2 54 ^'^^ Post and the Paddock. 



Sandbeck blood. The Pelhams were always noted 

 for their breed of horses, and there are but few Eng- 

 lish horses that have not some distant tinge in their 

 veins of the Bay Barb and Brocklesby Betty. The foun- 

 dation of their more modern stable-blood was laid about 

 the beginning of the present century, when the first 

 Lord Yarborough bought a Sir Peter mare (sister to 

 Hermione)from Lord Grosvenor. He also regularly sent 

 his mares to Earl Fitzwilliam's and Earl Egremont's 

 crack horse, and a Driver filly did great things for 

 the Brocklesby Hunt stables. Its sire was the original 

 old Driver (the " old, old hat," in fact, of Lord Pal- 

 merston's Tiverton speech), and was kept by Lord 

 Egremont on his own property between York and 

 Beverley. The first noted sire Lord Yarborough pur- 

 chased was the chestnut Quicksilver, a rather small 

 horse, remarkably blood-looking about the head, and 

 with abundance of quality. His stock, to which he 

 communicated great character, were nearly all chest- 

 nuts, and there was no mistaking their duck noses, 

 wide nostrils, and glove-like skin. No horses were so 

 good to know. " Quicksilver for a quart',' the very 

 labourer would say to his fellow, as he plodded along 

 the road, and espied a young chestnut dancing and 

 throwing up his heels in the harrows, and the guess 

 rarely failed. The county was at one time as full of 

 his stock as it was rather later on of Sir Malagigi's, 

 which had, one and all, very dubious tempers. This 

 own brother to Sir Marinel was a loose-built style of 

 horse, and it was difficult to say why the Lincolnshire 

 men took such a fancy to him for two or three sea- 

 sons. His owner was wont to boast that the proceeds 

 of one of them was 400 guineas in two-guinea fees, 

 and that he carried every stiver of the money home 

 with him when he took the horse back across the 

 Humber to his winter quarters in Holderness ! It 

 was from a Brocklesby draft filly by him that Mr. 

 John Richardson, of Horkstow, near Barton, bred 



