EARL OF STAMFORD 261 



however, were wonderfully well mounted, and they had 

 plenty of horses apiece, so that his great sales came to 

 be regarded as an annual function. He seldom ran a 

 horse in England unless he had something he deemed 

 good enough to have a chance for a great race, but 

 on the Irish turf he was a prominent character. The 

 Marquis of Waterford met his death out hunting 

 in March 1859. According to some accounts he was 

 riding his best horse ; according to others he was on a 

 middling hunter. At any rate, the fence which proved 

 fatal to him was a very small one into a road. The 

 horse made a mistake at it, and the marquis came with 

 such violence to the ground that he broke his neck. He 

 was wearing a hunting cap at the time, and it was said 

 that this stiff headgear saved his head at the expense of 

 his neck ; and the story goes that this doctrine had a 

 good deal to do with sending caps out of fashion, just as 

 black satin ceased to be worn after Mrs. Manning elected 

 to wear that material at her execution. 



The latter end of 1859 saw the publication of an 

 engraving (by Hacker) of Dick Christian mounted on 

 Mr. Little Gilmour's Lord Grey, which was lent to Dick 

 in order that he might sit to the artist. No sooner was 

 the engraving published and Lord Grey talked about 

 than several people claimed to have bred him ; indeed, 

 like two distinguished persons of our own time, he 

 appears to have had several birthplaces. As Dick 

 Christian himself observed, Lord Grey, like his master, 

 was very bad to beat over Leicestershire. Whatever 

 may be the history of his breeding, the story of his 

 later years appears to be plain enough. Mr. Garratt, of 

 Knossinaton, bought him out of a drove at Harborouodi 

 — a fact which would have entitled him to be described 

 in a horse-show catalogue as " breeder unknown." Mr. 

 Garratt "played with him for a season," and then sold 

 him to Mr. Gattring of Orton, near Newark, from whom 



