Early Days of the Race.hoksr. 53 



Privy Purse ; the remainder and the Scotch Plates out of the ConsoUdated Fund ; and the Irish 

 Plates by annual vote>~. in Parliament. But the encouragement to select, breed, and train horses 

 to win races, and thus to improve the breed of British horses, was not in these early days so much 

 the public prizes, bells, or bowls, as the rivalry between neighbours and counties, between the North 

 and the South, supported by heavy wagers. 



There were no sporting newspapers to report these races, but Racing Calendars have been 

 collected by Mr. Weatherby that go much farther back than the " Stud Book," and present many 

 names still familiar amongst our nobility and gentry as breeders of blood-horses. 



In 1720 there were twenty-six matches run off at Newmarket, and for a hundred years 

 previously races had been run at the king's favourite park of Theobalds at Enfield, at Croydon, 

 and Epsom ; while during Charles II.'s reign Newmarket became what it has been since, the 

 head-quarters of the racing world. From the beginning of the eighteenth century racing 

 became one of the institutions of Yorkshire, which has always been pre-eminent for its horses 

 and horsemen. 



Weatherby gives in the second part of his first "Stud Book" pedigrees of more than two 

 hundred horses and mares of note between 171 1 and 1759. These are, it will be observed, all 

 closely allied to Oriental blood, the first English stallion appearing to be Basto (by the Byerley 

 Turk) ; he died in 1723. Among the celebrities is Bald Galloway, by a Barb out of one of 

 Charles II.'s royal mares, the sire of Cartouche, who came from Place's (Master of the Horse 

 to Cromwell) White Turk. Cartouche, while in the possession of Sir William Morgan, of 

 Tredegar, covered several seasons in Wales. 



"Bonny Black, foaled in 1715, a very famous mare, by a son of the Byerley Turk, her dam 

 by a Persian stallion ; thus, probably, with at least two crosses of English blood." 



"Jigg, the sire of Partner, a capital horse, of whom a portrait by Seymour is extant, was 

 a common county stallion in Lincolnshire, till Partner was six years old ; while Partner, 

 foaled in 17 18, covered most of the best mares in Yorkshire for four years. He was bred by 

 Mr. Pelham," the ancestor of the present Earl of Yarborough, and breeder of several celebrated 

 horses and mares, amongst others Brocklesby Betty, one of the early English racers. 



It is therefore abundantly clear that, without any assistance from the State beyond the 

 importation of Charles II.'s royal mares, and a trifling sum annually expended in King's Plates, 

 the noblemen, county gentlemen, and yeomen of England, succeeded between the years 1618 

 and 1700 in founding on the stock of the best British mares, by the aid of Oriental sires — 

 Barb, Turkish, Arab, Persian — and a few Oriental mares, a tribe of horses superior to either. 



In 1724 the reputation of our blood-horses must have increased, for the giant Maurice 

 Saxe, illegitimate son of the last king of Poland, who twenty-one years later was our con- 

 queror, as Marshal Saxe, at the battle of Fontenoy, came to England to buy horses. He visited 

 Newmarket races, and delighted his English friends by pitching an insolent scavenger into the 

 midst of his mud-cart. 



In 1771, " Richard Berenger, Gentleman of the Horse to His Majesty King George," pub- 

 lished his " History and Art of Horsemanship," from which most writers on the horse since 

 that date have drawn freely for the historical part of their subject. He is the first up to that 

 period who makes any distinct allusion to the changed character of the British horse. He 

 writes with the feeling of a manege or high-school rider, with little sympathy for either hunting or 

 racing. He expresses regret that the royal prerogative of regulating bits and bridles by decree 

 had passed away with the House of Stuart, and not descended to the House of Brunswick. 



He says, " The finer and better sort of the more modern English horses are descended 



