SOME MEMORABLE MATCHES 311 



Lord Grosvenor once offered to match Mambrino 

 (sire of Messenger, ike sire of American trotters) 

 to do it for 1,000 guineas.' The reason, of 

 course, why trotting may not seem to suit the 

 progeny of thorough-bred race-horses is not 

 because they are thorough-bred, but because their 

 progenitors and progenitresses have been trained 

 to gallop, not to trot. The excellence of the 

 thorough-bred blood, with the proper training, is 

 as likely to assert itself in one case as in the 

 other.) 



A.D. 1779: At Newmarket First Spring Meet- 

 ing took place the memorable match between 

 Lord Grosvenor's filly (afterwards well named 

 Misfortune) by Dux and Lord Abingdon's 

 Cardinal York, by Marsk, B.C., 1,000 guineas 

 a side and a bye-bet of 6,000 guineas, laid by 

 Lord Grosvenor to 3,000, when Lord Abingdon, 

 being called upon to ' post,' would have had to 

 forfeit, but for the unsolicited interposition of 

 the 'Sporting Miser,' Mr. Elwes, M.P. for 

 Berks, who came to the rescue with a loan of 

 3,000 guineas, and thus enabled Lord Abingdon 

 (his neighbour in Berkshire) to beat the filly 

 (which became the dam of the great Buzzard. 



