THE FATHER OF THE TURF. 11 



of the middle of the reign of William III. What it was in the 

 reign of Anne we can gather from the following description of the 

 doings there, given by a gentleman who visited the place at that 

 time. He writes : " Being there in October, I took the opportunity 

 to see the horse-races, and a great concourse of the nobility and 

 gentry, as well from London as from all parts of England ; but 

 they were all so intent, so eager upon the sharping part of the 

 sport, their wagers, their bets, that to me they seemed just so 

 many horse-coursers in Smithfield; descending, the greatest of 

 them, from their high dignity and quality, to the picking one an- 

 other's pockets and biting one another as much as possible, and 

 that with so much eagerness, as it might be said they acted without 

 respect to faith, honour, or good manners. There was Mr. Frampton 

 the oldest, and, as they say, the cunningest jockey in England. One 

 day he lost 1,000 guineas, the next he won 2,000, and so alter- 

 nately. He made as light of throwing away £500 or £1,000 at a 

 time as other men do of their pocket-money, and was perfectly calm, 

 cheerful, and unconcerned when he had lost £1,000 as when he 

 won it. On the other side, there was Sir F. Wragge, of Sussex, of 

 whom fame says, he has the most in him and the least to show for 

 it, relating to jockeyship, of any man there; yet he often carried off 

 the prize. His horses, they say, were all cheats, how honest so ever 

 their master was, for he scarcely ever produced a horse but he looked 

 like what he was not, and was what nobody could expect him to be. 

 If he was as light as the wind and could fly like a meteor, he 

 was sui*e to look as clumsy and as dirty and as much like a cart 

 horse as all the cunning of his master and the grooms could 

 make him; and just in this manner he hit some of the greatest 

 gamesters in the field. I was so sick of the jockeying part that 

 I left the crowd about the posts and pleased myself with observing 

 the horses. . . . Here I fancied myself in the Circus Maximus 

 at Rome, seeing the ancient games, and under this deception, was 

 more pleased than I possibly could have been among the crowds 

 of gentlemen at the weighing and starting posts, or at the meetings 

 at the coffee houses and gaming tables after the races were over. 

 Pray take it with you as you go, that you see no ladies at New- 

 market, except a few of the neighbouring gentlemen's families, 

 who come in their carriages to see a race and then go home again." 

 On the whole, then, we may conclude that the turf in its infancy 

 was extraordinarily precocious in wickedness, and that even the 

 gentlemen who now-a-days scratch their horses an hour before a 

 race is run, had their counterparts nearly two centuries ago in 

 persons of the Tregonwell Frampton stamp. Yet, clever as this 

 reputed Father of the Turf was, he sometimes met with those 

 who were more than a match for him, as the following anecdote 

 will show. The celebrated horse. Merlin, was matched to run at New- 

 market against a favourite animal of Frampton's. Merlin, being a 

 north-country horse, was backed by the Yorkshire sportsmen to a large 



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