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A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



"straw" of the fourth Duke of Devonshire who succeeded to his title in 1755, 

 became Master of the Horse, and won the Jockey Club Plates of 1754 and 1759 with 

 Antelope and Atlas ; an ancestor of his is supposed to have won the first race for the 

 Newmarket Challenge Whip some thirty years before, but the racing reputation of 

 the family would have been established by the possession of Flying (or Devonshire) 

 Childers alone, even if Basto and other famous horses, besides several Devonshire 

 Arabians, had not belonged to it. Dromo, winner of the Jockey Club Plate of 



1773, was the property of the 

 fifth Duke, husband of the 

 lovely Georgina, of whom I 

 have reproduced an almost 

 unknown portrait by Down- 

 man. The Gainsborough 

 painting has, like many other 

 things of personal and historic 

 interest, been purchased by 

 an American. Georgina, 

 Duchess of Devonshire, whom 

 Fox loved as much as he 

 respected, owned Le Beau and 

 ran him in her own name at 

 Newmarket in 1786 against 

 her sister (Lady Duncannon, 

 afterwards Countess of Bess- 

 borough) and Lord Clermont. 

 Her husband's tastes were 

 more studious than sporting, 

 but the title has never since 

 his day been unrepresented in English Racing, and in the Lord President 

 of the Council of 1902, to whom this second volume is dedicated, the Turf 

 saw one of its firmest supporters, and the new King found another Delme 

 Radcliffe to carry on the high traditions of the Prince of Wales's racing stable. 



In previous pages I have already had to mention several other racing men who 

 were without doubt among the founders of the Jockey Club, for they are intimately 

 connected with that history of English racing which I have endeavoured to trace 



Georgina Duchess of 

 Devonshire. 



