It is strange, also significant, that in almost every age allusion has been made to the respect habitually paid to white horses, especially pure white horses. From Homer we know that in his period, or towards the latter part of the eighth century B.C., the Thracians, the Illyrians and the people of Upper Europe spoke of white horses as though they almost worshipped them as gods. In those early times it was deemed criminal intentionally to wound a white horse, while to kill one even by accident was thought to be but little less blameworthy—save, of course, upon occasions when a white horse was to be sacrificed to please the gods or to appease their anger. Some centuries later Herodotus virtually repeats what Homer has already told us, and gives us to understand in addition that by that time parts of Russia teemed with white horses, many of them of great value. Whether towards the end of the third and the beginning of the second centuries B.C. the Russians treated even white horses with ordinary humanity would appear doubtful, though we know that Russians entertained superstitious and grotesque beliefs concerning horses that were either white or cream-coloured. Finally, some seven centuries later, Marco Polo comes with his remarkable narratives of the Tartars' herds of white horses and their strange beliefs concerning them. From other sources particulars may be obtained of the barbarous practices these Tartars had recourse to upon the occasions of their sacrificial ceremonies, particulars of too revolting a nature to be given here. And now again we find allusion to the Turf. Apparently Edward II. disliked horse racing—such horse-racing as there was in his reign—and all that appertained to it, for upon the feast of St George in the year 1309 we find him interdicting “a tournament which was to be held on Newmarket Heath”; an act that made him unpopular for the moment, though when some years later he deliberately put a stop to preparations in progress in connection with a similar tournament nobody seemed much to mind. That the people of England were none the less interested in horses at about this time we may infer from the knowledge we have that John Gyfford and William Twety had already issued their books upon horses and hunting, books to be seen to this day among the manuscripts in the Cottonian Collection, and that were, if one may express it so, widely read when first written. Strictly dissimilar were the views of Edward III. from those of his predecessors where the subject of horses and the various forms of sport in which the horse plays a prominent part were concerned. The steps taken by Edward II. deliberately to foster general dislike of certain branches of sport had not achieved the desired effect save amongst his small circle of sycophants, and one of Edward III.'s first acts upon succeeding him was to gather together a stud of the swiftest running horses procurable.