Chapter 4 - Caveat Emptor: Buying and Selling Horses

Summary

’Tis, needless to give directions for Breeding any other sorts of Horses, As for the Coach, Wagon, Cart, Servants, and all manner of Drudgery, because there is not that Nicety required, and from the Fairs and Horse Coursers you may be supplyed, and save the trouble. (Blome, 1686)

Blome did recommend the best breeds of saddle horses but assumed that his elite readers would obtain them privately from their peers. These were the horses that most stud owners focused on, a reflection of the iconic appeal of riding on a fine horse and the prestige to be gained from breeding them, as well as the high prices that top-quality specimens commanded. Conversely, the annual cycle of fairs dovetailed neatly into the process of breeding and rearing strong draught horses, whether for the coach or the cart. This ensured that good-quality stock could be obtained there, especially at centres conveniently located to take advantage of the movement of horses around the country. In general, horses were bred in pastoral regions, with the largest being produced in and around the Somerset Levels and the Lincolnshire fens. Some mixed-farming regions, including south Derbyshire and the Southwell area of Nottinghamshire, bred some foals too. However, as agricultural specialisation developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, many mixed-farmers, notably in the east Midlands, increasingly bought in colts and geldings to train in the collar on their ploughlands before returning them to local fairs two or three years later as mature draught horses. According to Cavendish's nephew, William Cavendish, the best places to obtain fine coach horses were Market Harborough and Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire and Northampton and Rothwell in Northamptonshire.

Caveat Emptor

Although horses were central to the life of early modern England, not all of the many people who needed them could distinguish between a good and a bad animal. For this reason, horse dealers had a particularly poor reputation, attributed to the number of people conned into buying a horse at an excessive price or with hidden defects – or both. Writing to Cavendish's nephew in 1659, Sir Edward Nicholas declared that ‘itt is two professions, a good horse-man and a horse-courser. I pretende to the firste, butt knowe nothinge of the seconde, for Ile cosen no bodye. I onlye take care nott to be cosende, which theye finde I can doe reasonable well att that.’