78 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



H. Goodricke or John Hutchinson (until this latter 

 went South to look after Hambletonian on the eve of 

 the great match with Diamond in 1799) ever visited 

 Newmarket, so that they, or either of them, might 

 have carried home thence the idea of the ' parson's 

 new plan.' 



But in any case, whether two-year-old racing was 

 introduced at Newmarket from the North, or in the 

 North from Newmarket, the evidence which can be 

 collected goes to show that the invention or intro- 

 duction of it cannot be assigned with probability to 

 Sir Charles Bunbury, unless it be probable that a 

 man would be conspicuously absent from among the 

 earliest practisers of what he himself invented or in- 

 troduced. And what are the facts? Investigation 

 has revealed no earlier case of an undoubted two- 

 year-old run by Sir Charles than Parthian for the 

 Craven Stakes in 1774, though two-year-olds had 

 been run at Newmarket since 1769 by Mr. South 

 (who ran Precarious, 'rising three,' in February), by 

 the ' mad ' Lord Orford, by Lord Clermont, by Messrs. 

 Blake and Foley, and others, Sir Charles having run 

 against them, indeed, but with an older horse, and 

 invariably over a very short course (from a quarter to 

 three-quarters of a mile) . Sir Charles, in fact, as Mr. 

 W. Day remarks in his ' Eacehorse in Training ' 

 (first edition, p. 78), was proverbial for his gentle 

 usage of horses, at any rate in training ; and it may 

 be that the bad name which he has earned as a pro- 



