Agricultural History Review, Volume 56 Part 2 (2008), p. 221

Alongside Dorian Gerhold, Peter Edwards is the foremost historian of the horse and the horse-drawn world of early modern Britain. Indeed, taken together, Gerhold’s Carriages and Coachmasters and the present volume provide as good a ‘general view’ as we are likely to get in the absence of detailed local studies. Prof. Edwards’ book, drawing on an impressive range of sources (including, mirabile dictu, material from Wales) serves up a massively detailed account of the horse in all its manifestations; as a status symbol and object of conspicuous consumption, as a tool of war, as a labourer yoked to coach and plough and as a central player in a variety of sports.

The major strength of the book lies in the discussion of the issue of demand for horses of differing shapes and sizes as the economy expanded after the mid-sixteenth century. Before 1500 the profile of both saddle and draught horses in Britain was strictly limited, but with the development of regional specialization in agriculture, the opening of mines and quarries and the expansion of internal trade by road and water, bigger and better horses were required. As time went by, indigenous stock (or, at least, some of it) was improved by judicious crossing with Oriental and northern European animals, so that the great fairs of the east Midlands and elsewhere thronged with horses of every size and description. To these fairs flocked the carriers, traders and packmen, where they jostled with farmers seeking horses for the plough or gentlemen in pursuit of well-matched beasts to haul their newly-purchased coaches. Since everyone of any substance rode a horse, either their own mount or a hireling, the horse fair was of almost universal interest.

A gentleman attending the fair might be looking for mounts of decent stamp to meet his obligations under the various pieces of militia legislation (and I should add, incidentally, that Edwards is especially strong on the whole subject of the cavalry in early modern warfare). Alternatively he might be seeking a decent ambling hack for hawking, a speedy hunter which might occasionally be raced in a gruelling long-distance ‘match’, or even a candidate suited to the riding school. But, in any event, the matter of status and style was never far from his mind, because a gentleman could not fittingly be seen on any old horse. It was all very well for a farmer or a lawyer to go about his business on a nondescript mare, but the cut of a gentleman’s horse was a symbol of his power and authority; it had, perforce, to be an animal of distinction in the same way as his carriage horses had to be matched for colour and size and trained to move with studied dignity. And it was useless spending good money on the sort of horse capable of cutting a dash if you were unable to ride him properly; hence the development of ‘High School’ riding. A man well-versed in the classics, mathematics, music and poetry was still only half a gentleman if his dancing and swordsmanship were below par and his riding not of the highest order. The manege took riding beyond a mere leisure pursuit and made it central to a gentleman’s education. The polite fiction was maintained that training in the manege helped prepare a man for war. And polite fiction it remained; how, after all, could the balletic movements developed in the manege have any relationship to mounted swordplay or the taxing business of re-loading a pistol at the trot? At the end of the day, manege training did little more than offer a man just one other means of showing off!

Hunting was another matter altogether. While Edwards remains equivocal, I would suggest that riding to hounds, which demanded extremely skilled horsemanship, was as good a way as any of fittening horses and men. Anyone who has hunted knows that the sport requires strong nerves and considerable bravery, reminding one of Mr Jorrocks’ observation that hunting was the image of war with none of the guilt and twenty-five per cent of the danger. Besides, hunting controlled vermin, encouraged horse-breeding and the horse trade and, on another level, emphasized man’s governance over creation.

Edwards makes extensive use of contemporary accounts, estate records and the toll books of fairs. In so doing he rightly warns us that these sorts of documents only give a partial view of the attitudes and behaviour of people towards their animals. He seeks to argue that the instruction manuals and literary sources suggest that people’s behaviour towards horses became more humane and training methods less brutal later in the early modern period. Perhaps, but what of the approach of those unable to read these sources? I would guess that across all levels of society the brutality of behaviour meted out to a horse was in inverse proportion to its willingness to cooperate. I have known horses whose extraordinary stupidity and obtuseness would have driven the mildest and most humane of trainers to reach for the whip, chain and curb, and I suspect that things were much the same four centuries ago. Whatever the case, horses were over-ridden, over-driven and generally over-worked as a result either of ignorance or of economic pressures. Meanwhile the unfortunate animals were bled, purged and drenched with alarming abandon in what were often hopeless attempts to heal injury or cure disease. Of course, some customary poultices worked, but most veterinary procedures were utterly ineffective, while contagious diseases remained largely untreatable beyond keeping infected animals in isolation. Anyone with an interest in animal welfare who takes the trouble to read a pre-twentieth century veterinary text will offer up a silent prayer of thanks for some of the more recent developments in veterinary science. At the same time they will deprecate the posturings of the organicist zealots who would deny animals the benefits of science and, like a friend of mine, eschew proper treatment in favour of worming their horses with a clove of garlic when the tide is in ebb. Well, really!

Although Prof. Edwards has given us an important, well-researched and highly-authoritative book, it is not without its flaws. The syntax is occasionally garbled to the point of incomprehension. One is sometimes left quite breathless, as in the case of ‘Accordingly, the initial covering should normally take place in the third year, though gentlemen might wait a further twelve months’. Thoughtful proof-reading would have helped elsewhere. Meaningless remarks like ‘horses’ dietary requirements were high’, the totally unfounded observation that Berber horses from North Africa had acquired Spanish blood in prehistoric times and references to ‘equine (as opposed to “equestrian”) pursuits’ could have been clarified with a little care. So too would have been the claim that ‘Innogen’ was a character from Cymbeline, that the Suffolk Punch was a recognized breed in the sixteenth century, that horses were sold for ‘pistols’ rather than ‘pistoles’, or that ‘Lorimers’ engage in making mountings for bridles. And when, pray, will writers on the history of horses honour the Thoroughbred, a recognized breed, with the dignity of a capital ‘T’? Finally, while I reckon to know a little about horses, I fear a fog descends when I read of ‘a riffey horse’ or the ‘pocky fashions’.

But these are whingeing criticisms of a major achievement which should be essential reading for historians of the horse and for those with a more general interest in the early modern period.