snip intere > > ><<When it came to horses around our way in the 17th century, it seems that these >were more like the Range Rover or the Ferrari of their times. Only the more >wealthy had them and particularly those for riding were highly valued and mostly >mares.>> > > >Well, that's true as far as riding horses goes, but in fact peasant-owned >draught horses, used for ploughing, harrowing, carting etc, were common in most >medieval villages, and very common by the early modern period. In the early >medieval period oxen were the most common draught animals in most parts of >England, but they were gradually replaced by horses, a process that was largely >completed in most parts of the country by the 17th century (and much earlier in >some parts - the Chilterns, for example, were using all-horse teams as early as >the 14th and 15th centuries. One of the reasons for turning to horses for ploughing (on appropriate lkand) was that oxen apprently were not equipped with means for reversing, so you needed a large turning circle at the ends of plough lines - if you were ploughing boustrephedon and they tended to need a wider gap between furrows. Could have been sorted by overploughing, I suppose, but this would have messed up the neat furrows. > -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society