Part 2

Arab “Mesaoud” 104

The Polo Pony “Sailor” 110

The increasing attention which during the last few years has been devoted to breeding ponies for various purposes, more especially for polo, suggested the collection of facts relating to our half-wild races of ponies. It will be seen from the following pages that we possess large supplies of small but strong and sound constitutioned horses which may be turned to far more valuable account than has been done hitherto. The Polo Pony Society set the example of drawing attention to the possibilities of utilising profitably the Moorland and Forest Mares, and it is hoped that these pages may be of some interest to those who are giving attention to pony breeding whether for polo or for any other purpose.

Elsenham Hall, Essex, August, 1900.

PONIES PAST AND PRESENT

INTRODUCTION.

In another volume, Horses Past and Present, brief reference has been made to the early subjugation of the horse in Eastern countries by man; and it is unnecessary here to further touch upon that phase of our subject.

The early history of the horse in the British Islands is obscure. The animal is not indigenous to the country, and it is supposed that the original stock was brought to England many centuries before the Christian era by the Phœnician navigators who visited the shores of Cornwall to procure supplies of tin. However that may be, the first historian who rendered any account of our islands for posterity found here horses which he regarded as of exceptional merit. Julius Cæsar, when he invaded Britain in the year 55 B.C., was greatly impressed with the strength, handiness, and docility of the horses which the ancient Britons drove in their war chariots; his laudatory description of their merits includes no remark concerning their size, and from this omission we may infer that they were not larger than the breeds of horses with which Cæsar’s travels and conquests had already made him acquainted.

There can be no doubt but that these chariot horses were small by comparison with their descendants—the modern Shire horses; they probably did not often exceed 14 hands, and were therefore much on a par in point of height with the horses Cæsar had seen in Spain and elsewhere. It is unlikely that so shrewd an observer would have refrained from comment on the point had the British horses been superior in size, as they were in qualities, to the breeds he already knew. It is doubtful indeed whether the horses of Britain gained in stature to any material extent until the Saxons and Danes introduced horses from the Continent. These being for military purposes would have been stallions without exception, and being larger than the British breed must have done something to produce increase of height when crossed with our native mares.

See “The Great Horse or War Horse.” By Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. 3rd edition, 1899. Vinton & Co., Ltd.

This being the case, we are confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing between the horses and ponies of these early times; the chroniclers do not attempt to differentiate between “horse” and “pony” as we understand the terms. The process of developing a big horse was necessarily a slow one, from the system, or want of system, which remained in vogue until the fifteenth century, and was still in existence in some parts of England in Henry VIII.’s time. During the long period the greater portion of the country lay under forest and waste, it was the practice to let those mares which were kept solely for breeding purposes run at large in the woodlands, unbroken and unhandled. Doomsday Book contains frequent mention of equæ silvestres, equæ silvaticæ, or equæ indomitæ when enumerating the live stock on a manor; and there is evidence to show that these animals (always mares, it will be observed) were under a modified degree of supervision. They were branded to prove their ownership, and during the summer selected mares appear to have been “rounded up” to an enclosure in the forest for service. Apart from this they ranged the country at large, strangers alike to collar and bridle. It would be unreasonable to suppose that the mares which were employed in agricultural work were not also used for breeding; the surroundings of the farmer’s mare in those days were not luxurious, but she undoubtedly enjoyed shelter from the rigours of winter and more nourishing food than her woodland sister. Hence it is probable that the first differences in size, make and shape among English horses may be traced to their domestic or woodland ancestry on the dam’s side.

The life led by these equæ indomitæ made for hardiness of constitution, soundness of limb, surefootedness, and small stature; and we venture to think that the half-wild ponies England possesses to-day in the New Forest, Exmoor, Wales and the Fell country are (or were, until comparatively modern endeavours were made to improve them) the lineal descendants of the woodland stock which is frequently referred to in ancient records, and which in 1535 and 1541 Henry VIII. made vigorous attempts to exterminate.

The law of 1535 (26 Henry VIII.) declares:—

“For that in many and most places of this realm, commonly little horses and nags of small stature and value be suffered to depasture, and also to cover mares and felys of very small stature, by reason whereof the breed of good and strong horses of this realm is now lately diminished, altered and decayed, and further is likely to decay if speedy remedy be not sooner provided in that behalf.

“It is provided that all owners or fermers of parks and enclosed grounds of the extent of one mile in compass shall keep two mares, apt and able to bear foals of the altitude or height of 13 handfuls at least, upon pain of 40s.

“A penalty of 40s. is imposed on the Lords, Owners, and Fermers of all parks and grounds enclosed, as is above rehearsed, who shall willingly suffer any of the said mares to be covered or kept with any Stoned Horse under the stature of 14 handfuls.”

This Act applied only to enclosed areas, and therefore would not affect the wild ponies in any appreciable degree: but six years later another Act was passed (32 Henry VIII., c. 13) which provided that—

“No person shall put in any forest, chase, moor, heath, common, or waste (where mares and fillies are used to be kept) any stoned horse above the age of two years, not being fifteen hands high within the Shires and territories of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Buckingham, Huntingdon, Essex, Kent, South Hampshire, North Wiltshire, Oxford, Berkshire, Worcester, Gloucester, Somerset, South Wales, Bedford, Warwick, Northampton, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Salop, Leicester, Hereford and Lincoln. And furthermore, be it enacted, that if in any of the said drifts there shall be found any mare, filly, foal, or gelding that then shall be thought not to be able nor like to grow to be able to bear foals of reasonable stature or not able nor like to grow to be able to do profitable labours by the discretions of the drivers aforesaid or of the more number of them, then the same driver or drivers shall cause the same unprofitable beasts ... every of them to be killed, and the bodies of them to be buried in the ground, as no annoyance thereby shall come or grow to the people, those near inhabiting or thither resorting.”

This enactment was of a more far-reaching character than its forerunner. The “shires and territories” enumerated were those in which greatest attention was paid to the breeding of Great Horses; “profitable labours,” in those times, could only mean military service, agricultural work, and perhaps pack transport, for any of which purposes the woodland ponies were useless. How far the law proved effectual is another matter: laws more nearly affecting the welfare of the subject were less honoured in the observance than the breach in the remoter parts of the kingdom in those times.

In 1566, when Elizabeth was on the throne, Thomas Blundeville, of Newton Flotman, wrote a book on Horses and Riding; and prefaced it by an “Epistle dedicatorie” to Robert Lord Dudley, Master of the Horse, which begins:

“It would be the means that the Queen may not only cause such statutes touching the breeding of Horses upon Commons to be put in execution: but also that all such parks within the Realme as be in Her Highnesse hands and meet for that purpose might not wholly be employed to the keeping of Deer (which is altogether without profit), but partly to the necessary breeding of Horses for service [i.e., military service] whereof this Realme of all others at this instant hath greatest need.”

It would appear, therefore, that Henry’s laws had become a dead letter, or something very like it, within twenty-five years of its finding place on the Statute Book. It was afterwards repealed in respect of certain counties by Queen Elizabeth and James I. (for particulars see p. 26 and p. 33, “Horses Past and Present.”)

These various early edicts no doubt produced some result in the more central parts of England, though, as we gather from Blundeville’s “Epistle,” those charged with their administration failed to enforce them in areas more remote. A certain amount of driving and killing no doubt was done, but probably no more than enough to make the herds wilder than before and send them in search of safety to the most inaccessible districts. The natural result of this would be to preserve the breeds in greater purity than would have been the case had they been allowed to intermingle with horses which, after the harvest was carried, were turned out to graze at will over the unfenced fields and commons. It is worth glancing at these items of horse legislation to discover that the half-wild ponies have survived, not by grace of man’s aid or protection, but in defiance of his endeavours to stamp them out.

Nearly a century later (1658) the Duke of Newcastle published his work on the Feeding, Dressing and Training of Horses for the Great Saddle and therein, urged strongly the desirability of discouraging the breeding of ponies. The records of subsequent reigns show occasional endeavour to improve by legislation the breeds of horses needed for military purposes, tournaments, racing and sport, but until we come to the time of George II. we find no positive attempt to discourage the breeding of ponies. An Act passed in 1740 was definite enough in the purpose it sought to attain. This was the suppression of races by “poneys” and other small or weak horses.

Under this law matches for prizes under £50 were forbidden, save at Newmarket and Black Hambleton, and the weights to be carried by horses were fixed at 10 st. for a five-year-old, 11 st. for a six-year-old and 12 st. for a seven-year-old horse. This statute had two-fold intention: it was framed “not only to prevent the encouragement of a vile and paltry breed of horses, but likewise to remove all temptation from the lower class of people who constantly attend these races, to the great loss of time and hindrance of labour, and whose behaviour still calls for stricter regulations to curb their licentiousness and correct their manners.”

During the present century organised effort to improve these breeds has followed recognition of their possibilities for usefulness, and in few localities, if any, does the original stock remain pure. In Devonshire, Hampshire, Wales, Cumberland, the Highlands, Shetland, and in the West of Ireland, the original strains have been intermingled and alien blood introduced. Small Thoroughbred, Arab and Hackney sires have produced new and improved breeds less fitted to withstand the rigours of winter and the effects of scanty food contingent on independent and useless existence, but infinitely better calculated to serve the interests of mankind.

Before the establishment of the Hackney Horse Society in 1883 the dividing line between the horse and the pony in England was vague and undefined. It was then found necessary to distinguish clearly between horses and ponies, and accordingly all animals measuring 14 hands or under were designated “ponies,” and registered in a separate part of the Stud Book. This record of height, with other particulars as to breeding, &c., serves to direct breeders in their choice of sires and dams. The standard of height established by the Hackney Horse Society was accepted and officially recognised by the Royal Agricultural Society in 1889, when the prize list for the Windsor Show contained pony classes for animals not exceeding 14 hands. The altered Polo-rule which fixes the limit of height at 14 hands 2 inches may be productive of some little confusion; but for all other purposes 14 hands is the recognised maximum height of a pony. Prior to 1883 small horses were called indifferently galloways hobbies, cobs, or ponies, irrespective of their height.

THE NEW FOREST PONY.