The Horse in the Furrow
Page 14
In the development of the heavy breeds of horse in Britain Suffolk appears to have been differentiated relatively early as a county suitable for evolving its own breed of horse; and the fact that it reached perfection in the Sandlings—the coastal strip of East Suffolk—argues that certain properties of soil and water in that area had at least some effect on the original location of the breed. For most of the principal studs in the history of the Suffolk horse, before the foundation of the Suffolk Stud-Book Association, were situated in the Sands: Butley, Sudbourne, Rendlesham, Newbourn and Melton; and even in later years when the breed became more widely known, and successful studs were founded all over the country, the Sands studs continued to hold their own and turn out their quota of ‘winners’.
Robert Reyce the Suffolk Chonicler, writing at the beginng of the seventeenth century, implies that the process of evolving a horse peculiar to the county had already started some time before. He states: ‘Among the many ornaments of this shire, I may not omitt to speake here of the horse, for the breeding whereof this country hath many apt places of most profittable use.’ Suffolk, Reyce went on to complain, had not paid enough attention to breeding the horse for military purposes: ‘butt such is our slothfulness in this respect that for the most part we rather desire to bee furnisht from our dear faires with the refuse of other countries, though after our long labour and great cost wee commonly meet with pampered counterfeit, or deceipt. Now for our horses of burden, or draught, experience of long time teacheth us, how uncertaine this proofe is of that which wee pay so dear for at others hands, causeth us to esteeme our owne home bred the more, which every way proveth so well for our owne use and profitt, that our husbandmen may justly compare in this respect with any other country whatsoever albeit they often complain that many vain sports, and idle occasions did never in any age consume more good horses than this age doth, which otherwise might prove of great use to them and the common wealth.’1
In the phrase ‘the refuse of other countries’ Reyce is no doubt referring to the efforts of Henry VIII to increase the size of the English horse. Much of the farming stock in England appears to have dwindled in size during the fifteenth century, the horse particularly. During the next century attempts were made to improve the breeds: for this purpose Henry imported foreign horses and in a Statute of 15412 enacted: ‘That no person shall put in any forest, chase, moor or 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 Wilts, etc….; nor under fourteen hands in any other county on pain of forfeiting the same.’
But the danger of undersized or ill-bred stallions ‘running in’ with the mares on communal or ‘stinted’ pastures had become considerably less in Suffolk by Reyce’s time, as much of the county, as he himself states,3 had already been enclosed; and individual owners would have been able to keep their stock apart and breed as they desired, thus escaping the risks of a merry mating of ‘nobody’s son with everybody’s daughter’. Reyce’s account is of special significance as it indicates that the first enclosures were in the eastern part of the county where the Suffolk breed of horse was chiefly evolved.4
The early enclosures in Suffolk must have been favourable in another way to the differentiation of the heavy breed of horse, for the enclosures enabled the farmers to change over from the ox teams, or mixed teams of oxen and horses, to the teams made up solely of horses. Communal ownership was the key-note of the plough-team in the ‘open-field’; but when the enclosures began it became desirable for farmers to work their own teams. The horse was more suitable for this style of ‘several’ farming for the compelling reason that it was more speedy at the plough than the ox; and as individual farmers were now paying day-men to do their ploughing the saving on the wages-bill would be an inducement to change-over as quickly as possible. Just as today, even those farmers who would like to keep their horses have discarded them in favour of the tractor, chiefly because it does the job more quickly. The invention of lighter ploughs also helped the change-over from oxen to horses. Moreover, owing to the discovery of gunpowder and the decreasing use of heavy armour in battle, the ‘great—or military-horse’ was being released at this period for what the farmers, as Reyce states, considered his proper use.
But this tendency to use horses solely appears to have started much earlier than this in East Anglia, as we have seen in the Norwich records already quoted; and the region was spared that later battle with custom and tradition that handicapped other areas at a critical time in the later development of farming. What a favoured start East Anglia had in this respect can be gathered from the experience of Coke of Holkham when he went into Gloucestershire: ‘seeing a team of six oxen attended by a man and a boy at work in a field (he) decided he would show local farmers that such work could be done efficiently and even more quickly by employing two horses and a man. The demonstration did nothing to remove the prejudice from the horse and the affection for oxen.’5
In the early part of the nineteenth century Robert Bloomfield could write, referring to his own region: ‘No groaning ox is doomed to labour there’; and the present-day oral tradition in Suffolk can confidently state: ‘The Sheres6 never dropped bullocks as soon as we did’—in spite of the fact that there were isolated examples of ox-teams in this county (for instance, Robert Makens of Ringshall) right into the present century.
The Reverend Sir John Cullum, writing about the Suffolk parish of Hawstead in 1784, stated: ‘When the constant use of oxen was discontinued and only horses were employed by the farmers here I cannot say. Oxen are not mentioned in the leases of the reign of Elizabeth; for then when the landlords reserved to themselves the power of coming upon the farms to carry away timber, mention is made of carts and horses only, for that purpose. Yet from several passages in Tusser, who was a Suffolk farmer early in that reign, if not the preceding one, it should seem as if they were then used in some parts, at least, of this county.’7
By Cullum’s time the Suffolk horse had developed into a recognisable type, already well-defined and known to a certain extent outside East Anglia for his strength in drawing heavy loads; and the county became famous for its drawing matches. These matches have been described elsewhere,8 but the passage where Cullum delineates the Suffolk Punch should be quoted here:
‘Having mentioned horses I must take this opportunity of doing justice to a most useful breed of that noble animal, not indeed peculiar to this parish, but I believe to the county. The breed is well known by the name of Suffolk Punches. They are generally about fifteen hands high, of a remarkably short and compact make; their legs bony and their shoulders loaded with flesh. Their colour is often of a light sorrel, which is as much remembered in some distant parts of the kingdom as their form. They are not made to indulge the rapid impatience of this posting generation; but for draught they are perhaps unrivalled as for their gentle and tractable temper; and to exhibit proofs of their great power…. An acre of our strong wheat land ploughed by a pair of them in one day, and that not an unusual task, is an achievement that bespeaks their worth, and which is scarcely credited in many other counties. These natives of a province varied with only the slightest irregularities of surface yet when carried into mountainous regions they seem born for that service. With wonder and gratitude have I seen them with the most spirited executions unsolicited by the whip, and indignant as it were at the obstacles that opposed them, drawing my carriage up the rocky and precipitous roads of Denbigh and Caernarvonshire. But truth obliges me to add, though not to the credit of my compatriots, that these creatures, formed so well by nature, are almost always disfigured by art. Because their long tails might, in dirty seasons, be something inconvenient, they are therefore cut off infrequently to within four inches of the rump so that they scarcely afford hold for a crupper, and as absurdity never knows where to stop even the poor remaining stump has o
ften half its hair clipped off. In a provincial paper, a few years ago, one of these mutilated animals was expressively enough described as having a short mane, and a very short bung’d dock.’
Arthur Young, writing in 1797, when he was fifty-six, recalled that there was considerable rivalry among farmers in the Sandlings in breeding the best horses, even forty years before when he was a young man:9 ‘I remember seeing many of the old breed which were very famous, and in some respects an uglier horse could not be viewed; sorrel-colour, very low in the fore-end, a large ill-shaped head with slouching heavy ears, a great carcass and short legs, but short backed and more of the punch than the Leicestershire breeders will allow. These horses could only walk and draw; they could trot no better than a cow. But their drawing power was very considerable. Of late years by aiming at coach-horses the breed is much changed to a handsome, lighter and more active horse…. A spirited and attentive breeder upon a farm of 1,000 or 1,500 acres of various soils that would admit two or three stallions and thirty or forty capital mares, might by breeding in and in, with close attention to the improvements wanted, advance this breed to a very high perfection, and render it a national object.’
Young, in spite of being a Suffolk man, did not let local sentiment cloud his estimate of the old breed. Although it had been to a certain extent improved by the time he was writing, he admitted the Suffolk still had many faults left; but, like a good practical man, he suggested a way to correct them. The Leicester breeder he had chiefly in mind was Robert Bakewell of Dishley. Bakewell (1725–1795) had made revolutionary improvements in stock-breeding through experiments on his own farm; and his methods are basically those still in use today. He had paid much attention to improving the Black Horse of the Midlands, and by eschewing out-breeding and breeding in-and-in had produced stallions that travelled and became famous all over the country. Bakewell corresponded with Arthur Young, the best known agricultural writer of his time and later the first Secretary of the Board of Agriculture; and in some of his letters we can detect a note of asperity, a disapproval of Young’s ‘cocksureness’ which he deemed, as another letter shows, to be a fault of many Suffolk farmers. He writes of ‘Mr A. Y.’: (8th Feb. 1787)10 ‘Perhaps he thinks every Person who writes has as much time on his hands as he has which I believe with men of business is seldom the case. I have just heard his Account of your publication and Account he gives of his Journey to this place and on the whole considering what hands we have been in I think we have escaped pretty well. I think he has great merit as an Author but if he was less severe and sarcastical in his expressions he would not disgust so many of his Readers and his very useful Performance would still do greater good.’
The position appears to have been that Bakewell, as a scientific breeder with an international reputation, was peeved to find that the Suffolk horse breeders were resistant to his ‘empire’ and still persisted with typical stubbornness in the empirical methods they probably claimed were at least as good as his. In the following letter we can see the beginning of that rivalry of the breeds that so enlivened the agricultural shows and sales of the next century. Punctuation, as the reader will have gathered, was not Robert Bakewell’s strong point as a letter-writer: the letter is dated, 8th May, 1789; and was written, as was the previous one, to his farmer friend, George Culley:
‘I am obliged to you for the favorable account of Ed. Porter and his Horse which think will in time remove those objections that are too frequently made to all black Horses and that a usefull Farmers Horse may be under a black Skin—on Monday last I was at Ipswich Fair where was a large Shew of Stallions, many of them of the true Suffolk kind which the Bigotry and Prejudice of the Farmers in that Country lead them to believe and roundly to assert are the best in the World and a few days past I saw one advertisement in a Welch Paper offering a Premium of 20 Gs. for He that should shew the best Stallion the preference would be given to a Suffolk Punch but a Certificate must be produced that he was of that kind, this advertisement surely was drawn up on the other side of the Water or why prefer Blood to form or action? from hearing what they said at Ipswich I proposed a Mode of examining their Stallions venturing to give it as my Opionon that a Horse either for figure or use, particularly the former, should have his fore end so formed that his Ears when is is shewn to advantage be as nearly as may be over his fore feet, that measuring a Horse from the fore part of his shoulder points to a little below the Tail and divide that measure in to three parts that from the Shoulders to the Hip should not be the longest and when a Horse is shewn as Stallions commonly are he should be wider over the ribs than from Shoulder to Hip, this Doctrine was new to them but I rather think will have some effect I forgot your description of a Horse or probably might have availed myself of it.’11
One wonders whether the early preference the Welsh seem to have shown for Suffolk stallions came through observing the Punches owned by eighteenth century travellers in search of the picturesque; and particularly the way those two horses of Sir John Cullum drew his reverend bulk, making little of the frightening gradients of the native roads. Yet one thing emerges out of the controversy between Bakewell and the Suffolk breeders: Arthur Young paid him the sincerest compliment in advocating Bakewell’s own methods of breeding in-and-in. Undoubtedly Bakewell’s discoveries had a great influence on the methods followed in the Suffolk studs during the nineteenth century and was partly the reason for their early successes. In fact Young made the handsome acknowledgment: ‘Years after Bakewell’s death his system was established with such completeness that men forgot not only the existence of any different conditions, but even the very name of the most active pioneer of the change.’12
Yet in the very year that Young was urging Suffolk horse-breeders to the new policy, the Government in a panic burst of taxation to meet the cost of the war, placed a tax on all horses. The relevant parts of the Statute13 are:
*
Schedule C: A Schedule of Rates and Duties payable for all Horses, Mares and Geldings kept and used by any Person or Persons for the Purpose of riding or for the Purpose of drawing any Carriage chargeable with Duty by this Act—
For one such Horse, Mare or Gelding and no more and so on to: £1 4s. 0d.
For twenty such Horses, Mares or Geldings or upwards £2 15s. 0d.
Schedule D: A Schedule of the Rates and Duties payable for Horses, Mares and Geldings, not charged with any Duty, according to Schedule C and also Mules:
For each Horse, Mare or Gelding kept by any
Person and not charged with any Duty 6s. 0d.
It may, or may not, be some consolation to farmers to know that their ancestors a century and a half ago were not spared the necessity of wrestling with Schedules. But Schedule D was of a nature no one cares to meet—‘All the fish we’ve not caught in the other net, we’ll make sure of with this’—and for the farmers it meant that even the horses used in husbandry were brought in as well. The purpose of the tax, apart from the revenue accruing from it, may have been to divert as many horses as possible from civilian to military service; but the effect on the farmer or landowner interested enough to breed horses and to attempt to improve his stock must have been disastrous. For however real a farmer’s enthusiasm for improving the breed, it could not be unimpaired by the insult to his pocket and the rebuff to his public spirit that the tax seemed to offer. A note in the second edition (1813) of Cullum’s History of Hawstead14 shows that the first, at least, was quite considerable:
‘The duty paid for horses used in husbandry in the parish of Hawstead for one year from 6th April 1801 to 5th April 1802 (including one small farm in the extra-parochial place of Hardwick) was 44£.’15
To sum up: the state of development of the Suffolk horse up to this time was briefly as follows. At first he was ‘a very plain made horse’, to use a euphemism of the time; and even the most partisan advocates of the old breed had to admit he was no oil-painting. But his looks belied his true qualities, and during his hey-day looks, in any case, were not at a premium;
for competition was not by parade or exhibition in the show ring but by actual proof of a horse’s strength in drawing heavy loads of sand or stones. In this, the low position of the old Suffolk’s shoulders gave him a tremendous advantage. The old breed had been improved by the end of the eighteenth century as we have seen from Young’s testimony, and Bakewell’s testiness when he realised that his cherished Black Horse—the ancestor of the modern Shire—had a rival. Yet during the next forty years, in spite of the war and the discouragement of the horse-tax, the breed was so improved as to become one of the finest in the country. A Suffolk took the prize for ‘the best horse for agricultural purposes’ at the first meeting of the newly formed Royal Agricultural Society of England at Oxford in 1839; and for the first twenty-three years of its existence a total of fifteen first prizes went to Suffolk horses. How was the improvement effected?
Herman Biddell in the Suffolk Stud Book: Volume One: A History and Register of the County Breed of Cart Horses (1880), examined this confused but formative period of the breed and picked out five main families of the horse whose breed eventually became stabilised in one. This was the family of Thomas Crisp’s Horse of Ufford 40416 foaled in the year 1768. This horse was advertised five years later as ‘able to get good stock for coach or road’ and was described as ‘a fine bright chestnut17 horse full 15½ hands’. Herman Biddell wrote of him:18 ‘We must make up our picture of Crisp’s old horse as of low fore-end, large carcase, short legs and bent hocks, and perhaps a less inelegant head than most of his contemporaries.’ The next family was the Blake tribe, so called because its members were descended from a horse named Farmer 174, owned by Andrew Blake, and introduced into the county in 1764. Blake’s Farmer was a trotting stallion brought from Lincolnshire. The third considerable tribe at this stage in the history of the breed was that descended from a horse named Farmer’s Glory 1396 owned by John Wright of Attleborough in Norfolk, and was known as the Attleborough tribe. Farmer’s Glory was foaled about 1796 and was reputed to have similar provenance to Blake’s Farmer, and like this horse also infused a good deal of his blood into the Suffolks of that period. The fourth tribe stemmed from another fresh strain of blood introduced about the same time. This was the Shadingfield stock and was distinguished by being chiefly dark chestnuts. The tribe came out of one stallion, Barber’s Proctor 58, a horse foaled about 1793. His colour was bay although he came from a chestnut Suffolk mare. The fifth tribe was listed by Herman Biddell as being distinct and deserving of separate notice, more out of the need for absolute accuracy than out of any conviction that it was a family stemming from outside blood. It was called the Samsons and its sire was Samson 324, a horse bought in the south-west corner of Suffolk.