THE TURF. 
applies to light and speedy animals, used in racing 
perhaps, occasionally, but chiefly in other active pur- 
suits, and in contradistinction to the war-horse, then 
required to be most powerful, to carry a man cased in 
armour and seldom weighing less than twenty stone. 
In fact, the invention of gunpowder did much towards 
refining the native breed of the English horse ; and we 
begin to recognise the symptoms of a scientific turf in 
many of the satirical writings of the days of Elizabeth. 
Take, for instance, Bishop Hall's lines, in 1597 : 
" Dost thou prize 
Thy brute-beasts' worth by their dams' qualities? 
Sayst thou thy colt shall prove a swift-paced steed, 
Only because a jennet did him breed ? 
Or, sayst thou this same horse shall win the prize, 
Because his dam was swiftest Tranchefice ?" 
It is quite evident, indeed, that racing was in consider- 
able vogue during this reign, although it does not 
appear to have been much patronised by the Queen, 
otherwise it would, we may be sure, have formed a part 
of the pastimes at Kenilworth. The famous George, 
Earl of Cumberland, was one of the victims of the turf 
in those early days. 
In the reign of James I., private matches between 
gentlemen, then their own jockeys, became very common 
in England ; and the first public race meetings appear 
at Garterley, in Yorkshire ; Croydon, in Surrey ; and 
Theobald's, on Enfield Chace ; the prize being a golden 
bell. The art of training also may be said now to have 
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