32 FAMOUS EACING MEN. 



to make you a present for the manner in which you have ridden my 

 horses this week : I am about to give you £20, in bank notes of 



Messrs. bank, at Bury St. Edmunds, most highly respectable 



bankers.' ' Thank you, my lord, for your great kindness.' It was a 

 great present in those times. After that I got £500 for winning one 

 race." 



The connection between John Day and the old duke was never 

 weakened on the duke's side, and but for one instant on John's ; and 

 well it might, when his grace thus broke on his astonished ears, after 

 a race, with " You're a thief, John Day ; you're a thief ! " " Your 

 grace, what have I done to displease you ? " " You stole that race, 

 John Day, stole that race ! " John's thefts after this fashion were 

 perpetual ; in fact he was, perhaps, never quite so great as in the 

 colours of Whittlebury. 



THE EAELS OF DEEBY. 



NOT least among the famous turf worthies of the past stands 

 the honoured name of Stanley, for two who have borne that 

 patronymic and succeeded to that historic earldom have won for 

 themselves on the race-course and in the breeding-stable a reputa- 

 tion almost as world-wide as that which they have attained in the 

 Senate. As far back as the seventeenth century, when the Earls of 

 Derby were Lords of Man, their title was associated with horse- 

 racing, and the first Derby Stakes ever instituted were run for on the 

 narrow strip of turf which separates the bays of Derbyhaven and 

 Castletown in the Isle of Man. But to come to more modern days, 

 we owe the institution of the two greatest three-year-old races in 

 the Calendar, the Derby and the Oaks, to a member of this famous 

 house, and it is with him that we shall deal first. 



Edward Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, the great grandfather of the 

 present noble owner of the title and estates, was a century ago one of 

 the most successful as he was also one of the most honourable and 

 upright supporters of horse-racing in Great Britain. Before succeed- 

 ing to the title he had married Lady Jane Hamilton, sister to the 

 then Duke of Hamilton, but their married life was a very unhappy 

 one ; in the course of a few years after the marriage, when a 

 son and two daughters had been born, the countess was suspected, 

 tried, and found guilty of gross adultery with the Duke of Dorset. 

 The Earl of Derby, however, never sued for a divorce, in conse- 

 quence, it is said, of the following unfeeling observation of Queen 

 Charlotte, to whom the countess had been maid of honour. Her 

 Majesty remarked, when she heard of the circumstance, that she 

 " had long been aware that Lady Derby was more attached to Dorset 

 than to Derby, and a divorce would now enable them to marry." His 

 lordship, highly offended at this inconsiderate expression, resolved 



