RACING, OK TURF HORSES. 201 



a hood) was obliged takeep an entire trotting stallion, under a penalty 

 of twenty pounds sterling. So, also, it was made comi^ulsory that every 

 deer park and rural parish should maintain a certain number of full-sized 

 mares and stallions. It is also interesting, as being the first mention 

 made in English history, that Henry VIII. and Charles Brandon, Duk« 

 or Suffolk, rode a race in the presence of Queen Catharine, and that in 

 his reign the first annual races on a regular race course were instituted. 



H. W. Herbert, in his work. The Horse of America, thus sums up 

 the whole matter in relation to the value of Oriental blood in England, in 

 the time of Oliver Cromwell : 



It is now pretty generally admitted that, whether Barb, Turk, Syrian, 

 or Arab of the * desert proper, all oriental blood has had its share and 

 influence in reinvigorating the blood of the English thoroughbred, and 

 giving to it those peculiar qualities which cause it, with justice, at tliis 

 day, to be esteemed the best, completest, and most perfect animal in the 

 world . 



In what degree these animals have ministered to our now dominant 

 strain, is by no means to be ascertained ; but it is to be noted that most 

 of the early imported foreign stallions were not Eastern Arabs. 



During the protectorate, Oliver Cromwell, who, though he was com- 

 pelled by the necessity of conciliating the absurd prejudices of the 

 Puritans, to forbid racing, was yet an ardent lover of the horse, and an 

 earnest promoter and patron of all that belongs to horsemanship, pur- 

 shased of Mr. Place, afterwards his stud-master, the celebrated "White 

 Turk" — still recorded as the most beautiful south-eastern horse ever 

 brought into England, and the oldest to which our present strain refers. 

 To him succeeds Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, his Helmsley Turk, and 

 to him Fairfax's — the same great statesman and brave soldier, who 

 fought against Newcastle at Marston — Morocco Barb. 



And to these three horses it is tiiat the English race-horse of the old 

 time chiefly owes its purity of blood, if we except the royal mares, 

 specially imported by Charles II., to which it is — -mythically, rather than 

 justly — held that all English blood should trace. 



Of all succeeding importations, those, which are principally known and 

 referred to, as having notoriously amended our horse — by proof of sto^k 

 begotten of superior qualities, and victorious on the turf through tong 

 generations — but few are true Arabs. 



We have, it is true, the Darley Arabian , the Leeds Arabian, Honey- 

 wood's White, the Oglethorpe, the Newcome Bay Mountain, the Damascus, 

 Cullen's Brown, the Chestnut, the Lonsdale Bay, Combe's Gray and Bell's 

 Gray Arabians ; but what is generally called the Godolphin Arabian, as 

 it seems now to be the prevailing opinion — his origin not being actually 



