HORSE-RACING IN ENGLAND 



Pope's ' scorn and wonder of our days.' Thomas, 

 Lord Wharton, is said by Lord Macaulay to have 

 run race-horses chiefly for the pleasure of beating 

 any Tory that might be on the turf in those times, 

 and he certainly owned some excellent horses, 

 and among them Old Smithson, the famous 

 Old Careless (sire of the dam of Flying Childers 

 and Bartlett's Childers), and St. Martin (son of 

 the Duke of Buckingham's famous Spanker, by 

 Lord D'Arcy's Yellow Turk), whereof the last- 

 named won a great match at Newmarket in 1699 

 against the Duke of Devonshire's Dimple (reputed 

 holder of 'the Whip' at some period of his career). 

 But the glory, from a posthumous point of 

 view, of Dutch William's reign, so far as horses 

 are concerned, was the horse which had been 

 ridden by one of the King's officers, Captain 

 Byerley, at the Battle of the Boyne, and which, 

 though unknown upon the racecourse, was to be 

 renowned for ever, under the style and title of the 

 Byerley Turk, as the eldest of the three primitive 

 or principal sires, the Shem, Ham, and Japhet, 

 of all or nearly all English and Anglo-Arabian 

 thoroughbreds registered in the 'Stud Book,' in 

 direct male descent. 



