It is altogether improbable that the “dragooners” referred to were animals boasting the power and substance of the charger on which Vandyke has painted the Protector. Cromwell’s “Ironsides” were not clad in plate armour but in leathern jerkins, and for men so accoutred a much lighter stamp of horse would suffice. In another letter written six months after, appears the following phrase:--“I will give you all that you ask for that black you won last fight.” Use of this term still survives in a negative form among the breeders of Cleveland Bays; whose favourite boast of their strain is that it contains “neither blood nor black.” The actual value of the “piece” mentioned is not quite certain. Mr. Warwick Wroth of the British Museum (Department of Coins) to whom I referred the point writes: “I think that ‘piece’ must mean ‘broad piece,’ _i.e._, the gold sovereign (20s.) of the time called ‘Unite,’ ‘Broad’ or ‘Carolus’ (or if of James I. the ‘Laurel,’ ‘Jacobus,’ &c.). The only other coin that could be meant would be the silver crown piece (5s.) of Charles I., or possibly the ‘piece of eight,’ _i.e._, the Spanish dollar current in England about 1643, for rather more than 4s.” My informant kindly sends me a quotation from _Rogers’ History of Agriculture and Prices_, which confirms his cautious opinion that the “piece” was the gold piece, _i.e._, the sovereign. The quotation referred to possesses an interest germane to the subject under consideration apart from this special point; it runs:-- “There is very little change in the price of horses ... during the first thirty years of my period [1582-1702]. Then the price begins to rise for the next thirty years and, though the dear decade 1643-1652 does not represent the highest average of the whole, the exaltation over the thirty years that precede it is very marked. For the period 1673-1682 horses are decidedly dear. Thus in 1673 a horse is bought by All Souls College at £30 5s., and two others at Cambridge at £20 each. In 1674 Winchester gives £15 8s. 6d. for a saddle horse.” Cromwell’s letter was written at the beginning of the “dear decade;” and as the prices quoted for individual purchases thirty years later appear “decidedly dear” in a general review of the period, it is highly probable that £18 or £20 was the amount Cromwell thought “quite enough for dragooners.” His offer of three times as much, £60, for “that Black you won” shows the superiority of the Great Horse.