MR. TREGONWELT. FRAMI'TON A\D II IK HORSES. 143 



" Sir F. Ragg," as the name is here spelt, is very possibly a pleasant 

 permutation of the letters in the name of Sir R. Fagg, an enthusiastic Royalist from 

 Rye. His Baxter was beaten by Mr. Pelham's Old Partner, in 1723, and his Fanny 

 by Captain Appleyard's Bald Charlotte (Lady Legs], in 1727. So his alleged 

 wiliness did not invariably succeed. He also lost abet to Lord Hartington in 1731, 

 that the noble Marquis would not ride the twenty-one miles from Hyde Park Corner 

 to the Lodge in Windsor Forest on the same horse in sixty-five minutes. With 

 Mr. Pelham, Colonel Pitt, and others, Sir Robert was very fond of " pacing matches " 

 over a distance of twelve miles at Newmarket, and it is curious that the interest in 

 this form of sport should so soon afterwards have crossed the Atlantic and become 

 a recognised characteristic of American racing men. Mambrino, one of the first 

 natural trotters, greatly helped to establish in the United States a breed of horses 

 peculiarly suited for such efforts "against the clock." Cresccus, who trotted the mile 

 at Cleveland, Ohio (in July, 1901), in just over two minutes two seconds, was by 

 Robtrt McGregor Mabel by Mambrino Howard. 



From what seems a fairly impartial, though certainly inaccurate, account of 

 Newmarket affairs at this time, it is at least clear that in such company a ready 

 wit and a ruthless determination were as essential as a long pocket or a love 

 for sport. On the whole, I cannot think that Frampton comes so badly out of it 

 as many of his successors seem to imagine. A man who had so great a success 

 with horses must have loved them, as he did his hounds and his gamecocks ; and the 

 man who loves animals and knows how to get the best out of them is never a ruffian 

 at bottom. Wootton's original painting, from which the well-known engraving 

 I reproduce was taken, shows Dragons picture in the, background, instead of in 

 a separate medallion beneath. Beside it, in Lord Rosebery's collection at the 

 Durdans, is a most interesting portrait of Frampton in youth, which I have never 

 seen elsewhere, painted by R. Pyle, with the flattering inscription beneath it : 

 " Founder of Newmarket Racecourse." Allowing for difference in age, you 

 recognise the features as identical. The clean-shaved face, with its firm lines 

 about the mouth and chin, its strongly-marked aquiline nose, its eyebrows that 

 seem fixed in that gentle upward curve of politely tolerant amusement which 

 is common to the sportsman and the diplomatist, the eyes beneath them which 

 see everything, yet do not seem to watch all this is not the countenance of 

 roguery or of barbarity. The Keeper of the Horses to so many monarchs would 

 have paid the penalty of either, long before his first Royal Master died. Vet, as 



