CHARLES I.'S SADDLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 207, 2 September 1936, Page 15

CHARLES I.'S SADDLE.

USED BY KING EDWARD?

DESIGNED AFTER VISIT TO SPAIN.

LONDON. When King Edward VIII. took part in the Trooping of the Colour ceremony recently and later reviewed the Grenadier, Irish, Scots and Welsh Guard.? on the Horse Guards Parade, he bestrode a saddle that was utterly unlike those on the mounts, of the officers who surrounded him. Only one paper, in its photographs of the scene, identified it by a caption: "He rode a fine bay, which was saddled with the richly embroidered State saddle made for Charles I." Nothing is said, however, about its accessories—bridle, snaffle and martingale—which the photographs reveal as Moorish, save for the missing blinkers, which once bore the Stuart arms, and hoods of the stirrups. The Bearskin Holsters. Distinctly seventeenth century English, however, were the bearskin holsters which hung from each side of the pommel, and had once held, if they did not then, the gold-mounted horse pistols, a present from Charles I.'s chum, the Duke of Buckingham. This saddle is very conspicuous in the pictures showing the ill-fated Stuart King watching from an eminence the battlo of Naseby or observing other engagements between his troops and the New Model Army of Parliament under Oliver Cromwell, in the campaign of 1045. If Edward VilT. actually made use of Charles I.'s saddle, and not a copy, the fact is an encomium on the durability of Cordovan leather. When Prince Charles,' accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, went to the Madrid Court, in 1023, to sue for the hand of the Infanta Maria, daughter of Philip 111. of Spain, they amazed the grandees by their horsemanship, although their saddles were little more than sheets of cowhide strapped to the horse's back. ' When they returned to London, after the rupture of the potential nuptials, the Duke carried with him a roll of Cordovan goatskin and some designs of the Moorish saddles then in vogue at the Court of Madrid. Modified by the Duke. The, Duke is "said to have modified these designs, particularly in the matter of the holsters, and turned the result of his artistry and the pelts over to John Wymess, saddler to His Majesty .Tames 1., with orders for two saddles, one for his Royal friend and the other for himself. The subsequent history of the Duke's : saddle is not known. There is no record of it after his assassination in 1028. But : the other saddle may be plainly seen in . the equestrian portraits of Charles,' both f before and after his succession- in 1025, and down to the time of his execution, j nearly a quarter of a century later, i -Since then it is believed to have . reposed in the museum of the armoury j at Buckingham Palace, although, accordr ing to some accounts, it is the Duke's 3 saddle which has been' preserved.