PREFACE vii 



for the purposes of the work ; but special acknow- 

 ledgment must be made to Mr. J. B. Muir for 

 occasional help borrowed from his recent volume 

 (' Ye Okie Newmarkitt Calendar '), which must 

 have cost him an infinity of trouble. His name 

 is mentioned in nearly every case of indebtedness, 

 or an asterisk is employed to distinguish such 

 ' matches ' as are recorded on his authority. Op- 

 portunity may be taken here for saying that, 

 though he seems to have detected an inaccuracy 

 both in ' Pick ' and in the ' Stud Book,' his own 

 suggestion that the Bonny Black was foaled in 

 1708 or 1709 is quite out of the question; for 

 there can be no doubt of her having won the 

 Hambleton Gold Cup both in 17 19 and 1720, and 

 that Cup, we read, was originally ' free for either 

 horse, mare, or gelding, provided they were no 

 more than five years old,' and the restriction as to 

 age was not touched when the Cup was ' made 

 for mares only.' Whereas, according to Mr. 

 Muir's suggestion, Bonny Black would have won 

 the Cup the first time when she was eleven or 

 ten years old, and the second when she was twelve 

 or eleven years old (for the race was run in 

 August), and there would have been no protest or 



