The Laws of Henry VII
Henry VII. was fully alive to the desirability of fostering the breed, and during his reign (1485-1509) more Acts were passed to this end. At this time, says Polydore Virgil, the English were wont to keep large herds of horses in pastures and common fields; and when the harvest was gathered in the cattle of different owners fed promiscuously together; for which reason the practice of cutting horses was introduced. The preference accorded horses for military use was not due entirely to their superiority in strength over mares; for centuries only entire horses were used by men-at-arms; this being the case the interests of discipline and good order in the ranks and at the horse pickets in camp practically compelled the exclusion of mares. In the eleventh year of his reign (1496) Henry VII. passed a law forbidding the export of horses. In the preamble it was set forth that whereas “not only a smaller number of good horses were left within the realm for the defence thereof, but also that great and good plenty of the same were in parts beyond the sea which in times past were wont to be within this land; whereby the price of horses is greatly increased here to the loss and annoyance of all the King’s subjects;” therefore it was enacted that no horse at all was to be transported out of the kingdom, and no mare of the value of six shilling and eightpence or upwards. This law, it may be added, remained on the Statute Book until the reign of Charles II. when it was repealed. There were sundry weak points in the wording of this Act—in which respect legal draughtsmen will remind us it does not stand alone—and from the measures dealing with exportation which were passed by his successor it would seem that Henry VII.’s attempt to keep horses at home proved something of a failure.
To show what stage of development the Great Horse had reached in the time of Henry VII., art comes to our aid in the shape of a picture by Albert Dürer, dated 1505. This is the earliest work we have found, and though the animal portrayed is not of necessity an English bred Great Horse, it represents the stamp of animal then in use for similar purposes in Germany; and from the banks of the Elbe, as we have already seen, stallions were imported into England for the Royal Studs. It is quite possible that the horse whose portrait Dürer’s brush has left us was one of English raising. A white horse of size, weight and power, such as this, was just the gift one ruling prince might have sent to another at a time when animals of that colour possessed the peculiar ceremonial value to which reference has been made, and it is far from unlikely that this particular animal was a royal gift from Henry VII. to Maximilian I. or to some other German prince. However that may be, two things are certain; it was a war horse, as the dress of the soldier attendant indicates; and the height, bulk, sloping quarters, abundant mane and tail, and well feathered legs, prove it an example of a breed intimately allied to, if not identical with, the English Great Horse.
Our Frontispiece is reproduced from an engraving of a picture by Hans Burgkmair, a German artist, who lived 1473-1529. It not only affords an excellent idea of the stamp of horse ridden by armour-clad knights of the period, but also of the armour borne by the horse.