1773 THE LORDS 65 



Ayrton, of Malton, to whoin, at her wedding-dinner, 

 his dam was lent by her father Mr. Fenton, leading 

 to a pointed rather than delicate proposition, after 

 the fashion of' the time, on the part of one of the 

 guests, Mr. Preston, then owner of the stud-horse 

 Sampson), by Sampson ; and he bred as well as 

 owned the celebrated Solon (by Sampson out of 

 Emma, by the Godolphin Arabian), by whose match 

 with Lord Bolingbroke's Paymaster (3 to 1 on the 

 latter, October 1770, at Newmarket) he won 4,000 

 guineas. Oddly enough, Solon, after leaving the 

 race-course, was used as a charger by Lord Rocking- 

 ham. Autres temps, autres mceurs ; in these latter 

 days such a horse would be either sold for a small 

 fortune to ' furrin parts,' or hurried to his owner's 

 own stud to be ' coined ' as soon as possible. Lord 

 Rockingham, singular to relate, never won the St. 

 Leger after he had named it, but he won what was 

 the first unnamed edition of it with an unnamed filly, 

 afterwards called Alabaculia. He was among the 

 subscribers to the Jockey Club Challenge Cup, and he 

 won the Newmarket Challenge Whip, in the very 

 year (1768) in which that Cup was instituted, with 

 Bay Malton, beating Cardinal Puff easily. That there 

 was a mixture of eccentricity (illustrated by the goose- 

 race) and shrewdness in the family is probable from 

 the marriage contracted by the Marquess's sister, 

 Lady Henrietta Alicia Wentworth, with her groom 

 (who has acquired posthumous gentility in ' peerages ' 



F 



