The First Marquis of Clanricarde 



took the country. It was about this time that Mr. Grantley 

 Berkeley got up a steeplechase at Bedford, and asked Lord 

 Clanricarde to ride for him. Parliament was sitting at the 

 time, but my lord hacked down from town, rode in the steeple- 

 chase, hacked back again, and was in his place at Westminster 

 in the evening. 



A very hard man to hounds, Lord Clanricarde once in 

 Leicestershire broke his collar bone at a fence, mounted again, 

 and came to grief in a brook three fields further on. 



Amongst his best hunters was the grey, Leatherhead — the 

 last that the famous Valentine Maher rode with the Ouorn in his 

 old form — who carried his owner up to the age of twenty-seven 

 years, and jumped an undeniably big place even then. Angelo 

 and Gehazi were also two favourites, whilst Caustic, with his 

 head and neck all wrong, a bad mouth, and a determined 

 rusher at his fences, won the Irish National in 1864, within 

 six weeks of his making an appearance at a Leicestershire 

 meet. 



CAPTAIN BECHER 



In the early days of steeplechasing there was no more familiar 

 name in connection with the sport than that of Captain 

 Becher, undoubtedly one of the hardest and best riders that 

 ever crossed a country. 



The son of Captain Becher of the 31st Regiment, who, 

 retiring on half pay in 1791, afterwards turned farmer and 

 dealer in his native county of Norfolk, and was subsequently 

 known all over the country as "Old Becher, the last of the 

 leather Breeches," the subject of this memoir was "broke to 



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