RACING AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



345 



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bears his name, and he won it in 1787 with Sir Peter Teazle, the appropriate omen 

 of his wedding. The first race was won by Sir Charles Bunbury's Diomed (by 

 Florizel out of a Spectator mare going back to Flying ChilJers), who beat Captain 

 CT Kelly and seven others, and conferred the highest honours of the Turf upon the 

 pink and white stripes and black cap. Sir Joshua Reynolds has been kinder to the 

 first winner of the Derby than Gilray was to its founder ; nor has the famous Duke 

 of Bedford, another prominent racing man of the time, got off much better at the 

 hands of the vigorous caricaturist, who 

 spared nobody, and was probably much 

 more true to nature than is sometimes 

 imagined. 



With the advent of the classic races 

 the whole machinery of the Turf began 

 to be organised at its regular head- 

 quarters, and already the names that are 

 still familiar to all racegoers begin to 

 appear in the places that have known 

 them so honourably and so long. Mr. 

 James Weatherby was keeper of the 

 Match Book, and began his successful 

 dynasty in 1774, when he took over the 

 publication not only of the Calendar but 

 of the still more famous Stud Book. 

 Something in the nature of a record of 

 the racing at Newmarket had been kept 

 by Mr. John Nelson, and sold by him as 

 long ago as 1670. In 1727 Mr. John 

 Cheney got togetherwith infinite industry 

 the first volume which gave a corrected account of thoroughbred stock, and 

 it is significant that he obtained most of his details from the ranks of those sporting 

 clergy who have been well represented by the Rev. Mr. Tarran, the Rev. Mr. 

 Hewgill (breeder of Priestess), the Rev. Mr. Goodricke, who won several St. Legers, 

 Parson Harvey, and that clerical Fellow of Corpus, Oxford, who owned and ran 

 Apology. From Mr. Cheney's dying hand, one Reginald Heber seized the torch of 

 fame, not without struggles with Mr. John Pond, and bore it till his death in 1768. 



VOL. n. z z 



The Duke of Bedford. 



