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 ‘Case in View’ (1705). He regarded it altogether as a personal matter, and, though he could not himself feel justified in taking the oaths, he did not condemn others who might do so. He agreed in this to a great degree with [q. v.] At the accession of Queen Anne the position of the nonjurors appeared to alter, and many of them returned to allegiance. The queen took particular notice of Frampton, and went so far as to offer him the see of Hereford, which was to be regarded as a ‘ translation,’ thus recognising the position he still claimed as bishop of Gloucester. But Frampton, who was now a very aged man, declined this delicate offer. He died at Standish 25 May 1708, at the age of eighty-six, and was buried in the church there, his grave being marked by a black marble slab with the inscription, ‘Robertus Frampton, Episcopus Glocestrensis—Cetera quis nescit?’

A portrait of Frampton hangs in the episcopal palace at Gloucester, and has been reproduced in the anonymous contemporary memoir first published in 1876, which corrects some of the mistakes made by Wood and others, and was unknown to Lathbury, author of the ‘History of the Non-jurors.’



FRAMPTON, TREGONWELL (1641–1727), ‘the father of the turf,’ born in 1641 at Moreton in Dorsetshire, was the fifth son of William Frampton, lord of the manor of Moreton, by his wife, Katharine Tregonwell of Milton Abbas. He probably passed his youth at home in the country, and there acquired a taste for field sports. He is described by Chafin (Anecdotes of Cranbourne Chase, p. 47) as being in 1670 the most active pursuer of hawking in the west of England. He was at the same period a regular attendant at race meetings, kept horses in training, and owned a house at Newmarket, though he passed the greater part of the year in Dorsetshire. At the former place he speedily acquired a reputation for bold and successful gambling. Coventry, in a despatch dated March 1675, mentions a horse-racing match ‘wherein Mr. Frampton, a gentleman of some 120l. rent, is engaged 900l. deep.’ He adds: ‘I hope the world will see we have men who dare venture as well as M. de Turenne.’ Frampton won his money, and in the racing records of the time his name appears far more frequently as a winner than a loser, the amounts at stake being considerably greater than was usual. In April 1676, for example, he had two matches in the same week, the one at Newmarket and the other at Salisbury, each for 1,000l. A well-known incident belongs to this period. The commonly accepted tradition is that embodied by Hawkesworth in an essay on instances of cruelty to animals (Adventurer, No. 37). This story is that Frampton's horse Dragon beat a certain mare, winning a stake of 10,000l. On the conclusion of the match the owner of the mare instantly offered to run her on the following day for double the sum against any gelding in the world, and Frampton accepted the challenge. He then castrated Dragon, who was brought out the next day, and again beat the mare, but fell down at the post and died almost immediately. Hawkesworth declares that he remembers the facts as thus stated to be true, but he could have had no personal knowledge of them. Lord Conway, in a letter dated 7 Oct. 1682, says: ‘His majesty's horse Dragon, which carried seven stone, was beaten yesterday by a little horse called Post Boy, carrying four stone, and the masters of that art conclude this top horse of England is spoiled for ever.’ This last sentence would seem to imply that some such operation as Hawkesworth alleges had been performed on a horse called Dragon; but it also contradicts his statement that the horse died at the post, and there is not the remotest evidence for supposing that Frampton had any connection with the racing establishment of Charles II. On the other hand Lawrence (Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses) quotes a letter from a Mr. Sandern of Newmarket: ‘The abominable story which is told of Mr. Frampton … is entirely without foundation, for I had an uncle who was well acquainted with Mr. F., and who frequently assured me that no such circumstance ever happened. … Cruelty was no part of the old gentleman's character.’ A letter written by the Duke of York to the Prince of Orange eighteen months after the date of Frampton's alleged cruelty mentions a forthcoming match between the ‘famous horses Dragon and Why Not.’ Frampton, though probably not guilty of this atrocity, was by no means always scrupulous. On one occasion he had made a match with Sir William Strickland, a Yorkshire baronet. Frampton managed to arrange a private trial, and secretly put 7lbs. overweight upon his horse, which was just beaten. The greatest interest was excited by the match, which was looked upon as a struggle between the north and south, and it