THE THOROUGHBRED HORSE OF 1750. 55 
zentury, for speed, stoutness, and beauty; in all which qualities the 
present stock excels their parents on both sides. Much of this excellence 
is doubtless due to the climate and soil of the country, which encourage 
the growth of those fine grasses that exactly suit the delicate stomach of 
this animal. But without care and judgment in the selection and breeding 
of the horse, our ancestors never could have arrived at such extraordinary 
success ; and whether this depended upon chance or preconceived theory, 
nearly equal merit is due, for there is as much credit in seizing hold of 
facts which upset a prejudice, as in acting upon those that support it. 
For a century and a half we have carefully preserved the pedigrees ‘of our 
pure bred horses, and for more than a third of that time they have been 
recorded in the Stud-book by the Messrs. Weatherby. Besides these, we 
have breeds suited to the various purposes for which horses can be 
required—namely, hunting, hacking, light and heavy harness-work on the 
road, and agricultural operations. Each of these varieties must, therefore, 
be considered separately ; and, as the grand piece de resistance, I shall 
begin with 
THE ENGLISH THOROUGHBRED HORSE OF 1750. 
In OUR HISTORICAL RECORDS there are sundry notices of the importation 
of Spanish and Flemish horses to serve as chargers, but there is no clear 
account of any Eastern horse being brought into the country until the 
reion of James the First, when Mr. Markham, a merchant of London, 
sent for an Arabian from Constantinople, and sold him to the King for 
5002., an enormous sum in those days. <A great deal was expected from 
this horse, but both the individual and his stock were found to be too 
slow to race, and no other effort was made by either James I. or 
Charles I. in the same direction. A Mr. Place, who was stud groom 
to Oliver Cromwell, obtained possession of an Eastern horse, which 
appears in the Stud-book as “Place’s White Turk,” but of his history 
nothing is known. Fairfax’s Morocco Barb, and the Helmsly Turk, the 
property of the Duke of Buckingham, were used to cross the blood of 
the four Barb mares imported by Charles the Second from Tangiers, and 
known in the Stud-book ag the “ Royal Mares;” and for many years, that 
is, nearly to the end of the seventeenth century, no other Eastern blood 
was employed in the English breeding studs, with the exception of the 
three Hamburg mares which were taken at the siege of Vienna, and 
brought overin 1684. These are generally considered to be the foundation 
of the breed of our English thoroughbred. It is quite clear, however, 
that prior to this time we were in possession of a strain of racehorses which 
were possessed of fair speed, for it is absurd to suppose that the Arabs of 
these days are faster than they were two hundred years ago, and yet, 
those imported then specially to run at Newmarket, were beaten with ease. 
It is also highly probable that the imported horses and mares were not 
bred from, exclusively of the native or Spanish horses already in the 
country, for we find in almost all the old pedigrees a break-down somewhere 
or other. Thus, in the pedigree of Eclipse there are two blanks, which, it 
is true, may have been filled by mares of Eastern blood, but the omission 
of the name looks extremely like a desire to hide what has since been 
considered a blot in the escutcheon. My own belief is that the racehorse 
of that day was imported from Spain, and bred from a cross of the Anda- 
lusian mare with the Barb introduced by the Moors. A fresh infusion of 
Eastern blood therefore was likely to “hit,” as we know it did * and by 
