FRANCIS BUCKLE AND SOME OTHER FAMOUS RIDERS. 395 



match against Petronel, though "Old Frank" had his revenge soon after, on 

 Violantc, in the Selim match. This Violante must have always been rather a 

 sore point with Buckle, for she was turned out of the stud which Pratt kept for 

 Lord Grosvenor at Hare Park, where Mr. Brodrick Cloete breeds and trains 

 to-day, and was bought by Frank at ,50, only with the result that her first 

 owner at once changed his mincl, and Buckle had reluctantly to give her up. 

 One of Sam's best races was his victory on Wings for the Oaks, in which he 

 waited while Will Arnull made the running on Tontine, and was beaten by Pastime 

 TOO yards from home, and then rushed Wings ahead of both in the last three or 

 four strides. This, and many another victory, he won chiefly owing to his 

 knowledge of pace, which let him creep up all the way, and really settle the 

 verdict long before the crowd saw anything of him. When the Prince reappeared 

 on the Turf in 1826, with Delme Radcliffe as manager, William Edwards as 

 trainer, and Jack Ratford as factotum, it was a Chifney again who rode his Dervise 

 for the Oatlands in the next year ; and it was a good deal owing to that name 

 and all it meant, that, as Prince and King, in his twenty seasons on the Turf, 

 George IV. could call a score of 313 races, including a Derby, ten Cups, and 

 thirty King's Plates. He never liked the idea of Newmarket again, after the 

 Escape business. Sam was a silent man, as well as a lazy one, when he was off 

 a horse, and he loved a quiet day's shooting, or an afternoon with his gamecocks, 

 and his pet foxes in their artificial earths fenced in with wire on Fidget Farm, 

 named after the colt on which he first had a winning ride. But when King- 

 George IV. was fairly racing again, Sam would go anywhere to get one of the 

 Royal mounts, which he occasionally shared with Robinson, Dockeray, Nelson, 

 and Pavis ; and when the King had bought The Colonel for 4,000 guineas, and 

 Zinganee had beaten him, with Chifney up, he asked Chifney which of the three 

 he preferred, these two or Fleur-de-Lis. He was on his death-bed when the 

 Chifneys won the Derby with Priam, but Jack Ratford was charged to bring 

 back the news post-haste to the Royal chamber the moment the horses had passed 

 the post. Mr. John Kent, writing early in the twentieth century as the oldest trainer 

 alive, recorded his opinion that Priam was the most perfect racehorse he had ever 

 seen, more sound in constitution, and better formed than Ormonde. He was a 

 beautiful dark bay with black legs and slight tips of white upon each hind heel, and a 

 feather on each side of his neck. A number of false starts were made in his Derby, 

 on purpose to upset the favourite, but he caught the leaders in 400 yards. Priam 



