THE GREY MARE IS THE BETTER HORSE, phr. (old).—The wife is master: of a BREECHES-WEARING (q.v.) wife: a tradition, perhaps, from the time when clerics were forbidden to carry arms or ride a male horse. Lord Macaulay’s Explanation (see quot. 1849) is the merest guess work.

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  1546.  HEYWOOD, Proverbs [SHARMAN’S Reprint, 1874].

        She is (quoth he) bent to force you perforce,
To know that the GREY MARE IS THE BETTER HORSE.

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  1550.  C. BANSLEY, A Treatyse, Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now a Dayes (HAZLITT’S Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, IV. 237).

        What, shall the GRAYE MAYRE BE THE BETTER HORSE,
And be wanton styll at home?

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  1605.  CAMDEN, Remains Concerning Britain [1870, 532]. In list of proverbs. (Is said to be the earliest in English.)

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  1670.  RAY, Proverbs, s.v.

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  c. 1709.  WARD, The London Spy II., 40. Another was as full as if his GREY MARE WAS THE BETTER HORSE; and deny’d him Enterance for keeping late Hours. Ibid., Hudibras Redivivus, II. iv. 5. There’s no resisting Female Force, GREY MARE WILL PROVE THE BETTER HORSE.

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  1717.  PRIOR, Epilogue to Mrs. Manley’s Lucius.

        Yield, or she-Pegasus will gain her course,
And the GREY MARE WILL PROVE THE BETTER HORSE.

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  1719.  D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, 240. The GREY MARE HAS PROVED THE BETTER HORSE.

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  1738.  SWIFT, Polite Conversation, iii. I wish she were married; but I doubt the GRAY MARE WOULD PROVE THE BETTER HORSE.

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  1748.  SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, xix. By the hints they dropped, I learned the GRAY MARE WAS THE BETTER HORSE—she was a matron of a high spirit.

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  1849.  MACAULAY, The History of England, iii. The vulgar proverb, that the GRAY MARE is the better horse, originated, I suspect, in the preference generally given to the GRAY MARES of Flanders over the finest coach horses of England.

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  1883.  G. A. S[ALA] [Illustrated London News, 14 April, 359, 2]. She [Mrs. Romford], did not over-accentuate either her strong mindedness or her jealousy of her flighty husband; but she let him and the audience unmistakably know that she was in all respects THE GREY MARE in the Romford stable.

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