40 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



thought, or a desperate resource, for getting out of an 

 unpleasant position. At any rate, the best authorities 

 give the story as it has been told here. Besides, Mr. 

 Elwes was M.P. for Berkshire and Lord Abingdon's 

 neighbour, as it were, and would be far more likely to 

 back his county and his acquaintance than to help 

 Lord Grosvenor, who may have been a perfect stranger 

 to him. No wonder Lord Grosvenor named his mare 

 Misfortune ; but so strange are the ways of Nature 

 that the said Misfortune, though she never won a race 

 (of any importance, if at all), became the dam of the 

 celebrated Buzzard, sire of Castrel, Selim, Bronze, 

 and Bubens, and one of the ' crack ' American im- 

 portations (imported into Virginia by Col. Hoomes ; 

 died in Kentucky in 1811), so that there seems to 

 have been something in her to account for Lord 

 Grosvenor 's expensive belief in her. 



The fourth Lord Abingdon married the daughter 

 and co-heir of Admiral Sir P. Warren (buried in 

 Westminster Abbey) ; and perhaps his memory is still 

 cherished by the Corporation of Oxford, to which im- 

 mortal body he presented the handsome Cup won at 

 Oxford (when there were races there) in 1775 by his 

 mare Takamahaka. His titular name, at any rate, is 

 well preserved at Oxford by the familiar Abingdon 

 lasher. 



Lord Ashburnham must have been John, the 

 second Earl, LL.D., whose active membership of the 

 Jockey Club is attested by his signature appended to 



