MR. TRGO.\\\'t.LL FRAMPTON AXD HJS HORSES. 



127 



to the alleged iniquitous proceeding of Frampton, then indeed improbabilities 

 crowd one upon another. 



For Dr. Hawkesworth says Dragon won ; the eye-witness reports he lost. 

 Dr. Hawkesworth also dilates upon his cruel death "the next day." But in 

 Dalrymple's Memoirs it is stated that in 1684, the Duke of York writing news of 

 that year's Spring Meeting to the Prince of Orange, says in March that " on \Yednes- 

 d iv the two famous horses Dragon and Why Not are to run " ; and again, 

 during the King's last visit to Newmarket in that same year, the Duke of York 

 sends news of the October Meeting to his niece the Countess of Lichfield, in a 

 letter preserved among 

 Lord Dillon's manu- 

 scripts at Ditchley, in 

 which he says (October 

 8th, 1684), "this day 

 Dragon was beaten by 

 Why Not." So that 

 the murdered and mu- 

 tilated animal survived 

 his master's butchery 

 for two years at least. 

 It may further be 

 pointed out that 

 Frampton was not 

 made keeper of the 

 Royal Horses until 



William III. came to the throne, that is to say in 1689 at the earliest, when 

 he would be forty-eight years of age, and at the right time of life for a position 

 of so much responsibility. 



But if there is no excuse for the invention of this barbarous fable, there are 

 certainly some grounds for confusion in the names of the horses about this time. In 

 1680 we find from Banks's "Current Intelligence" that there was a horse called 

 Dragon, belonging to Mr. May, who was entered for the King's Plate at Newmarket 

 on March I7th, against His Majesty's Tankot, the Duke of Monmouth's S/wt, and 

 A'eJ Rose, " the topping horse of Newmarket " ; and a further record shows, in 

 Smith's " Current Intelligence,'' No. 18, that a match was made between "Sir Rob. 



Mr. W. Osfia/dexton's " Old Traveller." 

 By permission of H.K.H. Prince Chrittian. 



