THE JOCKEY CLUB IN THE DAYS OF CHARLES JAMES FOX- 255 



hunters nowadays as could Sir Robert Walpole at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, or the Prince Regent at the beginning of the nineteenth ; and the facilities 

 that were open to both these gentlemen were in large measure owing to the 

 existence of such King's Plates as those won by Fox and by those of his gallant 

 contemporaries whom I mentioned in the last volume. 



It will complete the record of the early days of the Jockey Club, from which I 

 have been for a moment diverted by larger considerations, if I add that by 1762 

 there had been instituted a second October Meeting, and by 1771 the July Meeting, 



" Marske " by " Squirt," his dam by 

 Mr.Hutton's "Blacklegs:' 



the Houghton Meeting, and the Craven Meeting were established. All this con- 

 stitutes a fine record for an association which possessed no authority as yet to enforce 

 its rulings, and could only appeal to the sympathy of the public with its evident 

 intentions to improve the sport they all loved. Whether the enormous changes 

 produced on the Turf by modern progress will necessitate any alteration in the 

 ancient constitution of the Club, it is too early in these pages yet to discuss. 

 But it was necessary to mark at once the appearance on the Turf of an insti- 

 tution which contributed, as much as any one cause can ever have contributed, to the 



