TURF HISTORY. 11 



Gower, and Patmore, were names of renown in its 

 lists ; and " Old Q." who had then hardly seen 

 seven-and-twenty summers, and was able to go to 

 scale at ten stone with his racing-saddle, had already 

 established his fame as one of the best gentleman- 

 riders of the day, by his perpetual matches with Mr. 

 Duncombe. " Brown-and-black cap first " was the 

 Judge's report in the Second Spring of 1757, when 

 he rode a match against the Duke of Hamilton ; but 

 lie could not draw his weight to half-a-pound, and 

 was disqualified accordingly. It is difficult to con- 

 ceive how one who always "set-to" so well, conformed 

 so readily to his flippant era, and could, when he 

 was only forty-two, be found writing to George 

 Selwyn at Paris, and assuring him that " I like the 

 muff you have sent me much better than if it had 

 been tiff re, or any other glaring colour/' Muff or 

 no muff, he stood manfully by his brother-sportsman 

 in the Regency business, and lost his office as Groom 

 to the Bedchamber in consequence- a slight for 

 which a man with so many friends cared but little. 

 He scarcely missed one York Meeting for half a 

 century, and did not wholly quit the turf for his bow- 

 window in Piccadilly (where Lord Campbell, when a 

 law student, used to behold him with awe), till he 

 was verging on eighty, having then owned race- 

 horses for about sixty years ; and he now rests, not 

 many paces from Tom Durfey, and Beau BrummelFs 

 poor relations, in a vault beneath the communion- 

 table of St. James's Church. 



The North was the Marquis of Rockingham's 

 especial battle-ground : and in 1759 his chesnut, 

 Whistlejacket (J. Singleton), defeated Brutus in a 

 2,000 guineas match over four miles, at York. 

 Another seven years' cycle brings us to the death of 

 Brutus's jockey, Thomas Jackson, who was (as his 

 tombstone remarks) " bred up at Black Hambleton, 

 and crowned with glory at Newmarket" : and the 



