereas the thirteen Royal Plates of 100 guineas value each, annually run for, as also the high prices that are continually given for horses of strength and size are sufficient to encourage breeders to raise their cattle to the utmost size and strength possible, "Therefore it shall be lawful to run any match for a stake of not less than ?50 value at any weights whatsoever and at any place or places whatsoever."

The effect of this "climbing down" measure was naturally to introduce lighter weights. Thus in 1754, to take an example that presents itself, Mr. Fenwick's Match'em won the Ladies' Plate of 126 guineas at York carrying nine stone, as a five-year-old; six-year-olds carrying 10 stone, four-mile heats; and in 1755 Match'em beat Trajan at Newmarket carrying 8 stone 7 lbs. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the Act of 1745 was the first step towards modern light-weight racing. It must be added that the scale of weights prescribed for the Royal Plates was as follows:--

Races decided in 4-mile heats.

The King himself lent a somewhat perfunctory support to the Turf, keeping at Hampton Court a grey Arab stallion, whose services were available for mares at a stated fee.

"What more natural than that the noblemen and gentlemen who frequented Newmarket, where ruffians and blacklegs were wont to congregate, should conceive the notion of forming themselves into a body apart, so that they might have at Newmarket as well as in London and elsewhere a place of their own, to which not every blackguard who could pay a certain sum of money would have as much right as they to claim entrance."

The conjecture is a most plausible one; but it was not long before the Club showed that it intended to support racing in practical fashion, for at the Newmarket meeting in May, 1753, two Jockey Club Plates were given for horses belonging to members of the Club.

It is stated that, in the year 1752, sixty thoroughbred stallions, of which only eight were reputed imported Arabs, were standing for service in various parts of England; fees, as may be supposed, were low. A horse named Oronooka headed the list at a fee of 20 guineas; another, Bolton Starling, covered at 8 1/2 guineas; but the usual charge was one, two or three guineas. Flying Childers in the earlier part of the century stood at 50 guineas, then at 100 guineas, and one season at 200 guineas.

The accompanying portrait of Grey Diomed, a son of Diomed, the winner of the first Derby, in 1780, gives a good idea of the racehorse of this period. Grey Diomed was foaled in 1785, and won many important races between the years 1788 and 1792. He was bred at Great Barton, Bury St. Edmunds, by Sir Charles Bunbury.

It was in 1780 that Mr. William Childe, of Kinlet, "Flying Childe," introduced the modern method of riding fast to hounds. Prior to Mr. Childe's time, men rode to hounds in a fashion we should consider slow and over-cautious, timber being taken at a stand; but once the superior excitement of fast riding across country was realised, the old, slow method soon disappeared.

The founding of the Royal Veterinary College at Camden Town in 1791 was by no means the least important event of this reign; it is not too much to say that it marked an epoch in the history of the Horse; for the establishment of this institution made an end of the quackery, often exceedingly cruel, which for centuries had passed for medical treatment of animals. Until the end of the eighteenth century English veterinary practitioners had been content to follow in the footsteps of such teachers as Gervaise Markham, who was the great authority on equine diseases two hundred years before; and the principles and practice of Gervaise Markham were hardly free from the taint of witchcraft and sorcery. Some of the more drastic and obviously useless remedies had been discredited and abandoned, but at the period of which we write, English veterinarians appear to have been following their own way regardless of the more enlightened methods which were beginning to gain acceptance among the advanced practitioners of France. For to the French is due the credit of laying the first foundations on which scientific veterinary surgery was built.

The helplessness of the old school is proved by the ravages of epizootics. The loss of horses and other live stock when contagious disease gained footing was enormous, such diseases being entirely beyond the understanding of veterinarians. The last half of the eighteenth century saw the establishment of veterinary colleges in Europe. Lyons led the way in 1761; the next to be founded was that of Alfort near Paris in 1765; the next, Copenhagen, in 1773; Vienna, 1775; Berlin, 1790, and London, as already mentioned, in 1791.

Study of animal diseases was stimulated by the invasion of deadly plagues, which wrought such havoc that stock-raising in some countries threatened to disappear as an industry. Knowledge of these plagues and efficient remedies had become essential to the existence of horse and cattle breeding, and the collection of facts and correct views concerning such diseases was the greatest task of the veterinary colleges: the progress made was necessarily slow; but the foundation of veterinary surgery as a science dates from the establishment of the colleges named. For many years the new school of veterinarians were groping in the dark; but if they made no striking advance they did valuable work in collecting facts and correct views concerning animal diseases, which were of great value to a later generation.

The Royal Veterinary College was founded by a Frenchman named Charles Vial de St. Bel, or Sainbel. Sainbel was born at Lyons in 1753. His talents developed early in life, and after a brief but brilliantly successful career in France he came over to England in 1788. He published proposals for founding a Veterinary School in this country, but his suggestions were not favourably received, and he returned home. Perhaps the fact that he had married an Englishwoman during his short residence on this side of the Channel influenced Sainbel in his choice of refuge when the Revolution threatened; but however that may be, it was to London that he repaired when political unrest in Paris bade him seek a new sphere of activity.

He still cherished his scheme for founding a Veterinary School, and his abilities now being recognised, it was taken up by the Odiham Agricultural Society. In 1791 Sainbel had the satisfaction of seeing the school established, in the shape of a farriery with stabling for fifty horses. He did not live to see the success that was destined to attend his enterprise, as he died in 1793 in his fortieth year. During the two years of his work as principal, however, he had laid down the lines on which scientific veterinary practice should be conducted; in the words of his biographer, "Sainbel may justly be looked upon as the founder of scientific veterinary practice in England" .

In the same year, 1832, a new schedule of weights was appended to the Articles for the King's Plates; this shows that the weights to be carried varied somewhat according to the places where the races were run. No scale was prescribed for Newmarket, the conditions being left for settlement by the Jockey Club. In 1837, the last year of William's reign, the number of Royal Plates had again increased and stood at 48, 34 in England and Scotland, 14 in Ireland.

The king continued the breeding stud at Hampton Court which his brother had bequeathed to him; if his affection for the Turf was slight, he deserves the greater credit for having maintained it.

HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA.

ACC. JUNE 20, 1837.

The sale of the Hampton Court Stud is the first noteworthy event of Her Majesty's reign. The step taken by the Queen's advisers, with Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, at their head, was deeply regretted by all interested in horse breeding, as one seeming to imply that the national sport would no longer receive the patronage of the Throne. A respectful but strong memorial against the sale was presented by the Jockey Club, but without avail, and on October 25, 1837, Messrs. Tattersall disposed of the stud before a crowded audience, which included buyers from France, Germany, Russia, and other foreign countries. The catalogue included 43 brood mares, which brought 9,568 guineas; 13 colt foals, 1,471 guineas; 18 filly foals, 1,109 guineas; and 5 stallions, including The Colonel and Actaeon and two imported Arabs, 3,556 guineas.

Actuated by patriotic motives and unwilling that so fine a horse should go abroad, Mr. Richard Tattersall bought The Colonel for 1,600 guineas; a price which was then considered a very large one. The total realised by sale of the stud, including a couple of geldings, was 15,692 guineas. Thirteen years later, in 1850, the clear-sightedness of H.R.H. the Prince Consort, saw that the dispersal had been a mistake, and that year saw the foundation of a new stud which flourished until 1894, when it was sent to the hammer. Regarding this second dispersal, it was urged that the stud did not pay its expenses; and although it produced The Earl, Springfield and La Fl?che, good judges, including the late General Peel, were of opinion that the ground, on which for so many years Thoroughbreds had been reared, was tainted and therefore needed rest.

The result of this investigation, as far as the horse question is concerned, was briefly summarised in the following passage of the Third Report of the Lords' Committee. They thought it desirable that this amusement should be upheld, "because, without the stimulus which racing affords, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that purity of blood and standard of excellence which have rendered the breed of English horses superior to that of any other country in the world."

The last statement was borne out by Mr. Tattersall's evidence. He said that he had sent horses to every part of the world except China. America and the countries of Europe have been purchasing the best stallions and mares money could buy in England during the last hundred years and more.

In 1845 the number of Queen's Plates stood at 51; 36 in Great Britain and 15 in Ireland. In 1861 the scale of weights was remodelled and made applicable to all the Plates wherever run; and in the same year it was enacted that "none of Her Majesty's Plates shall be run in heats."

Some few abortive attempts to control racing by law have been made since Her Majesty's accession. In 1860 Lord Redesdale introduced into the House of Lords a bill to stop light-weight racing by fixing the minimum weight at 7 stone. This measure was withdrawn, Lord Derby and Lord Granville, also a member of the Jockey Club and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, promising on behalf of the Jockey Club that that body was prepared to deal with the matter; but nothing was done in the direction indicated.

In May, 1870, Mr. Thomas Hughes, the member for Frome, brought in a bill to amend the laws relating to racing. This bill proposed to make it unlawful to race any horse or mare under three years old, and to make the Queen's Plates open only to horses four years old and upwards. Mr. Hughes, in introducing his measure, said that between 1843 and 1868 the number of two-year-olds running had increased fourfold, while the number of races of a mile and upwards had decreased, and urged that the system which had grown up tended to cause deterioration in the breed of horses. As was well known at the time, Mr. Hughes was indebted for his facts and figures to Sir Joseph Hawley. This bill was read a first time by 132 votes to 44, but was withdrawn in the following July.

Great and radical changes had come over the Turf during the twenty-five years mentioned by Mr. Hughes, but they were only incidental to the general process of Turf development which has been going on since the advent of the railway.

In 1836 the travelling van was first used for conveying a horse from training quarters to the race course. Lord George Bentinck, who managed Lord Lichfield's racing stable, resolved at the last moment to run Elis in the St. Leger, and astonished the betting fraternity by producing him at Doncaster in time for the race; to do this he had borrowed a van which had been constructed to carry fat cattle to Smithfield Show. The fact that Elis won the St. Leger to which he had been brought in this, then novel, fashion no doubt did something to stimulate the practice of transporting race horses thus; but the van was gradually superseded by the horse-box, which was first employed for the purpose about 1840.

Railways, as they spread over the country, did much to increase the number of meetings held and to increase the numbers of entries. We find that in the period between 1827 and 1837 the number of horses running increased from 1,166 in the former year to 1,213 in the latter; while during the period between 1860, when railroads had become numerous, and 1870, the number of horses running rose from 1,717 in the former year to 2,569 in the latter.

The tendency for years has been in favour of short races at the expense of long distance events. At the Newmarket Craven meeting of 1820 there was one race of about three miles, five races of two miles or over, twenty of about one mile and two of under one mile. At the Newmarket Craven meeting of 1900 there were three races of about one mile and a half, six of about one mile, and eleven of five or six furlongs. The necessity for breeding race horses that could carry from ten to twelve stone twice or thrice in an afternoon over a four-mile course has disappeared altogether. In his place we have the animal which can carry seven stone over six or seven furlongs at a pace that would probably have left Eclipse hopelessly behind, but which is useless for any purpose off the race-course.

The highly artificial existence to which our race horses are now subjected, jealously protected from change of temperature, and "forced" in preparation to take part in two-year-old races, has done much to impair fitness to beget horses that will stand work in the hunting field or on the road. This is a result of the changes which have come over the English Turf during the century. We must, however, retrace our steps and glance at the endeavours to improve our horses which have been made within the last thirty years.

The year 1873 saw the appointment of the Select Committee generally known as Lord Rosebery's Committee "to Enquire into the Condition of the Country with regard to Horses, and its Capabilities of Supplying any Present or Future Demands for them." This committee did not consider the question of Racing; their labours during their sixteen sittings were restricted to eliciting facts from the witnesses concerning the breeding and supply of horses of the generally useful stamp; and much valuable evidence was given before them. To summarise them briefly, the main points of their Report were as follows:--

The Committee considered that so far as the Army was concerned it seemed to be admitted that the mounted branches were never better horsed than they were now: Mr. H. R. Phillips had given evidence that Irish mares were chiefly used in the Army. They were not prepared to recommend the formation of Government breeding studs on the Continental plan, deeming it better that the military authorities should continue to buy as private customers. They did not recommend any check on the use of unsound stallions, though admitting this to be a great evil; to restrain owners of unsound sires from offering their services for hire would, they thought, be construed as interference with individual liberty; but, if practicable, they would have prizes given at agricultural shows to sound stallions which covered mares at a low fee.

They also recommended the abolition of taxes on horses which operated as a deterrent to farmers who would otherwise pay more attention to breeding. The evidence given before them showed that there appeared to be no scarcity of Thoroughbreds: high-class hunters had increased in price and more in proportion than other horses, but those who could afford to pay could generally find what they required. There was a general decrease in the number of horses in England; the evidence pointed to a great scarcity of agricultural horses, and while the Cleveland Bay and old-fashioned Hackney or Roadster had become extremely rare, we had been obliged of late years to look abroad for supplies of harness horses.

The causes of deficiency in these breeds were the export of mares; the increased profits accruing to sheep and cattle rearing, and the increased demand for horses, consequent on increased population and augmented wealth, which produced a relative scarcity. The Committee recorded great improvements during the few years preceding in Cornwall and Devon, where formerly few horses had been bred.

The value of the work performed by this Committee was much qualified by the disinclination of its members to hear any evidence which did not bear directly upon Thoroughbreds and the production of saddle horses. Perusal of the mass of evidence given by numerous witnesses shows that the Committee would hear little or nothing in relation to the condition of Harness Horse breeding, apparently holding that very important department of the industry as without the scope of their inquiry. It is difficult to understand why this attitude was adopted, but the published minutes stand to prove that any witness who ventured to comment upon harness horses and the advisability of stimulating their production, was not encouraged to give information.

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