Gentlemen Riders 



Roberts), and popular with every one with whom he came into 

 contact, the news from South Africa that the " Weasel " had 

 been shot when in the act of trying to pull a wounded soldier 

 out of the river during an engagement with the Boers, was 

 received with universal regret, and nowhere more so than in 

 the world of sport with which he had been so long and 

 honourably connected. 



In 1898 the subject of our memoir married Lady Margaret 

 Innes-Ker, sister to the present Duke of Roxburgh, by whom 

 he had one daughter. 



Mr. JOHN UPTON 



(Mr. John Cottrell-Dormer) 



Notwithstanding the fact that his riding career, due to the 

 terrible fall he sustained at Sandown Park in the autumn of 

 1892, when riding a mare of the Duke of Hamilton's, named 

 Miss Chippendale, extended over a very brief period — barely 

 six years, indeed — the record established by the accomplished 

 horseman who forms the subject of this chapter is quite a 

 remarkable one. The third son of the late Mr. Clement 

 Cottrell-Dormer, of Rousham Park, Oxon, head of one of the 

 oldest families in the county, the subject of our memoir — who 

 has since changed his name to Upton, was born in 1865, ^^<^ 

 received his education first at John Hawtrey's school, at Slough, 

 and subsequently at Wellington College ; afterwards studying 

 agriculture for a while, under the Duke of Westminster's agent 

 at Eaton. A horseman to the manner born, and with a passion 

 for riding over a country — the bigger the better — attired in a 

 silken jacket instead of a double-milled scarlet coat ; like a wise 



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