So KINGSCLERE 



six furlongs that ever trod the turf. She carried off 

 the Oaks, and was second for the St. Leger ; but it 

 was her one great gift of extraordinary speed which 

 landed her on each occasion, as she had no pre- 

 tensions whatever to stay either course. When she 

 was defeated in the Fern Hill Stakes at Ascot by 

 Lord Rosebery's Narcissa, it was not on her merits, 

 for she had jumped the road. On the death of the 

 trainer, Percy, Lord Alington's and Sir Frederick 

 Johnstone's horses were removed to Kingsclere, and 

 eventually, on the retirement from business of 

 Robert Peck, the Duke of Westminster's, these 

 owners, with Lord Stamford and Mr. John Gretton, 

 comprising the stable. Porter is happy to think 

 that the only gap which has occurred in the 

 association which was thus formed was caused by 

 the lamentable death of Lord Stamford in 1883. 



Among the horses now at Kingsclere was St. 

 Blaise. He came into the hands of the new 

 schoolmaster after running (in 1882) moderately 

 well as a two-year-old. One of his most note- 

 worthy exploits was winning the Troy Stakes at 

 the Newmarket Houghton Meeting. Porter's 

 opinion of St. Blaise, from first to last, is that he 

 was a good, without being a great horse. The 

 accession of the Duke of Westminster's stud of 

 yearlings, and of his horses in training, taxed the 

 resources of Kingsclere to the utmost, and kept the 

 head of what was now, perhaps, the most extensive 

 establishment of the kind in England incessantly 



