40 A MIRROR OF THE TURF. 



III. 



" The great County of York " was famed at an 

 early date for its seats of racing. The " Turf 

 Annals" of York and Doncaster have an historian 

 in John Orton, keeper of the match-book and clerk 

 of the course, York. The capital of the great 

 county, as that gentleman tells us, was the first 

 to chronicle her sports, and to Yorkshire, " the 

 British turf," he says, " has perhaps been more in- 

 debted for the superior breed and present per- 

 fection of the high mettled racer, than any other 

 portion of the kingdom." 



Orton in his compilation — a most useful work, 

 to which writers about " the turf" have often been 

 indebted — only deals with the accredited figures of 

 racing, when the results began to be chronicled in 

 a somewhat formal manner. But long before the 

 date of the first race given in his volume, " York, 

 1709," the sport of horse-racing had been inaugu- 

 rated, the prize as usual in those early days being 

 a small golden or silver bell, to be carried pre- 

 sumably, in all time coming, by the victorious horse. 

 In Camden's "Britannia" (1590) we are told of 

 horse-racing having taken place in a forest on 

 the east side of the city of York. 



A horse-race it is recorded was run on the 

 River Ouse when it was frozen over in 1607, and 

 also in the following year. There is plenty of 

 evidence as to the fact of horse-racing having 

 taken place in these early days (1590); but it was 

 long after that period before the sport was made 

 to assume the shape which immediately preceded 

 the business kind of racing with which so many 

 persons are familiar at the present time. 



