PRIME MINISTERS AND THEIR RACE-HORSES 



would take him down to some distant country 

 meeting in order to defeat the horse of a High 

 Church Tory squire, and thus gratify a violent 

 poHtical animosity. Wharton was " the truest of 

 Whigs," wrote Macaulay. " He was the most 

 universal villain that I ever knew," was the verdict 

 of Swift. Vicious as the owner undoubtedly was, 

 his stud was beyond reproach. When Louis XIV 

 endeavoured to institute horse-racing in France, 

 he gave a plate worth i,ooo pistoles to be run 

 for at Echere, near St.-Germains, for which the 

 best animals in Europe were entered. The horse 

 selected to do battle for England was one of 

 Wharton's, on which the Duke of Monmouth rode 

 and won. Louis offered its weight in gold for the 

 horse ; but as the Englishman was too proud to 

 sell and the Frenchman would not stoop to the 

 gift, no property passed. ^ 



Since the institution of the capital races of the 

 Turf, five Prime Ministers have devoted them- 

 selves to the pursuit of winning them. 



The Marquis of Rockingham. — The outcome 

 of a violent struggle by George HI in 1765 to rid 

 himself of the Grenville Ministry and the yoke 

 of the Bedfords was that, after seven weeks of 

 administrative anarchy, the main body of the 

 Whigs returned to office under a new leader in the 

 person of the Marquis of Rockingham, then thirty- 



I Memoirs of the Life of Thomas, late Marquis of Wharton, London, 

 1 7 15. There is another version of this story which makes Louis 

 purchase the horse (Echard, History of England, vol. ii. p. 1204). 



15 



