The Price and Value of the Warhorse in Late Medieval England

Horses, ubiquitous in the lives of medieval people and the cornerstone of medievaleconomy, industry, agriculture, logistics, and warfare, were, presumably, promi-nent on the medieval market, with considerable variety in prices depending on theuse of the horse and its conformance to the criteria set for its class. However, littleresearch has been carried out on the practicalities of allocating horses to categoriesand attributing them with the sought-after epithet“of quality.”Certainly, the priceand value of a horse would depend on its type of use (the warhorse, the palfrey, the hunter, and the packhorse being just afew of the types), but also on its match-ing the markers of perfection set for the type. However, determining a horse’squal-ity and value within a class could be moreproblematic: in other words, how doesone know, for instance, that a warhorse is a good warhorse? In this study, I focuson the markers of quality, most typically those of price and class, but sometimesincluding references to coat color, conformation, training, breeding, and originfound in literary and documentary sources, to discuss the complex interplay thatdetermined the price and value of horses in late medieval England, focusing onthewarhorseasmycasestudy.