Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/55

 TURF a horseman named Place had a white horse which was known, and is still known in the stud books, as Place's White Turk. He had great merit as a stallion. When the Puritan sects prevailed, horse racing, in common with all other forms of popular amusement, was suppressed. But Cromwell took Place into hi service, purchased his White Turk, and did all in his power to improve the breed of English horses. After Charles II. came to the throne, horse racing was revived all over the country. He imported four (or as some accounts say, six) mares from Tangier, and these have ever since been known as the Morocco or royal mares. Some of them enter into nearly all the old pedigrees. In the reign of Charles II. racing was again regularly established at Newmarket, where it has flourished ever since. During the short reign of James II. there is little to be said of the turf. In that of William and Mary it flourished greatly, and the first of the three great patriarchal imported sires became known in England. This was the Byerly Turk, a horse ridden by Capt. Byerly as a charger in Wil- liam's army after James was expelled from the throne. This horse was first noticed in Eng- land in 1689. Where he came from nobody knows ; but some of the best race horses and stallions that ever lived came from him. Jig was his son, and Partner his grandson; and King Herod, a horse to which we have been as much indebted as to Eclipse for the speed and bottom of our race horses for a century, was his descendant at four removes. A large number of Barbary and Turkish horses were also imported, one of the best of which was the Lister or Stradling Turk ; and a gray Arabian called Bloody Buttodks, from a red mark on his haunch, was also of much merit. But the greatest of all the importations was in the reign of Queen Anne, when a Yorkshire- man named Darley received from his brother in Palestine a bay Arab horse obtained from one of the desert tribes. This horse, after- ward called the Darley Arabian, was the second and the greatest of the three sires from which the blood horse of modern times is mainly de- scended. From him starts the right male line of Eclipse and of Snap, and the King Herod line on the side of his dam. In 1715 the Darley Arabian got Flying Childers, the best horse by long odds that had ever run in England. The Darley Arabian also got Bartlett's Childers, who did not race himself, but was a famous stallion, great-grandsire of Eclipse on the male side, and sire of the Little Hartley mare, whose name appears in the pedigrees of many of the best horses of the present day. The Darley Arabian also got Snip, the sire of Snap, the lat- ter a sire of such immense merit and enduring influence that he is third to King Herod and Eclipse. The racer was at first a cross-bred horse, composed of the old English breed and Spanish, Barb, Turk, and Arab strains, but improved by good feed and care and develop- ment on the turf. The Godolphin Arabian 800 VOL. xvi. 4 was the third of the three great foreign sires. It is now generally believed that he was a Barb instead of an Arabian. He was foaled about 1704, and sent as a present to Louis XIV. of France by the emperor of Morocco. He was deemed of little value in France, and was purchased by a Mr. Coke, who took him to England and sold him to one Williams, the keeper of a coffee house in London. This man gave him to Lord Godolphin, who bred many famous racers from him. The blood is nearly as much esteemed as that of the Darley Arabian, and perhaps more than that of the Byerly Turk. It does not appear that any rec- ords were kept of the races even at Newmar- ket before the beginning of the 18th century. No horses ran until they were five years old, and the races were nearly all four miles or a greater distance. Basto, by the Byerly Turk, one of the very earliest of those whose ex- ploits are recorded, was foaled in 1703. Bay Bolton was foaled in 1705. The first time of his running he won Queen Anne's gold cup at York for six-year-olds, four-mile heats, weights 168 Ibs. Bay Bolton beat eight six-year-olds, giving them a year each. He was a successful stallion, and his daughter Gypsy was celebrated as a brood mare. Brocklesby Betty, a chest- nut mare by the Curwen Bay Barb out of a little mare by the Lister Turk, was foaled in 1711. Before she was trained she had a foal, but she was the best race horse that appeared in England before Flying Childers. The lat- ter, a chestnut horse with four white legs and a blaze in the face, was foaled in 1715, and was got by the Darley Arabian out of Betty Leedes. Flying Childers had immense speed and thorough bottom. He did not run much, for after he had shown his powers no one would start a horse against him. On one occa- sion, it is said, he ran over the Beacon course, 4 m. 1 fur. 138 yds., in 7 min. 30 sec. His stride was 25 ft. With his rider in the saddle, he leaped 30 ft. on level ground. He was a horse of fair size, and so was his brother Bartlett's Childers. After their time the thoroughbred horse increased much in height and length. Still some of the best and most enduring of that age were mere ponies. Gimcrack and Little Driver were only about 14 hands high. King Herod, a horse of fine size and power, was bred by the duke of Cumberland in 1758, and sold to Sir John Moore. He came in the male line of the Byerly Turk through Tartar, Partner, and Jig, and on the side of his dam be had two crosses of the Darley Arabian, one through Flying Childers and one through a daughter of the Arabian. King Herod had. better race horses, while it is agreed that there ias been no better stallion. Between the time of Flying Childers and Eclipse 50 years elapsed, and many famous horses were produced, in- luding Snap as well as King Herod. The for- mer was son of Snip, whose sire was Flying ~hilders; and it is through the daughters of
 * reat speed and bottom. There have been