_J. L. Agasse_
]
The Black Shire, according to Wm. Marshall, had a somewhat chequered
working career. The breeders brought their yearlings to certain markets
or fairs—Ashby, Loughborough, Burton-on-Trent, Rugby, and
Ashbourne—where they were sold to graziers, the prices ranging from £10
to £20. The graziers kept them until they were about two years and a
half, and then brought them to the fairs to sell to the farmers and
dealers; the markets at Rugby and Stafford being noted for this
business. Their purchasers now were farmers. At two years old or two off
heavy horses are capable of doing gentle work, and the object of the
buyer being to prepare them for the London market, he took good care not
to overtax the youngsters. They were not expected to do more than earn
their keep, and it was very usual in the home counties to see a team of
four drawing a plough which was easily within the strength of two much
lighter animals; but the object of the farmer was thus accomplished. The
young horses learned to pull steadily, and the light plough work was, in
point of fact, their education for the career before them. At four, or
four off, they were sent to London, fully developed, conditioned, and
ready for the brewer’s dray or the heavy waggon. The brewers of those
days took peculiar pride in their dray horses, and spared neither pains
nor money to procure the largest and finest Shires for the purposes of
their trade.
The Ashby Black Stallion Show, which enjoyed the distinction of being
the only event of its kind in England, still flourished in George III.’s
time. It took place at Eastertide, and was _the_ occasion for selling
and letting stallions of this breed. The word “show,” it should be
added, is a complete misnomer; there was no show or anything remotely
resembling one. The breeders brought in their stallions and stabled them
at the inns, and when a possible purchaser or hirer appeared a horse was
pulled out and shown off in some convenient back street or open space.
Such an incident we need not doubt afforded Agasse the idea for his
picture; the lad in the smock frock has been running the great stallion
up and down to show off his paces and carriage before the well-to-do
farmer who stands under the tree on the left, and the other critics who
stand on the near side of the horse. Marshall was present at the Ashby
Black Stallion Show of 1785, when some thirty horses—two, three, and
four-year-olds, for the most part—were offered for sale or hire. The
prices paid for Black Shire stallions at this so-called “show” ranged
from fifty to two hundred guineas; the hire for a season ranged from
forty to eighty guineas. Breeders sometimes held private shows of
stallions where similar business was transacted.
These horses were largely bred in Lincolnshire: they were, indeed, so
closely identified with the county that they were locally known as
“Black Lincolnshires.” In the fens they grew to their greatest size; few
of them at two and a half, says Youatt, were under seventeen hands.
Neither the soil nor the pasture of these districts is better calculated
to meet the horse-breeder’s needs than the soil and pasture of other
regions of England; but the situation, climate, and conditions of life
were in some way peculiarly favourable to the growth of horses, and the
Blacks grew bigger there than they did anywhere else. Marshall refers to
them disparagingly as the “elephants of Lincolnshire.” All the brood
mares seen by Arthur Young on his tour in this county (“General View of
the Agriculture of Lincolnshire, 1799”) were Blacks. They were regularly
worked in the farm teams by the “arable yeoman,” who kept them for stud
purposes.
It was popularly believed in the Midlands that the Black horse
originated from half a dozen Zealand mares, which Lord Chesterfield,
when ambassador at the Hague, sent over to England. These mares were
stabled at Bretby, in Derbyshire, about 1755 or 1760, and no doubt were
instrumental in improving the breed. It is stated that for some time
after Lord Chesterfield imported these mares Derbyshire “took the lead”
among the counties in which Blacks were bred. But while we need not
doubt that these mares were the best of their kind, and as such did much
in the way of improvement, it is impossible, by the light of the
historical evidence, to which reference has been made, to regard them as
the foundation stock.
Whatever Marshall’s opinion of the Black, it certainly found great
favour all over England, even in Norfolk, a county famous for the small,
active carthorses, with which the farmers, as the author points out in
“The Harness Horse,” used to run their curious “team races.” The greater
popularity which the Black enjoyed a century ago seems to have
contributed to the disappearance of the brown-muzzled Norfolk horses.
Farmers in those days were not more governed by sentiment in the
management of their business than they are now, and we may rest assured
that if they turned their attention to the breeding of Blacks, it was
because they proved the more profitable stock. Their great weight would
suffice to recommend them for heavy draught work on the deep and miry
country roads of a past generation. A writer in the _Sporting Magazine_
of 1796, says that “there are instances of single horses that are able
to draw a weight of three tons.”
Not the least interesting fact concerning the picture which furnishes
occasion for these remarks is the fact that the painter of a scene so
typically English in subject, so purely English in spirit and in mode of
treatment, should have been a foreigner. Jacques Laurent Agasse was a
Swiss by birth; he came to this country when about twenty years of age,
and his works show how completely he became imbued with a love of the
land of his adoption.
The Judging of Polo Ponies.