CHAPTER I 



FIRST PERIOD 



SIR JOHN CARLETON, an ancestor very likely of the 

 present Lord Dorchester (himself a member of the 

 Jockey Club), appears to have been about the first 

 person who ever exercised against frequenters of New- 

 market Heath that somewhat mysterious power of 

 ' warning off,' which seems to invest the Jockey Club 

 in the eyes of the public with a majesty beyond that 

 of all other clubs consisting of noblemen and gentlemen. 

 But it was not ' touts ' and defaulters and impertinent 

 writers in the newspapers, under the style and title 

 of 'Argus,' or * Hotspur,' or 'Craven,' or ' Pavo,' or 

 ' The Devil on Two Sticks,' or the like or the unlike, 

 that Sir John warned off, but noblemen and gentlemen 

 themselves, of whom many, not to say most, were 

 progenitors of the very noblemen and gentlemen upon 

 whom, collectively as a Club, that mysterious power 

 has devolved. Sir John, single-handed, did not, of 

 course, issue his edict on his own account : he was 

 merely the mouthpiece of his Most Gracious Sovereign, 

 who, as we learn from the annals of State Papers 



B 2 



