A HISTORY OF 



THE ENGLISH TURF. 



CHAP T E R I . 



IXTKODL'CTOKV. 



" Libriim scribal i/>se qui jndical." 



IT is not my intention to begin this history with the usual apology for adding 

 another book about horses to the sportsman's library. If excuse were needed, 

 the opportunity of a new century and a new reign would be alone sufficient to explain 

 an attempt to resume what has been done on the English Turf since Racing 

 became a popular institution, and to put on record the position from which a fresh 

 start has been made. 



The point of time thus chosen is Hot merely the arbitrary date of a conventional 

 calendar. It forms, if I am not mistaken, a real and organic division in that 

 life-story of classic encounters which has as much to do with the men and women of 

 the period as with the horses they have loved so well to watch. 



It confirms this belief, and it is appropriate to these pages, to observe that in 

 the old century, His Majesty King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, headed the 

 list of winning owners, an auspicious success which has been mainly due to the 

 magnificent three-year-old career of Diamond Jubilee, own brother to the no less 

 illustrious Persimmon. But it was not the mere total of his winnings which made 

 the year 1900 remarkable in the racing career of His Majesty, and in the history of 

 the Turf. Apart from the fact that the treble event of the Two Thousand, Newmarket 

 VOL. L B 



