5 6 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



were down," as "The Druid" said, and his career was soon but the moral of a trainer's 

 tale. His brief years upon the Turf must have been an extraordinary time for 

 Danebury ; for when George Forclham had nothing to ride for the Marquis, he was 

 fairly sure to get a good one from the Duke of Beaufort, and neither John Day 

 nor Joseph Enoch can have had much time to spare, in the duties of which a scanty 

 outline has been given, from the day when The Diike won the Stockbridge Biennial 

 Stakes, at 5 to 4, from a field of fourteen. This light bay son of Stockwell, out 

 of Bay Celia, was the first really good two-year-old the Marquis owned, and was 

 such a desperate puller that even so fine a horseman as T. Cannon could only hold 

 him in a plain snaffle. I have already mentioned some of the trials which the stable 

 had to arrange at this period, and I have quoted the doings of the Marquis of 

 Hastings as one of the best illustrations possible of how much may depend upon 

 a trainer's skill. It is worth noting, too, that Danebury had the Duke of Beaufort's 

 Ceylon and Vauban at the same time. The defeat of the latter in Hermifs Derby 

 Enoch always explained by saying that Fordham was not well enough to ride a 

 proper race. Such an extraordinary lot of two-year-olds as there were to be seen 

 at Danebury in 1867 has probably never been equalled elsewhere in any year; for 

 though Crucifix, Achievement, Wheel of Fortune, St. Simon, and Ormonde may be 

 produced in half a century, Lady Elizabeth, The Earl, See Saiv, Athena, Europa, 

 and Mameluke were the produce of a single season, and many think that among 

 them the best two-year-old that ever galloped was to be found. The beautiful bay 

 daughter of Trumpeter was once asked one of the severest questions ever put to 

 a two-year-old, and Mr. Sydenham Dixon, son of "The Druid," gives the figures as 

 follows for the result of the trial over six furlongs of the Stockbridge racecourse : 



Lady Elizabeth, 2 yrs., 8st. lolb. ..... i 



Lord Ronald, 5 yrs., gst. 61b. . ., . .2 



Challenge, 3 yrs., 8st. I2lb 3 



Pantaloon, 5 yrs. . . . . . o 



This the filly won comfortably by two lengths as early in the year as June 4, and 

 having regard to what she beat, it is probably one of the best two-year-old 

 performances ever done in private. No wonder it was followed, four months later, 

 by her equally fine victory over falius. 



It is sad to think, as I revise these pages in the spring of 1903, how many of 

 the men mentioned in this chapter have only lately left us, and become but names 

 in the history they helped so much to make. John Day's head lad in the sixties, for 



