SECOND PERIOD: GEORGE III. 57 



exercise, instituting a Plate for hunters at Ascot, 

 and attending the races there with homely Queen 

 Charlotte and the family, quite without ceremony, 

 and thereby, unintentionally no doubt, exciting in 

 two of his sons, George, the ' first gentleman of 

 Europe,' and Frederick, the ' Bishop of Osna- 

 burgh,' an ardent desire to be conspicuous upon 

 the turf, yet it was in his reign that horse-racing, 

 both for good and for evil, was to attain a de- 

 velopment which was truly stupendous. The 

 Jockey Club had been some ten years in exist- 

 ence, and though the King himself was neither a 

 member of it nor titular ' patron ' of it, as Wil- 

 liam IV. was, yet the King's uncle (the ' Culloden ' 

 Duke of Cumberland), the King's brother (Henry 

 Frederick, the next Duke of Cumberland, de- 

 scribed as ' the silly boy who disgraces the tide ' 

 by a contemporary), and, in due course, two of 

 the King's sons, became very prominent members 

 of it, to say nothing of other uncles and sons, two 

 or more of whom certainly belonged to it. 



Horse-racing, then, was well off for Royal patron- 

 age during this reign, in which flourished such great 

 horses as Herod {alias King Herod) and Eclipse 

 (both bred by the ' Culloden ' Duke of Cumber- 

 land), and, both before and after those two horses' 



