72 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



proof can be advanced of his membership. Sir John 

 was no more than twenty-seven at the time of his 

 death, and it is, therefore, not surprising that he 

 should have left few marks of his individuality on the 

 history of the Turf and of the stud. 



Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, who was steward, 

 and received the subscriptions for the Jockey Club 

 Plate in 1768, and became a sort of ' Perpetual Presi- 

 dent,' as he is sneeringly called by an enemy, of the 

 Jockey Club (something like Admiral Pious in later 

 times), is perhaps the most familiar by name to the 

 world of all the men who have ever been members of 

 the Jockey Club. He was born in 1740, succeeded to 

 the Baronetcy in 1764, first appeared (as Mr. Bun- 

 bury) on the Turf in 1763, and by 1768, as has 

 already been observed, was steward of the Jockey 

 Club. No doubt his proximity to Newmarket, as a 

 resident upon his estate at Great Barton, near Milden- 

 hall, Suffolk, which he represented in Parliament for 

 man} 7 years, would be enough, combined with a ' strict 

 attention to business' (that is, to horse-racing), to 

 account to a considerable extent for the control which 

 he obtained over affairs at ' head- quarters ' ; but that 

 there was ' something about him ' personally is abun- 

 dantly evident, if only from the mention of him in the 

 ' Keceipt to make a Jockey,' and from the more 

 creditable fact that he was preferred above all rivals 

 for the hand of the lovely Lady Sarah Lennox, whom 

 the King would gladly have made Mrs. George the 



