FRANCIS BUCKLE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS RIDERS. 393 



the risk of his life, and enjoying at the end the fruits of a temperance and wisdom 

 which had both undergone sore temptation in his early days. A quiet hackney to 

 watch the hounds occasionally, a carriage for a gentle drive, a walk with his favourite 

 terrier round his neat garden and grounds, these comprised his simple pleasures, 

 after he had taken care that his sons were well started in their different paths of life. 

 He was blessed by the dispensation of a short illness and a sudden death, and all his 

 friends endorsed the epitaph : 



" No better rider ever crossed a horse ; 

 Honour his guide, he died without remorse. 

 Jockeys attend from his example learn 

 The meed that honest worth is sure to earn." 



The saddle I reproduce in these pages has been preserved, with other relics of 

 him, by his grand-daughters. The linings and girths had to be cut away in the 

 'seventies. On the inside is the label : " VVestley Saddle and Cap maker 

 Newmarket." 



Remarkable as their talents undoubtedly were, it would be difficult to award to 

 the Chifneys, either father or son, such praise in every line of life as was so cheerfully 

 and universally bestowed on Buckle, and it may be feared that young Sam's 

 reputation will never quite get over the suspicions involved by Manuella s running 

 in the Derby and Oaks of 1812. Sam won the Oaks himself in 1807, 1811, 1816, 

 1819, and 1825 ; and the Derby in 1818 and 1820. He was often too lazy to take 

 a mount that involved a long journey from Newmarket, and when he had made an 

 engagement to ride a trial in Yorkshire, the carriage often waited for him in vain at 

 the cross-roads, for he was rarely on the Coach when he was wanted. He had sat as 

 a boy on the knee of the Prince of Wales and received a guinea from the Royal hand. 

 He did not die in a debtors' ward like his father, but his last years at Brighton 

 were only rendered tolerable by a pension from his nephew, Frank Butler. At a 

 time when the intercourse between jockeys and their noble employers was far less 

 intimate than in the days which roused the wrath of the late Captain Machell, the first 

 Duke of Cleveland, who was as great a Turfite as his second son, Lord William 

 Powlett, astonished his contemporaries by inviting Sam Chifney to pass many weeks 

 with him every winter at Raby Castle, and they dined together alone nearly every 

 night, after a day with the Raby Hounds, at which the Duke easily outstripped the 

 jockey, for Sam was always timid across country, while Lord Darlington, who was 

 given his step in the peerage owing to the support he gave to Lord Grey's Reform 



