https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2024/07/23/the-sport-of-kings-and-protectors/The Sport of King and Protectors!
In this blog, Dr Patrick Little, of the 1640-60 Lords section, explores the enduring popularity of horse-racing, even during the rule of that archetypal puritan, Oliver Cromwell ....
Oliver Cromwell is blamed for many things without any basis. There are ruined castles said to have been destroyed by him (even though he never went near them); Christmas was famously banned by him (it wasn’t blame the Long Parliament); and his hatred of entertaining sports and pastimes, including racing, is also well known. In this summer of sport, it might be appropriate to reconsider this last accusation.
When Cromwell, responding to popular complaints about bans on racing and other sports in September 1656, told Parliament, ‘I do not think these are unlawful, but to make them recreations, that they will not endure to be abridged of them’ would be the greatest ‘folly’ (Letters, Writings and Speeches ed. Morrill, iii. 316), he was considering them as occasions of vice, where people would (certainly) gather to drink and gamble and (probably) plot against the regime. Plotting was the principal reason for a series of bans on racing in England during the protectorate. The earliest ban was imposed on 4 July 1654, after intelligence that such meetings would be used as a cover by royalists to muster cavalry, and this was renewed for six months in February 1655, and, after the rising in Wiltshire instigated by John Penruddock in the spring of the same year, the policy was adopted by the major-generals who governed the English and Welsh localities. Yet Parliament’s decision to end the major-generals scheme at the end of January 1657 also ended the ban on racing, and a new injunction was not imposed until April 1658, when new plots were suspected. Such inconsistency suggests that there was no ideological opposition to racing in itself. This is also suggested by the fact that a similar ban in Scotland also imposed for security reasons was not matched by one in Ireland, where popular meetings, as at the Strand at Youghal in County Cork, continued throughout this period.
To reinforce the point, it is clear that racing was something of a passion within the Cromwell family during the protectorate. In March 1654 a few months before the first ban came into force the protector’s own horse, the ‘Dun Arabian’, competed on Banstead (that is, Epsom) Downs in Surrey. In April 1657, after the ban had lapsed, the protector’s son and heir, Richard, gave £30 to the corporation of Winchester for a race cup. In August 1658, a race at Youghal was held in honour of the protector’s younger son, the lord deputy of Ireland, Henry Cromwell. The devotion to the turf shown by the Cromwells was shared by others at the protectoral court. Surviving evidence shows that such key figures at court, such as the protector’s sons-in-law, Viscount Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse), and John Cleypoole, as well as political advisers such as Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney), Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle), and Charles Howard (later 1st earl of Carlisle), all shared the Cromwellian passion for horses and racing. Other former parliamentarians, including the earls of Northumberland and Warwick, were also enthusiasts. It was not just royalists who were keen on a day at the races.
In banning racing, Cromwell was limiting his own pleasure and that of his friends for the greater good. But there were other ways to promote the sport. The protector devoted much time, money and effort in establishing his own stud, including importing valuable horses from abroad to improve the blood-lines, including Barbs from North Africa and Spanish Jennets. Although occasional Arabian horses (probably Turcoman-Arabians) had been seen in Britain in the early seventeenth century, they did not impress contemporaries, and their potential was only accepted at the end of the century, after three Arab stallions were capture at the siege of Vienna in 1683 (the famous ‘foundation sires’ of modern-day thoroughbreds: the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk). Yet Cromwell was ahead of his time in showing great interest in the breed, trying to secure them at source from Aleppo, even though the Turkish authorities went to great lengths to ban their export. At least one stallion made it to England during the protectorate the ‘White Turk’, which later joined Charles II’s stud, where it was probably matched with the king’s ‘Royal Mares’, whose bloodlines are also considered foundational. It is an odd thought that, despite being famous for banning racing, Cromwell may have contributed to the genetic make-up of the thoroughbred race-horses of today.
P.L.
Further reading:
Patrick Little, ‘Uncovering a protectoral stud: horses and horse-breeding at the court of Oliver Cromwell, 1653-8’, Historical Research, 82 (2009), pp. 252-67.
Peter Edwards, Horse and Man in Early Modern England (2007)
C.M. Prior, The Royal Studs of the 16th and 17th Centuries (1935).
The biographies of Oliver, Richard and Henry Cromwell, as well as Thomas Belasyse, Roger Boyle, John Cleypoole, Charles Howard and Philip Sidney, appear in the House of Commons, 1640-60 volumes.
