Chapter 5 - Grooming to Perfection: The Care and Maintenance of Horses

Summary

By ordinary standards horses belonging to the landed elite were cosseted. Grooms looked after them, and when they were stabled they had individual stalls and a nourishing diet. When they were sick or injured the staff took care of them or, if necessary, hired specialists to treat them. On the road, the ostler tended to them overnight, receiving a tip for his services when the cavalcade moved on the following morning. In London, stabling was more rudimentary and harder to find but Cavendish, like other upper-class sojourners in the capital, eased the task by sending surplus horses back home. Nonetheless, even these pampered horses were kept outside grazing on grass for as long as possible to conserve stocks of hay and to reduce expenditure on corn and pulses. As the weather worsened, they were brought into the stables, starting with the more vulnerable foals. In a document of 1708 relating to the Haughton stud (Nottinghamshire) of John Holles, Duke of Newcastle and the husband of Cavendish's great-great-niece Margaret, winter was already drawing in when two of that year's foals were put into the stables. Four other foals and the two yearlings were to be housed ‘as soon as the first Storm comes’, whereas the two- and three-year-olds had to wait until ‘the Winter comes to be very hard’.

Winters could be severe, as in Derbyshire in 1614–15, a time described as the ‘great snowe’ in the accounts. Horses were stabled from 9 October to 26 April, and the accounts report deep snow-drifts throughout the county in January and February. Extra fodder had to be found for all the animals. For instance, servants bought a little stack of hay, better than four loads, to feed the fat oxen and young colts at Pentrich and obtained a further 420 stones of hay from Richard Sutton for £3 10s. In February Parker purchased additional supplies of hay and straw at Tibshelf, and at Stainsby the tenants were given food and drink for carting a hayrick to the mares in the ‘snowe tyme’. At Sutton-in-Ashfield Does earned 3s. for twelve days’ work helping the shepherds to carry hay to the forest for the sheep. The bad weather also upset the annual routine, forcing the ‘Alman’ of Beighton to delay driving the horses to Haddlesey until ‘the great snowe allowed him’.