The Great Horse in the First Century
Our next piece of evidence comes, not from the writer but from the artist, if he may be called so; not from without the shores of Britain but from within. For some historical purposes coins serve a purpose as valuable as pictures, and the present is a case in point. The coins of which illustrations are here given are among the very earliest known to have been struck in this island. They date from the age of Cunobelin (the First century), and are therefore the production of a period when neither Art nor Agriculture had place in the country; they are relics of a time when the conditions of life required only the herdsman and the soldier. With these facts in mind we may examine these coins and see what we can gather from them. The fact that the device on each is a horse suggests at once that this animal played a most important part in the social economy of the people who struck the coins. They were among those found on the borders of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and are believed to have been circulated in the interest of the Iceni, a tribe which distinguished itself above all others by its resolute resistance to the Roman troops.
The head and front of the power of resistance displayed by the Iceni lay in their skilful employment of the war-chariot as a means of attack—in other words, in the efficiency of their powerful and disciplined horses. There was no agriculture among these people, and the importance of the horse which led to the adoption of its figure as a numismatic device was due to the part it played in war. Now these quaintly archaic designs must not be compared with the works of art by which Greek and Roman civilisation was made famous, and laughed aside as contemptible. The true standard of comparison is found in the rude figures in rock inscriptions, and in the ornamentation on the weapons and tools of what we now call savage races. Measured by this standard these designs boast merit, for the artist has succeeded in conveying an impression of the character of his ideal horse. His ideal was clearly one of deep-carcased, wide-buttocked breed, with profuse mane and tail; a horse, in fact, which possessed some of the prominent characteristics of the modern Shire horse. Thus we have pictorial evidence to confirm the written testimony of Julius Cæsar, that twenty centuries ago there existed in Britain a breed of horses having cardinal points in common with those massive animals seen to-day, known as Shires, Clydesdales and Suffolks, and held in the highest esteem.
Parenthetically, it is worth noticing that while a large proportion of the few coins known to be British bear the effigy of a horse, not one of the Roman coins figured in Camden’s Britannia bear such a device; nor do the coins of Saxon origin. To a horse-loving people this proof of the esteem in which their forefathers held the animal is particularly interesting. A large white horse is stated by Mr. Walker, Camden’s collaborator, to have been the ensign of Hengist and Horsa, who landed in Britain in A.D. 449, and this seems to be the only instance in which the figure of a horse was employed as an emblem by others than the Britons.
Mr. Walker, whom Camden introduces as the great expert of the day, remarks, apropos of the coins figured in the Britannia, that in ancient times special value attached to white horses; in this respect, however, horses were not singular, white animals of all domesticated species being regarded with peculiar favour, and commonly selected as gifts to Royalty, and as ceremonial tribute when state or tribe was required to acknowledge suzerainty. Mr. Walker asserts also, that only men of the highest rank were permitted to ride white horses on state occasions. That the use of a white steed implied dignity is well shown by the treatment accorded John of France by Edward the Black Prince when he conducted the French King to London. Anxious that the captive should appear not as a prisoner but as a royal guest, John “was clad in royal robes, and was mounted on a white steed, distinguished by its beauty and size; whilst the conqueror, in meaner attire, was carried by his side on a black palfrey.” Richard Berenger, gentleman of the horse to George III., who wrote The History and Art of Horsemanship, published 1771, observes that “The King of Naples at this day pays an annual fief of a white horse to the See of Rome as acknowledgment for the kingdom which he holds from the Pope.” Thus we see that the ceremonial value of the white horse was both ancient and lasting. We must not, however, allow this point to detain us.