128 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



Mr. Pratt, whose membership of the Jockey Club 

 is established from several other sources besides the 

 group of subscribers to the Jockey Club Challenge 

 Cup in 1768, was the celebrated John Pratt, Esq., 

 of Askrigg, Wensleydale, Yorkshire, probably the first 

 case, and undoubtedly one of the very few cases, of a 

 plebeian admitted to the Jockey Club ; that is to say, 

 with the plebeian stamp so very fresh. For — tell it 

 not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ascalon 

 — his father is said to have risen to be a hackney- 

 coach driver (from the condition of ostler), and then a 

 hackney-coach proprietor, and ultimately a small 

 landed proprietor near Askrigg. The future member 

 of the Jockey Club, however, was sent to the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge, where, no doubt, he was affected 

 by the neighbourhood of Newmarket, and where he 

 studied after the fashion described in some once well- 

 known verses : 



At Trin. Coll. Camb., which means in proper spelling 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, there resided 



One Henry Dashington, a youth excelling 

 In all the learning commonly provided, 



That is to say that he could drive a tandem, 



etc., etc. 



Mr. Pratt, who died at Newmarket May 8, 1785, 

 was so respected that somebody wrote an epitaph or 

 elegy, rather longer than the High Street, to com- 

 memorate his vicissitudes and virtues. He never had 

 more than 700Z. a year, it is stated, from the estate 



