3 ro The Post and the Paddock. 



by Crop, came before Black Sultan, and was the most 

 successful sire they ever had. The sixth Duke's True 

 Blue was by him, and so was Philip Payne's favourite 

 grey, Cherrington, which he rode for some eighteen 

 seasons. In fact, early in the present century, half 

 the stud were Lops, grey like the old horse, and as 

 neat as pictures. The hounds were not exactly to 

 match, as although they were very fine and powerful, 

 they had not that genteel appearance which Will 

 Long, by immense attention to lines of blood, gra- 

 dually introduced. His Grace was also very fond of 

 Percy, a chestnut stallion of nearly seventeen hands 

 high. Will Stansby whipped in to Will Long on him, 

 and when his day was over the farmers bred very 

 extensively from him. Tamburino, a very fine- 

 tempered animal, came before Wandering Boy by 

 Langar, who carried Will Long for four seasons, and 

 then broke the small bone of his hind leg. Among 

 Will's other pets (during the forty-eight years he wore 

 the Badminton green, ten as second whip, eight as 

 first, and thirty as huntsman) were four Lops to wit, 

 Nora, Dairymaid (the dam of Milkman), Little Girl, 

 great at water, and Gawky, the heroine of the twenty- 

 mile Stanton Park day. Fond as he was of Bertha, 

 after whom his cottage on the confines of Bad- 

 minton Park is named, Milkman was the one Will 

 loved best to reserve for the lawn meets ; and in 

 his 1844 speech, when a testimonial plate was pre- 

 sented to him, he calculated that this horse had carried 

 him about thirteen thousand miles during their seven- 

 teen seasons, and that those who could keep up with 

 him, though then in his twenty-fourth year, " would 

 not lose much of the fun." This celebrated bay was 

 by Shirza out of a Lop mare ; but his half-brother, 

 Gimcrack, who was as grey as the Shirzas generally 

 were, was much below his form. Sir Richard Sutton's 

 nimble giant, Hotspur, was bred by the late Duke. 

 He became latterly most dreadfully crooked in the 



