256 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



success of all we mean by English Racing ; and it may be added that, although that 

 kind of omission which outside critics describe as "obvious " is to be found at every 

 stage of the Club's membership, from its inception to the present day, yet nearly all 

 its early founders were members of one or the other House of Parliament, and owned 

 between them nearly every thoroughbred whose blood is of importance in the Stud 

 Book. For if the Byerly Turk and the Darley Arabian were born too early, and if the 

 owner of the Godolphin Arabian was one of the omissions aforesaid, the members of the 

 Jockey Club owned at one time or another Matchem, Herod, and Eclipse ; and neither 

 now nor then can any body of gentlemen who associate together of their own free 

 will be intelligently criticised it seems to me for refusing to enlarge their 

 boundaries at the will of other people. 



The owner of Marske, when he won the Jockey Club Plate at Newmarket 

 in 1754, was William, Duke of Cumberland, who is thereby proved to have been 

 one of the first members of the Jockey Club. He was a gallant soldier, a very 

 loyal uncle to George III., and a staunch supporter of the Rockingham Administra- 

 tion, who held Cabinet meetings at his house. But he only had time for politics 

 after 1760, and in the last year of his life (1765) he conducted a series of most 

 important negotiations, partly at Newmarket. Luckily for the Turf, he threw 

 himself with characteristic energy into horse-racing. His name is preserved in 

 that lodge in Windsor Great Park where he lived as Ranger, and which is now 

 filled with pictures of the racehorses he loved. His memory is almost equally 

 cherished upon the Berkshire Downs, one of the localities which energetically 

 disputes with the Isle of Dogs, and the Royal Domain, the honour of being the 

 birthplace of Eclipse. In a Berkshire Manor House I have seen the old oak 

 writing-desk, as solid still as its first master was, in which the Duke kept his 

 racing memoranda. They have long ago followed their writer into dust and ashes, 

 or I should have a very much more interesting story to tell now. But it is suffi- 

 ciently established, without their vanished testimony, that His Royal Highness owned 

 not only Marske but Spiletta, and that in Cypron he was the wise possessor of the dam 

 of King Herod as well. Such names as these would be more than enough to give 

 immortality to any racing man, for they imply that he was, if not the largest, at any 

 rate the most successful breeder of his time, and they deserve more careful investiga- 

 tion in another chapter. But they far from exhausted the triumphs of Cumberland 

 Lodge, which it is pleasant to see to-day so full of memories of the racehorses 

 the Duke loved. Among the best of his stable were Dumplin and Dapper by Cade, 



