subs. (common).—A wife; specifically one who WEARS THE BREECHES (q.v.). [From the proverb, ‘The gray mare is the better horse’ = the wife is master: a tradition, perhaps, from the time when priests were forbidden to carry arms or ride on a male horse: Non enim licuerate pontificem sacrorum vel arma ferre, vel praeter quam in equuâ equitare.—BEDE, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. ii., 13. Fr., mariage d’epervier = a hawk’s marriage: the female hawk being the larger and stronger bird. Lord Macaulay’s explanation (quot. 1849) is the merest guess-work.]

1

  1546.  HEYWOOD, Proverbs [Sharman’s reprint, 1874, p. 110].

        She is, (quoth he), bent to force you perforce,
To know that the GREY MARE is the better horse.

2

  1550.  C. BANSLEY, A Treatyse, Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now a Dayes (in 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?

3

  1605.  CAMDEN, Remains Concerning Britain [ed. 1870, p. 332]. In list of proverbs. (Is said to be the earliest in English.)

4

  1670.  RAY, Proverbs, s.v.

5

  1698–1750.  WARD, The London Spy, part II., p. 40. Another as dull as if the GREY MARE was the better Horse; and deny’d him Enterance for keeping late Hours.

6

  1705–1707.  WARD, Hudibras Redivivus, vol. II., pt. iv., p. 5.

        There’s no resisting Female Force,
GREY MARE will prove the better Horse.

7

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

        As long as we have eyes, or hands, or breath,
We’ll look, or write, or talk you all to death.
Unless you yield for better and for worse:
Then the she-Pegasus will gain the course;
And the GREY MARE will prove the better horse.

8

  1719.  D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, p. 240. For the GREY MARE has proved the better horse.

9

  1738.  SWIFT, Polite Conversation, dial. 3. I wish she were married; but I doubt the GRAY MARE would prove the better horse.

10

  1748.  SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, ch. xix. By the hints they dropped, I learned the GRAY MARE was the better horse—that she was a matron of a high spirit.

11

  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.

12

  1883.  G. A. S[ALA], in Illustrated London News, 14 April, p. 359, c. 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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