User:Peaky76/Markham Arabian

The Markham Arabian was a bay horse, owned by King James VI and I and considered by some the first ancestor of the throughbred breed, since he was, for a long time, the first documented oriental horse used in the royal studs.

This bay horse was sold to King James I by Gervase Markham in 1616,

since he and his purported purchase price were described by William Cavendish, (1st) Duke of Newcastle, in his 1658 book on horses and horsemanship, La MÈthode Nouvelle et Invention Extraordinaire de Dresser Les Chevaux. C.M. Prior [History of the Royal Studs] has since made a case for this horse probably having been born in England, possibly by an imported sire and out of a mare of any number of possible lineages, but most likely Spanish or Italian barb.

Although the Duke reported his purchase price was £500, the actual document shows his price to have been £165, which Prior points out would argue against him being a pricey import, the cost alone of bringing him to England at that time would have far exceeded that amount. Further, the Markham Arabian was "...trained up for a Course, when he came to Run, every Horse Beat him," which would have been more likely for the offspring of an imported horse, rather than a valuable breeding stallion. The Duke described him as a "...Little Horse and no Rarity for shape, for I have seen Many English Horses far Finer." Further, Prior has shown that horses derived from oriental bloodlines had been imported into England from well back into the previous century, both as gifts to the royal stud and as purchase, many from the famed Gonzaga studs near Mantua and the stud of the Duke of Savoy, and were primarily derived from North African barb stock and Andalusian genet breeding. Tracing the sparse documentation over the centuries, Prior makes a case for showing most of the so-called Royal Mares seen in the GSB were descendants of such horses, periodically augmented by additional gifts and purchases, and not necessarily all of oriental breeding, certainly not imported oriental breeding. A son of the Markham Arabian, Frisell, was apparently a stallion at the Tutbury royal stud in 1649. To date, no further information regarding his influence on the breed has surfaced.