1887. Scientific American, vol. LVI., 2. They [ships] are built in the strongest possible manner, and are so swift of foot, as to have already become formidable rivals to the English grey hound. 2. (Cambridge University).—An obsolete name for a member of Clare College; a clarian. 1889. Whibley, Cap and Gown, xxviii. The members of Clare ... were called grayhounds. Gray-mare, subs. (common).—A wife; specifically one who wears the breeches (q.v.). [From the proverb, ‘The gray mare is the better horse’ = the wife is master: a tradition, perhaps, from the time when priests were forbidden to carry arms or ride on a male horse: Non enim licuerat pontificem sacrorum vel arma ferre, vel praeter quam in equâ equitare.—Beda, Hist. Eccl. ii., 13. Fr., mariage d’epervier = a hawk’s marriage: the female hawk being the larger and stronger bird. Lord Macaulay’s explanation (quot. 1849) is the merest guess-work.] 1546. John Haywood, Proverbs [Sharman’s reprint, 1874]. She is (quoth he) bent to force you perforce, To know that the grey mare is the better horse. 1550. A Treatyse, Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now a Dayes (in Hazlitt’s Early Popular Poetry, iv., 237). What! shall the graye mayre be the better horse, And be wanton styll at home? 1605. Camden, Remains Concerning Britain [ed. 1870, p. 332]. In list of proverbs. (Is said to be the earliest in English.) 1670. Ray, Proverbs, s.v. 1698–1750. Ward, London Spy, part II., p. 40. Another as dull as if the grey mare was the better Horse; and deny’d him Enterance for keeping late Hours. 1705–1707. Ward, Hudibras Redivivus, vol. II., pt. iv., p. 5. There’s no resisting Female Force, Grey mare will prove the better Horse. 1717. Prior, Epilogue to Mrs. Manley’s Lucius. As long as we have eyes, or hands, or breath, We’ll look, or write, or talk you all to death. Yield, or she-Pegasus will gain her course, And the grey mare will prove the better horse. 1719. Durfey, Pills, etc., p. 240. For the grey mare has proved the better horse. 1738. Swift, Polite Convers., dial. 3. I wish she were married; but I doubt the gray mare would prove the better horse. 1748. Smollett, Rod. Random, ch. xix. By the hints they dropped, I learned the gray mare was the better horse—that she was a matron of a high spirit. 1819. Macaulay, Hist. England. The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I suspect, in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England. 1883. G. A. S[ala], in Illustr. London News, 14 Apr., p. 359, c. 2. She [Mrs. Romford], did not over-accentuate either her strong-mindedness or her jealousy of her flighty husband; but she let him and the audience unmistakably know that she was in all respects the grey mare in the Romford stable.