1773 71 



CHAPTER IV 



THE SIRS 



SIR JOHN ARMYTAGE, whose membership of the Jockey 

 Club is attested by his signature appended to the first 

 public document issued by the Club (March 1758), 

 must have been the gallant young baronet who left 

 his home in the North, his friends in the South, and 

 his sport and pleasure on the Knavesmire and the 

 Heath, to serve as a volunteer under General Ely the 

 in those dark days which followed the convention of 

 Closterseven, in 1757, when Lord Chesterfield, the 

 imperturbable, was sufficiently moved to declare that 

 we were * no longer a nation,' and apparently fell on 

 the field in the September of that very same year in 

 which he had signed the ' Order ' of the Jockey Club. 

 He was succeeded by his brother Sir George ; the very 

 same baronet, no doubt, who won the Doncaster Gold 

 Cup with Stargazer (dam of Teddy-the-Grinder), in 

 1787, who was among the ' quality ' invited to meet 

 the * First Gentleman ' and the Duke of York at the 

 Mansion House, York, on the occasion of their memor- 

 able visit to the North in 1789, and who was himself 

 very likely a member of the Jockey Club, though no 



