392 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



founded the Racing Club at Florence, the Jockey Club of Italy. His cousin, Mr. 

 Henry Vansittart, of Kirkleatham in Yorkshire, was a member of the Jockey Club 

 from about 1810 to 1828, and his colours were lilac all that time. When he resumed 

 racing in 1835 he assumed the orange jacket of his cousin, and became well known 

 as the breeder of Van Tromp, Tlie Flying Dutchman, and other famous horses. 



Buckle's last appearance was not perhaps a very brilliant one for the great 

 jockey who had ridden Champion by Pot8os to victory in both the St. Leger and the 

 Derby of 1800; who scored the great Doncaster race on Mr. Mellish's Sancho ; and 

 who had won so skilfully on Lord Exeter's Green Mantle in the Second October 

 Meeting of 1828, after the mare had played all sorts of fantastic tricks at the start. 

 But it showed, as nothing else could do, that he had lived straight all his life, and 

 could ride straight within so short a period of his death. For he was dead before 

 three more months were done, and he attained an honour that no other jockey I ever 

 heard of has received, either because none has been worthy, or because the pen that 

 wrote it has never found a successor, I mean an obituary notice in the " Quarterly 

 Review." It is worth quoting more fully than is usually done. " He is in his grave, 

 but he has left behind him not merely an example for all young jockeys to follow, but 

 proof that honesty is the best policy, for he died in the esteem of all the racing 

 world, and in the possession of a comfortable independence acquired by his 

 profession. What the Greek said of Fabricius might be said of him that it would 

 have been as difficult to have turned the sun from his course as to have turned him 

 from his duty." He rode at various times for Earl Grosvenor, Sir Charles Bunbury, 

 Honourable George Watson. Mr. Cookson, Colonel Mellish, the Duke of Grafton, 

 Mr. Udny, and Mr. Durantl. It was after heavily backing a horse belonging to this 

 last-named gentleman at Lewes that Buckle found himself retained to ride another in 

 the same race. Greatly to his credit, he won, and was literally "cut off with a 

 shilling." How to get back he did not know till a gentleman offered him a seat in 

 his carriage, and at the next toll-bar Frank had to confess his temporary destitution, 

 throwing his last shilling to a beggar they met on the road, with the remark that it 

 would never do to "take that into Newmarket." 



He died on the 5th of February, 1832, and his grave is in the churchyard of 

 Orton Longueville, an altar-tomb with iron railings round it. In his last years his 

 estimable character became even more evident in his private life near Peterborough, 

 where he lived as a quiet country gentleman, abhorring publicity, giving more to 

 charity than could possibly be expected of a man who had earned all he possessed at 



