In early modern England, for a landowner to be recognised for the quality and soundness of his own ‘breed’ of horses was a matter of considerable prestige. Yet keeping a stud was expensive, far more of a drain on resources than simply keeping horses. By investigating the account books of William Cavendish, first Earl of Devonshire (1551–1626), the uncle of the famous horseman William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, Peter Edwards returns horse breeding to its central place in aristocratic economic and social life. If economic, social, and cultural histories have come to be seen as increasingly distinct from one another, this book brings them together through meticulous detective work.
Yet Edwards remains an economic historian at heart. The core of this study consists of three disbursement books housed at the Chatsworth estate covering expenditures by William Cavendish between 1597 and 1623. There are no accounts remaining that pertain to income. Although the lack of income data is to be regretted, meaning that it is never possible to establish whether Cavendish actually made a profit on his stud, the disbursement accounts constitute a rich source regarding not only the costs of horses and horse keeping but also other aspects of what Edwards calls ‘the aristocratic lifestyle’. Edwards does not regard the term as an anachronism, taking his stand with Linda Levy Peck in Consuming Splendor (2005), arguing that, at least among the upper classes, fashion and luxury consumption were already entrenched by Cavendish’s day (a diamond ring for £300, a grey Spanish Ginete stallion for the ‘huge sum’ of £66 13s 4d).
William Cavendish’s prudent management of money was exceptional. For a dramatic contrast, see Edwards’s ‘The decline of an aristocratic stud: the stud of Edward Lord Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer at Welbeck (Nottinghamshire), 1717–29’, Economic History Review, 69:3 (August 2016), 870–92. (This article is erroneously cited in the book as appearing in Economic History Review, 99:3.)
A fuller description of the accounts in the manner of ‘book history’ would have been helpful. Only on page 72, for example, do we learn that the 1602 accounts appear to have been written by Robert Parker, a stud servant who would be promoted to chief estate steward in 1605. Not until page 144 is it revealed that the accounts covering expenditure on Prince Charles’s visit in 1616 are ‘later, fair copies’ and thus ‘do not always list items in the correct order’ (note 20). To quibble: the term ‘stoned horses’ for ungelded or ‘entire’ horses (stallions) is used throughout, whereas in the early modern sources it appears as ‘stone-horses’, or very occasionally, ‘ston’d-horses’, always with a hyphen. Edwards usefully observes that gentlemen’s and ladies’ horses had to be of the right quality, conformation, size, and paces for purpose, whether for the manège (‘riding the great horse’) with its associations of tournaments and war, or for hunting, hawking, ‘running’ (racing), travelling, making long journeys, or pulling coaches or carts. More could have been made of these differing types and how they were bred than Edwards’s distinction between ‘saddle horses’ and horses for ‘draught’ – coaches and carts – allows. But no longer can early modern historians ignore the importance of the horse.
