But, as most
drovers are very diligent to bring great store of these unto those
places, so many of them are too too lewd in abusing such as buy them.
For they have a custom, to make them look fair to the eye, when they
come within two days' journey of the market to drive them till they
sweat, and for the space of eight or twelve hours, which, being done,
they turn them all over the backs into some water, where they stand
for a season, and then go forward with them to the place appointed,
where they make sale of their infected ware, and such as by this means
do fall into many diseases and maladies. Of such outlandish horses as
are daily brought over unto us I speak not, as the jennet of Spain,
the courser of Naples, the hobby of Ireland, the Flemish roile and the
Scottish nag, because that further speech of them cometh not within
the compass of this treatise, and for whose breed and maintenance
(especially of the greatest sort) King Henry the Eighth erected a
noble studdery, and for a time had very good success with them, till
the officers, waxing weary, procured a mixed brood of bastard races,
whereby his good purpose came to little effect.
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