110 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



*Mr. CODRINGTON, whose membership of the Jockey 

 Club is attested by the fact that he ran Augur for a 

 Jockey Club Plate in 1774, is the gentleman who (as 

 we shall see more fully hereafter) varied the racing 

 and betting at Newmarket by ' backing his father's 

 life ' against the like-minded Mr. Robert Pigott's 

 father's. The said father was Sir W. Codrington, 

 second Baronet, of Doddington Hall, Gloucestershire, 

 and the family was of West Indian connection ; for it 

 was a member of it, Colonel Codrington, of Barbados, 

 who, as we read in Walpole's ' Letters,' founded the 

 library at All Souls, Oxford, and, dying at Barbados 

 in 1710, 'left a large estate for the propagation of 

 the Gospel ' (not, as young Mr. Codrington would 

 have preferred, for the propagation of the racehorse), 

 ' and ordered ' (with delightfully ingenuous uncon- 

 sciousness) ' that three hundred negroes ' (at that 

 time slaves) ' should always be employed upon it ' 

 (' it,' no doubt, being the estate, not the propagation 

 of the Gospel, though grammatically applicable to 

 either). The Colonel was evidently a scholar and a 

 man of letters ; he wrote Latin verses, which were 

 published in 'Musse Anglicanse,' and he must have 

 differed in many respects from the young Mr. 

 Codrington who betted paternal lives with Mr. Robert 

 Pigott, jun. It seems not improbable, moreover, that 

 Sir William (the father of the filial but speculative 

 young Mr. Codrington) did not approve altogether of 

 his son's views complimentary as they were to Sir 



