Sir Walter Gilbey

“ Only some three hundred and fifty years have elapsed since wheeled conveyances for passengers came into use in England; but, once introduced, they rapidly found favour with all classes of society, more especially in cities. The progress of road-making and that of light horse-breeding are so intimately connected with the development of carriages and coaches that it is difficult to dissociate the three. In the early days of wheeled traffic the roads of our country were utterly unworthy of the name, being, more particularly in wet weather, such quagmires that they were often impassable. ”

“ To drag heavily laden waggons and drays, to shunt railway carriages and trucks, we need horses of the Shire stamp and character at their highest development; for it must be borne in mind that a compact, truly framed draught horse will move a given weight with far greater despatch and less chance of injury to himself than one whose shoulders are defective, whose loins are weak, legs ill formed, pasterns too long and feet defective. ”

“ I to my coach-maker’s and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my coach at three in the afternoon, but I set it in doing and stood by it till eight at night and saw the painter varnish it, which is pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more yellow, and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost, and most coaches are nowadays done so, and it is very pretty when laid on well and not too pale as some are, even to show the silver. ”

“ Until they acquired the knowledge from their Norman conquerors, the inhabitants of this country knew nothing of the art of fighting on horseback, but at the same time the “theigns and hus-carles”—picked household troops, generally consisting of big men—employed horses to carry them from place to place,{12} and as these wore chain mail, and had to accomplish long arduous marches over roadless country, a big and powerful stamp of horse was just as necessary to them as it would have been had actual fighting in the saddle been the profession of the riders. ”

“ Richard Lovell Edgeworth, in his Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages (1817) , tells us that in 1768 he discovered that springs were as advantageous to horses as to passengers, and constructed a carriage for which the Society of English Arts and Manufactures presented him with a gold medal. In this carriage the axletrees were divided and the motion of each wheel was relieved by a spring.
Travel in a springless coach over uneven streets and the roughest of roads could not have been a sufficiently luxurious mode of progress to lay the traveller open to charge of effeminacy. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that the use of the horse in agriculture is comparatively modern. In England until the middle ages the work of the farm and almost all heavy draught work was performed by oxen. These animals were in common use for farm work until the latter half of the last century. Arthur Young in his General View of the Agriculture of Lincolnshire, written in 1799, mentions a farm he visited where he saw “two (oxen) and a horse draw home in a waggon as good loads of corn as are common in Suffolk with three horses.” ”

“ The mail and stage coaches were used by nearly all classes of society, but these worked only the main roads throughout the kingdom; therefore country gentlemen who resided off the coach routes had to find their own way to the nearest stage or posting house; moreover, wealthy men who could afford the luxury of taking their own time over a journey, were still much addicted to the use of private travelling carriages drawn by their own horses or, more often, horsed from stage to stage along the route by the post masters. ”

“ The steady increase in the weight of armour is a factor of the first importance in our present investigation; for therein we find the sufficient motive which impelled our ancestors to develop to the utmost the size and strength of the only breed of horse which could carry a man-at-arms. When we find that the weight a horse might be called upon to bear amounted to 4 cwt.—32 stone—at the period when plate armour reached its maximum strength, no further stress need be laid on the power of the animal required. We{15} may find opportunity later on to consider in minuter detail the weight of armour. ”

“ There were two classes of coach in the seventeenth century. Mons. Misson [13] says, “There are coaches that go to all the great towns by moderate journeys; and others which they call flying coaches that will travel twenty leagues a day and more. But these do not go to all places.” He also refers to the waggons which “lumber along but heavily,” and which he says are used only by a few poor old women. Four or four miles and a half in the hour was the speed of the ordinary coach. ”

“ It is also certain that during this century the Shire Horse has played no mean part in building up size and massiveness in all the other Draught breeds in the Kingdom. That he has undergone great changes is certain; but the characteristics of the breed, size, strength, substance, courage and docility, have been perpetuated and developed by careful selection till we have now in our Shire horse the ideal beast of draught. ”

“ Hence the best of the coach-builder’s art, the finest workmanship in the practical, as opposed to the decorative sense, was applied to the travelling carriage, which was constructed to secure the greatest comfort to the occupants, together with the greatest strength to withstand rapid travel over roads of all kinds with the least weight. ”

“ The Duke writes of the Northern Horses, using the term to distinguish the North German, Flanders and similar breeds from the lighter Oriental and Spanish horses:—“I have seen some, beautiful in their kind, genteel in all sorts of paces, and which have excelled all others in leaping. Moreover they have a peculiar excellence in the motion of their forelegs which is the principal grace in the action of a horse.” ”

“ During George III’s reign, three Acts of Parliament had been passed defining the number of outside passengers that any stage coach might carry, and making other regulations in the public interest; these three Acts were repealed by a fourth placed on the statute book in 1810, which enacted that any “coach, berlin, landau, chariot, diligence, calash, chaise-marine or other four-wheeled vehicle,” employed as a public carriage and drawn by four horses might carry ten outside passengers including the guard but not the coachman; that only one person might share the box with the coachman ”

“ We quote from “Coach and Sedan,” the curious little publication before referred to:—
“Coaches and Sedans (quoth the waterman) they deserve both to be thrown into the Thames, and but for stopping the Channel I would they were, for I am sure where I was wont to have eight or ten fares in a morning, I now scarce get two in a whole day. Our wives and children at home are ready to pine, and some of us are fain for means to take other professions upon us.” ”

“ To maintain the standard of excellence which has been attained at the cost of so much care, it is essential that only the best types should be used for breeding: such horses as are truly framed, are free from imperfections, and above all are free from hereditary unsoundness. The numerous statutes mentioned in the foregoing pages assisted our ancestors in building up the breed which has long been established as permanent. ”

“ Every Friday there is a brave sight of gallant horses to be sold. Many come out of the city to buy or look on—to wit, earls, barons, knights and citizens. There are to be found here maneged, or War Horses (Dextrarii) , of elegant shape, full of fire and giving every proof of a generous and noble temper; likewise Cart Horses, fit for the Dray, or the Plough or the Chariot.”
At this time, therefore, it appears that horses were beginning to replace oxen to some extent, and at all events for farm and draught work ”

“ THE MAIL COACH.
Mr. John Palmer’s [24] “diligences” were put upon the road in 1783, and with these the proprietor laid the first crude foundation of the mail service. The ordinary post was carried by boys on horseback and was both slow and uncertain owing to the poor quality of the horses, the badness of the roads and not least to the untrustworthiness of the boys. Every letter for which expedition was necessary was now sent by diligences where they were established, and they ran from nearly all the towns in the kingdom to London and between many of the principal towns. ”

“ When they have got among the troops of [their enemies’] horse, they leap out of the chariots and fight on foot. Meantime the charioteers retire to a little distance from the field, and place themselves in such a manner that if the others be overpowered by the number of the enemy, they may be secure to make{6} good their retreat. Thus they act with the agility of cavalry; and the steadiness of infantry in battle. They become so expert by constant practice that in declivities and precipices they can stop their horses at full speed ”

“ If men would not ride, John Cressel urged them to travel in the long waggons which moved “easily without jolting men’s bodies or hurrying them along as the running coaches do.” The long waggon was drawn by four or five horses and carried from twenty to twenty-five passengers. He proposed that there should be one stage per week from London to each shire town in England ”

“ Their object is to perpetuate the Shire breed pure, and also to improve the bone, size and substance of native breeds; and with this purpose in view they are invariably most exacting on the points of pedigree and soundness. They know that good pedigree and soundness are essential, and require that their purchases shall not only be registered in the Stud Book, but shall be able to show the clearest record of descent; such record shows that the qualities of the individual horse are hereditary, and may be relied on as transmissible to its progeny. ”

“ The last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century saw great increase of the coaching industry and many important improvements. The “long stages” were still slow; the Edinburgh Courant, of 1779, contains an advertisement of the London Coach which “will run every Tuesday, occupying ten days, resting all Sunday at Barrowbridge; for the better accommodation of passengers will be altered to a new genteel two-end coach machine hung upon steel springs, exceeding light and easy.” ”

“ The early foundation stock from which investigation proves that our modern Shire horses are descended was brought to a high state of perfection for its special purpose, not only by the judicious introduction of foreign blood, but by wise enactments of the Legislature. We find in the old Statute Books numerous Acts of Parliament which supported private skill and enterprise in the endeavour to improve an animal on which, it may fairly be said, the safety of the nation in no small measure depended. ”

“ Is it for his health to travel in rotten coaches and have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait half the day before making good their stage?”
John Cressel was prone to exaggeration, but there is plenty of reliable contemporary evidence to show that his picture of the coach roads was not overdrawn. Yet when [60] this advocate for the suppression of coaches seeks to rouse public sentiment, he reproaches those men who use them for effeminacy and indulgence in luxury! ”

“ Charles was fond of the manège and was a good{40} horseman; his care for the art of riding the Great Horse was shown by a proclamation issued in the third year of his reign. In this he commanded that, as he had found by experience, such horses as are employed in the service are “more apt and fit to be managed by such as shall ride them, being accustomed to the Bitt, than the Snaffle ... no person shall in riding use any snaffles but Bitts only.” ”

“ These naturally selected routes over the hills when they sought to avoid the bogs and quagmires of low-lying ground; and these routes, becoming in time the regular coach roads, left much to be desired in point of gradient and contour. Telford cut through the hills to obtain an easier ascent, and when Macadam had “made” the new road thus outlined it was as widely different from the original track it replaced as it is possible to conceive. “Nimrod,” writing in 1826, said, “Roads may be called the veins and arteries of a country through which channels every improvement circulates. ”

“ 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 ancient British war chariot was neither more nor less than a fighting engine, which was probably never used for peaceful travelling from place to place. Carts for the conveyance of agricultural produce were in use long before any wheeled vehicle was adapted for passengers. ”