It appears that at this early period the best horses were imported into England from Bordeaux. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the male horse only was ridden by knights or people of any distinction, and that to ride a mare was always looked upon as a degradation. This seems to have been an old Teutonic prejudice, perhaps a religious superstition. [Illustration: _No. 214. Lady and Cart._] The kinds of horses most commonly mentioned in the feudal ages are named in French (which was the language of feudalism), the _palefroi_, or palfrey, the _dextrier_, the _roncin_, and the _sommier_. The _dextrier_, or _destrier_, was the ordinary war-horse; the _roncin_ belonged especially to the servants and attendants; and the _sommier_ carried the luggage. Ladies especially rode the palfrey. The Orkney islands appear to have been celebrated for their _dextriers_. The Isle of Man seems also to have produced a celebrated breed of horses. Brittany was celebrated for its palfreys. The _haquenée_, or hackney, of the middle ages, appears to have been especially reserved for females. England seems not to have been celebrated for its horses in the middle ages, and the horses of value possessed by the English kings and great nobles were, in almost all cases, imported from the Continent. The ordinary prices of horses in England in the reign of Edward I., was from one to ten pounds, but choice animals were valued much higher. When St. Louis returned to France from his captivity, the abbot of Cluny presented to the king and the queen each a horse, the value of which Joinville estimates at five hundred livres, equivalent to about four hundred pounds of our present English money. These must have been horses which possessed some very extraordinary qualities, as the price is quite out of proportion to that of other horses at the same period. In the charters published by M. Guérard, horses are valued at forty sols, and at three pounds at various periods during the eleventh century. In 1202, two _roncins_ are valued at thirty sols each, another at forty, two at fifty each, and two at sixty; the _roncin_ of an arbalester at sixty sols; a _sommier_, or baggage-horse, at forty sols; and three horses, of which the kind is not specified, at six pounds each. These appear to have been the ordinary prices at that period; for, though prices of horses are mentioned as high as thirty-four, thirty-five, and forty pounds, these were only possessed or given as presents by kings. The value of horses went on rising through the thirteenth century, until Philippe le Hardi found it necessary to fix it by an _ordonnance_, which limited the price which any man, whether lay or clergy, however rich, might give for a palfrey, to sixty pounds _tournois_, and that to be given by a squire for a _roncin_ to twenty pounds. The prices of horses appear not to have varied much from this during the fourteenth century. In the middle of the century following the prices rose much higher.