A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



A Kim/nil Horse of t lie Third Century A.D. 

 From the Coliimna Tkcodusiana. 



in close upon 400 races. 

 How rare that combination 

 is will become more and 

 more manifest as I trace 

 the gradual descent of 

 modern thoroughbred stock 

 from the seventeenth cen- 

 tury to the present day. 



" Vixere fortes ante 

 Agamemnona," and I do 

 not desire to imply for a 

 moment that before, let us 

 say, the Markam Arabian 

 (to go back as far as pos- 

 sible) there was nothing of 



interest to sportsmen to record in England. The records of early race-meetings, 

 of legislation in favour of breeding, of love for horses in the abstract, and of 

 the passion for matching them against each other whenever an opportunity arose all 

 these things are worth gathering up and considering at their true value in the course 

 of our description of the development of all that is meant by the English Turf. 

 But I do not propose to weary you with long columns of figures and statistics at 

 dates when there are many other materials available for the historian. These 

 things are essential for reference of course, and they will be found in their right place 

 at the end of each volume. 



As soon as I come to the crystallisation of something like a definite society 

 round certain events, bound together by kindred interests, and accustomed to meet 

 each other at stated intervals, I shall begin to reveal the second of those reasons for 

 my present attempt, at which I hinted in the first lines of this chapter. When the 

 racecourses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are looked at in the light 

 of the society contemporaneous with them ; when the owners of famous horses are 

 realised to be men of prominence in many other spheres of life as well ; when the 

 ladies who accompanied them are considered not merely as so much gay background 

 to the scene, but as the wives, the mothers, or perchance the mistresses, of men who 

 held the fates of their own country and sometimes of Europe in their hands ; when, 

 in fact, the Turf is regarded as one aspect of the life of a part of England and that 



