THE JOCKEY CLUB IN THE DAYS OF CHARLES JAMES FOX. 245 



century England, I must turn to the most important event in the History of Racing 

 with which their names are connected. 



It is about the year 1750 (according to Mr. Robert Black, to whose valuable 

 researches in this direction I am much indebted) that the first traces of the Jockey 

 Club can be discovered. It was hardly likely that such important clubs as White's 

 or Brooks's would have long been without their counterpart in more active spheres 

 of life than that which was to be enjoyed in the neighbourhood of St. James's. 

 When the racing men who met each other at White's went down to Newmarket to 

 match each other's horses it was but natural that they should soon use the advantage 

 of a bond of union and even of self-defence in the country, very similar to that 

 which gave them so many pleasant social privileges in town. Whether the one 

 form of association was slightly anterior to the other or not is no great matter, for the 

 spirit which produced both was evidently similar, and the necessity for some kind of 

 combination among owners on the Turf was even more apparent than the need for a 

 good private gambling-room in London. Newmarket and its surroundings were far 

 more open to the casual and burly blackguard than was any respectable residence 

 close to Piccadilly ; and even in those happy times before the growth of millionaires 

 became a common incident, it may have been found advisable to erect one more 

 barrier, which money alone would not be able to surmount. The very indifference 

 of the reigning monarchs who succeeded Queen Anne was, with those who 

 remembered earlier years, an additional incentive to provide themselves and their 

 legitimate proceedings with a sanction and a tone which had previously been cheer- 

 fully given by the sympathy of the Throne itself. 



Sir John Carleton's exercise, of the Royal authority, delegated to him to warn off 

 undesirable persons from " those places which the King reserves for his own sport," 

 may very possibly have suggested to a few of the noblemen and gentlemen most 

 interested in Newmarket, that if their present Sovereign was not disposed to safe- 

 guard the surroundings of their racecourse, they had better find some method of 

 doing so without him. The materials were of course easily discoverable for such an 

 association as may have occurred to them. And the traditions of that racecourse 

 itself were more than sufficient to provide them with a solid foundation for the 

 future ; for, as we have so often seen in glancing at the Court of Charles II., in the 

 days when the King owned and rode his own horses, and when both the Duke of 

 Monmouth and the Duke of York did the same, there must obviously have been some 

 kind of an organisation to provide jockeys fit to ride against such illustrious owners, 



