88 



ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



evening in the spring of 1828 a small but merry party 

 sat around the dinner table of that fine old English 

 gentleman, Lord Egremont. " The bottle was in active 

 circulation and the good old peer in merry glee — his 

 friends around him, and his racehorses the theme. 

 'What will you do now, my lord, with that young 

 Whalebone weed in the further paddock ? ' quoth one of 

 the guests. 'Sell him,' w^as the reply. 'The price?' 

 'A hundred and fifty.' 'He is mine.' That 'weed' 

 was Spaniel, whose rivals on the turf at that period were 

 mighty racers like Priam, Camerine, Lucetta, Tranby, 

 Cetus, and Fleur de Lis." 



In the spring of 1837, at Lord Chesterfield's sale, 

 one lot comprised an old mare tw^enty-one years of age 

 and a lanky looking foal at her foot. This couple excited 

 the laughter rather than the competition of the 

 bystanders, insomuch that they w^ere knocked down to 

 Lord George Bentinck for the sum of 54 guineas, 

 even he buying them at the earnest solicitation of a 

 pretty good judge in these matters as a " spec." That 

 old mare's foal was Crucifix, by Priam out of 

 Octaviana by Octavian. Crucifix won the Chesterfield 

 Stakes, the Lavant Stakes, the Molecombe Stakes, the 

 Hopeful Stakes at New^market, the Clearwell, the 

 Criterion, and other events of importance as a two-year- 

 old, her total winnings for the season being a clear £4587 

 of public money, a most remarkable sum in those distant 

 times when the stakes w^ere small as compared to what 

 obtains in the present day. As a three-year she won 

 the One Thousand, the Tw^o Thousand Guineas, and 

 the Oaks. Crucifix up to that time did more on the 

 Turf than any other English horse that had yet 

 appeared, having w-on twelve races wdthin as many 

 months without having been once beaten, winning 



