"Every Sunday in Lent after dinner young men ride out into the fields on horses which are fit for war and excellent for their speed. The citizens' sons issue out through the gates by troops, furnished with lances and shields, and make representation of battle and exercise and skirmish. To this performance many young courtiers yet uninitiated in arms resort, and great persons to train and practice. They begin by dividing into troops; some labour to outstrip their leaders without being able to reach them; others unhorse their antagonists without being able to get beyond them. At times two or three boys are set on horseback to ride a race and push their horses to their utmost speed, sparing neither whip nor spur."[3] RICHARD I. (1189-1199). Richard I., ignoring the opposition of the Church, which held them dangerous alike to body and soul, encouraged tournaments as valuable training for his knights; and it may here be observed that from his time through the succeeding ages until 1559, when a fatal accident to King Henry II., of France, in the lists, caused the institution to go out of fashion, tournaments were held from time to time in England. Some of our kings encouraged them for military reasons; others discouraged them under Church influence, or as records show, because they were productive of loss in horses and arms, which the resources of the country could ill afford. We find traces of the old "Justs of Peace," as tournaments were officially called, in the names of streets in London. Knightrider and Giltspur Streets, for example: the former owed its name to the circumstance that through it lay the route taken by knights on their way from the Tower to the lists at Smithfield; the latter to the fact that the makers of the gilt spurs worn by knights carried on their business there. Cheapside was the scene of some historical tournaments, as were the Barbican and Roderwell. The Tiltyard near St. James's was the exercise ground of knights and gentlemen at a later date. JOHN (1199-1216). King John reigned at a period when the armour worn by mounted men was becoming stronger, and when the difficulty of finding horses powerful enough to carry heavily mailed riders was increasing. This sovereign, so far as can be discovered, was the first to make an endeavour to increase the size of our English breed of Great Horses; he imported from Flanders one hundred stallions of large size. The Low Countries, in the Early and Middle Ages, were the breeding grounds of the largest and most powerful horses known; and John's importations must have wrought marked influence upon the British stock. He also purchased horses in Spain which are described as Spanish _dextrarii_, or Great Horses. _Dextrarius_ was the name by which the war horse was known at this period and for centuries afterwards. EDWARD II. (1307-1327).