Queen Anne’s Reign
In the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1713), the roads throughout England were still of the worst description, and the ponderous carriages of the nobility demanded great strength and weight in the animals which drew them; and thus we now find the Shire Horse in demand as a carriage horse. The Queen’s state coach was drawn by long-tailed Shire mares; and the stage coaches which since 1670 had opened regular communication between London and the most important towns in the kingdom were we need not doubt, drawn by horses of a heavy, massive type; for until the end of the century, when McAdam introduced the system of road making known by his name, no team of lighter horses would have been equal to the work. The value and importance of the Shire horse therefore in no wise decreased when the abolition of armour enabled our ancestors to employ a lighter stamp of cavalry trooper.
The London Evening Post, of September 24th to 27th, 1737, contains notice of a race which shows that endeavours were made to encourage the breeding of active cart horses. It runs as follows:—
“To be run for on Finchley Common, in the county of Middlesex, on Tuesday the 4th of October next, a Set of Lating Bells and Whip, for five Horses, by Carthorses that constantly go in a Team, and to be rid by the Carter that did constantly drive the Team; to ride bareback’d, with the Bit-Halter and his own Cart-Whip; to run two miles at a Heat, the best of three Heats, and to pay three shillings entrance, and no less than five to start, and enter the day of running between the Hours of Eight and Two, at the place above-mentioned; the first Horse to have the Bells, and the second the Whip.”
Here is the advertisement of another race of somewhat similar character which, in spite of the element of jocularity in the conditions, would help to stimulate the interest taken by carters in their charges. This is taken from the London Evening Post, of September 4th to 6th, 1739:—
“On the Wash, near Newbury, in Berkshire, on Friday, the 22nd of September, 1739, will be run for, a set of Cart Harness with Bells, for five Horses (given by the Most Honourable the Marquess of Carnarvon), by any Horse, Mare, or Gelding that shall be 15 hands high at the least, and has been train’d to the Cart only, and in that way continued to be used. None but Carters to ride, and to ride with Bell Halters, long Cart Whips, in Straw Boots and Carter’s Frocks, and without saddles; and all Riders to change their Horses, &c. (mares or geldings), before starting at the Starting-Post, and no Man to ride his own Horse (mare or gelding), &c., the Horse (mare or gelding) &c., that comes in last to win the Prize. And if any Dispute shall arise about the Change of Horses, starting, running, &c., the same to be determined by the said Marquis, his deputy, or deputies, and 2s. 6d. will be given by the said Marquiss to each Rider.”
Marshall in his Rural Economy of Norfolk, published 1795, describes the road races in which “the lead was the goal contended for:” in his time this dangerous amusement, as he justly considered it, had been “a good deal laid aside though not entirely left off.” The gist of Marshall’s account has been given in a former little work.B
From Heavy Horses (No. 3 of Messrs. Vinton’s Live Stock Handbooks Series), we take the following interesting passage which shows the value set upon good Shires, by their owners in the middle of the eighteenth century:
“Only within the last year or so there went over to the great majority... an old stud groom, whose grandfather in his day was at the head of a famous stud owned by people of the name of Gallemore, who for generations had a celebrated Shire stud within two miles of Calwich Abbey. At the time when Prince Charlie marched on Derby in the famous ’45 this old retainer was forced to take refuge from the invaders and place the stallions of this stud in a place of safety. This he successfully did.”
The fear lest these animals should be appropriated by the invader reminds us of the similar state of affairs three hundred years previously, when the Wars of the Roses created a demand for horses which private owners took extreme measures to avoid satisfying at their own expense (pages 19-20).
This excerpt also furnishes us with a link between past and present; for volume i. of the Shire Horse Stud Book contains mention of several of the original Derbyshire stallions named Gallemore, which were no doubt called after their owners. The stud referred to was stabled at Croxden Abbey—“and from its courtyard the horses went forth into hiding. Though it cannot be stated as an absolute fact, all the evidence points to the famous Packington Blind Horse having been begotten at this same place” (Ibid., p. 16).
The direct descendants of the Packington Blind Horse (believed to have been in his full vigour from 1755 to 1770) are traced down to the year 1832.
It is certain that this breed, for which War Horse, Great Horse, Old English Black Horse or Shire Horse are terms used at different periods has been distributed for centuries through the district between the Humber and the Cam, occupying the rich fen lands of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, and extending westward through the counties of Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Norwich and Stafford, on to the Severn. It has also been extensively bred in the low-lying pasture lands of England, in the counties both north and south of those named, everywhere retaining its typical character subject to slight variations produced by differences of climate, soil and food.
When Arthur Young, in the latter part of the last century, was describing his tours through the counties of England and Scotland, he mentions only two varieties of Cart Horse as deserving attention, namely, the Large Black Old English Horse, “the produce principally of the Shire counties in the heart of England and the Sorrel-coloured Suffolk Punch for which the sandy tract of country near Woodbridge is famous.”
The writer’s use of the word “Shire” will be remarked; we cannot doubt but that a breed of horses whose home was in these counties would have been known in other localities as “Shire Horses,” like the “Norfolk Trotter” and “Suffolk Punch,” and at a later date the “Clydesdale;” the only difference being that the Shire was distributed over a larger breeding area, which therefore furnished him with a less strictly local name. Arthur Young, it will also be observed, describes the breed as the “Large Black Old English Horse,” a name which, as we have seen, had been in current use since at least the time of Oliver Cromwell. The Eastern counties breed was known and described as the Black Lincolnshire Horse. Black and grey, as Mr. Reynolds points out, were held to indicate purity of breeding.
We have now reached a period when painters of animal pictures were sometimes commissioned to execute portraits of fine examples of horses, cattle and sheep. The engraving which faces this page is from a picture by Mr. Woodward of a Norfolk Cart Horse called Dodman (East Anglian for “Snail”), of whose pedigree unfortunately no particulars exist, but which was foaled in the year 1780. This horse was the property of an ancestor of Anthony Hamond, Esq., and the portrait is preserved at his family seat in the parish of Westacre near Brandon. The long hair-lock hanging from the knee arrests the eye; this appendage, like a moustache on the upper lip and a hair lock projecting from the back of the hock, is regarded as the distinguishing mark of a strain or variety of the Shire. Dodman seems to have been used as a stallion in the district whence was obtained, nearly a century later, Honest Tom (1105), whose portrait faces page 60.
Our next engraving is from a picture by George Morland, which was probably painted at about the same date as that of Dodman. That artist, between 1790 and 1795, went into hiding in Leicestershire to escape from his creditors; he took up his abode in the neighbourhood of Mr. Bakewell’s famous Dishley Farm; and the horse portrayed resembles in no small degree pictures of some of Mr. Bakewell’s stud, which at that period had attained its highest repute. It is therefore exceedingly likely that this represents a typical Leicestershire Cart Horse of the time. It belongs to a type differing in some respects from Dodman, being longer in the body, finer about the head and lacking the hair-lock in front of the knee, while the mane, tail, and feathering on the legs are less profuse. These two portraits afford opportunity of comparing two varieties of the Shire, the Fenland and the Leicestershire.
The Sporting Magazine of 1796 contains an article headed “Operations on British
Horses,” in which the following passage occurs:—
“We have a large and strong breed in the more fertile and luxuriant parts of the island; and there is no country can bring a parallel to the strength and size of our horses destined for the draught, as there are instances of single horses that are able to draw the weight of three tons.”
The roads in England had been vastly improved since Holinshed described the drawing powers of a team of horses in the latter half of the sixteenth century; but we cannot doubt that the horse itself had also improved, more especially during the eighteenth century when the Great Horse was gradually becoming the servant of the farmer rather than that of the soldier. The Statutes to which reference has been made unquestionably did much to promote the building up of the Great Horse breed and establish it as national; the counties and districts enumerated in 32 of Henry VIII. quoted on p. 24 show very clearly how wide was the area over which the breed was distributed three and a half centuries ago; and it would be superfluous to lay stress upon the increase of the area over which the Shire horse has been bred since that remote day.
It would seem that the action which our forefathers sought to develop in the Great Horse was still characteristic, in some degree at least, of the Shire at the end of the last century; this engraving, published at the time, shows a horse named Elephant, whose portrait was painted in 1792 by an artist whose name is unknown. An inscription on the frame tells us that this horse was “supposed to be one of the most boney horses ever seen;” at four years old he “is said to have stood 16’2” and to have girthed 8 feet, while he measured round the knee-joint 16½ inches. He was plainly a horse of great muscular development and big bone, while his attitude suggests the activity and spirit that distinguished the War Horse from which he was descended.
From one of Garrard’s pictures now hanging in the Council Room of the Shire Horse Society, we take our engraving of this gelding which was in use at Whitehead’s Brewery in 1792, and was therefore a contemporary of the horse painted by George Morland, and of Elephant. This picture served as an illustration in Garrard’s series of engravings of British Farm Stock. It is the likeness of an excellent horse—“type perfect, flat bone, with good hocks, pasterns and feet.” Apparently this is a fen-bred horse; a chestnut with the white face and markings which we have, of late years, learned to associate with the stock of the Rutlandshire Champions. High prices were paid for Shires in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Mr. Hambleton of Callon Moor sold to Mr. Summerland in 1778 a brown stallion for 350 guineas; and in 1791 a two-year-old stallion named Marston was sold by Mr. Handley for 500 guineas; these would be good prices for pedigree stock at the present day.
It is worth adding to the portraits of Shire Horses foaled during the last decades of the eighteenth century one more showing a pair whose colour betrays them as belonging to a variety closely allied to that last noticed. The picture facing page 58 shows two horses named Pirate and Outlaw, and was painted in 1810 by an artist named J. C. Zeitter; the owner of the work was Mr. Andrew McCullum, and it was engraved by J. Egan.
These particulars we obtain from an inscription on the frame of the work, which is our only source of information. Having an eye to the accessories in the background, we infer that Pirate and Outlaw were, like Garrard’s horse, the property of a brewer; both before and after this period views of well-known breweries were favourite subjects with some of our best animal painters, who found excellent reason for their preference in the magnificent teams of dray horses of which private firms were so proud. The ownership of, and work performed by, these horses, are however of no special importance; the interest of the picture, apart from the substance and strength of the animals, lies in the colour. This curious parti-colour is by no means uncommon in the Shires reared in the Fen country; in the middle of the present century Mr. Colvin, of Pishobury, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, had a breed of Shire piebalds on his Home Farm. Mr. Charles Marsters, of Saddlebow, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, possessed a celebrated stallion, “England’s Wonder,” foaled in 1871; this horse was the sire of good animals, but many of them horses of odd colours. To this day there is a tendency to breed animals with white legs, white markings and odd colours.