The change was, perhaps, began at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314. It is recorded that Robert Bruce rode a “palfrey” in that battle, on which he dodged the charges of the ponderous English knights, and he took a very heavy toll, not only of English warriors but of their massive horses; therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that some of the latter were used for breeding purposes, and thus helped to build up the Scottish, or Clydesdale, breed of heavy horses; but what was England’s loss became Scotland’s gain, in that the Clydesdale breed had a class devoted to it at the Highland Society’s Show in 1823, whereas his English relative, “the Shire,” did not receive recognition by the Royal Agricultural Society of England till 1883, sixty years later. As a War Horse the British breed known as “The Great Horse” seems to have been at its best between the Norman Conquest, 1066, and the date of Bannockburn above-mentioned, owing to the fact that the Norman nobles, who came over with William the Conqueror, fought on horseback, whereas the Britons of old used to dismount out of their chariots, and fight on foot. The Battle of Hastings was waged between Harold’s English Army of infantry-men and William the Conqueror’s Army of horsemen, ending in a victory for the latter. The Flemish horses thus became known to English horse breeders, and they were certainly used to help lay the foundation of the Old English breed of cart horses. It is clear that horses with substance were used for drawing chariots at the Roman invasion in the year 55 B.C., but no great development in horse-breeding took place in England till the Normans proved that warriors could fight more effectively on horseback than on foot. After this the noblemen of England appear to have set store by their horses, consequently the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be regarded as the age in which Britain’s breed of heavy horses became firmly established. In Sir Walter Gilbey’s book is a quotation showing that “Cart Horses fit for the dray, the plough, or the chariot” were on sale at Smithfield (London) every Friday, the extract being made from a book written about 1154, and from the same source we learn that during the reign of King John, 1199-1216, a hundred stallions “of large stature” were imported from the low countries--Flanders and Holland.