FIRST PERIOD: CHARLES II. TO GEORGE II. 19 



George I. is said to have put in an appearance 

 at Newmarket two or three times, in 1716, 

 1717, and 1718; he 'kept on' Mr. Tregonvvell 

 Frampton as ' keeper of the running-horses ' 

 there, and he maintained the royal stud at 

 Hampton Court, with Mr. R. Marshall for stud- 

 groom, but his heart was not nearly so much set 

 upon the turf and horse-racing as upon feather- 

 ing his nest, and upon his German mistresses. 

 Indeed, it has been remarked, and even com- 

 plained, that our Hanoverian line of sovereigns, 

 before the coming of the ' first gentleman of 

 Europe,' were shamefully regardless of the turf 

 and of horse-breeding. Nevertheless, the reign 

 of George I. was the age of many noteworthy 

 horse-owners, horse-breeders, horse-runners, and 

 horses, including among the persons the out- 

 rageous Duke of Wharton, already mentioned, 

 who was conspicuous at Newmarket, when he 

 was quite a youth, for four or five years from 

 1 71 7; and among the horses, the Duke of 

 Devonshire's fabulous Flying Childers, the Duke 

 of Rutland's Bonny Black (the mare that not 

 even Flying Childers was thought capable of 

 tackling, apparently), Mr. Pelham's Brocklesby 



