COLONEL O'KELLY. 19 



Shortly afterwards our hero got into bad odour among turfites by 

 scratching his horse Dungannon after it had been heavily backed 

 against Mr. Bullock's Eockingham, on which occasion O'Kelly nar- 

 rowly escaped being lynched. Still he had such great natural gifts 

 for winning popularity among all classes that these peccadilloes were 

 soon forgotten, and in the year 1782 we find him at the annual meet- 

 ing of the Hibernian Charity, a most respectable institution started 

 by the Earl of Bellamont, unanimously voted to the presidency. In 

 1785 O'Kelly purchased the beautiful estate of Canons, near Edge- 

 ware, once the celebrated seat of the Duke of Chandos, who spent 

 £200,000 in erecting a stately palace there, which was pulled down at 

 his death, and replaced by the humbler, but still comm^odious villa 

 bought by O'Kelly. Here the subject of our sketch passed most of 

 his time in the fascinating pursuit of breeding blood-stock until liis 

 death, which took place at his town house in Piccadilly on the 28th 

 of December, 1787. He bequeathed his fine estate — the Canons — 

 to the faithful Charlotte Hayes, and Clay Hill to his nephew, with 

 directions that all his horses in training should be sold, and that the 

 said nephew should forfeit £500 for every bet he made on the turf — a 

 curious clause in the will of a man who owed all his fortune, all his 

 success in life to lucky speculation on the turf. Eclipse, as we have 

 stated, survived his master two years, and so did another famous 

 animal belonging to the colonel, namely, his celebrated parrot, also 

 called Eclipse, which had been hatched at Bristol, and bought by 

 O'Kelly for 50 guineas, and which could not only talk, but sing in 

 imitation of the human voice after a fashion that astonished all who 

 heard it. And so closed in oj)ulence the career of one of the most 

 remarkable and successful men the racing world has ever known. 



SIE CHAELES BUNBUEY. 



THOMAS CHARLES BUNBURY, whose name will live for ever 

 in the annals of the turf as the owner of the first horse that 

 won what is now recognised throughout the world as the greatest 

 and most important of horse races, was a descendant of an old 

 Norman family, the original name of which was St. Pierre, that 

 of Bunbury being derived from a manor, so-called, one of their 

 many landed possessions. The great-great-grandfather of the 

 subject of this sketch was created a baronet by Charles II. in 1681. 

 The owner of Diomed, who was the sixth baronet, was born in 1740, 

 and succeeded, on the death of his father, who was in holy orders, to 

 the family estates and titles in 1762, previous to which time, and 

 indeed immediately on attaining his majority, while he was himself 

 abroad on the grand tour, he was elected member of Parliament for 

 his native county of Suffolk, which he continued to represent for 

 nearly two generations. When little more than a boy he had held 



