Advice for the novice in the 1760s

The Complete Sportsman Thomas Fairfax 1765

0f Horse Racing.

'As to the method of ordering running-horses, or what is called keeping, it will be found under the article running-horses, and therefore we will only here suppose a horse set to run for a plate, and that the hour of starting is at hand, when the drum beats or the trumpets found, according to the custom of the place where you run, to give notice for stripping and weighing; be sure in the first: place, to keep out the wind, and to strengthen you: if you are light, that you must carry weight, let it be equally quilted in your waistcoat; but it is better if you are just weight, for then you have no more to do than just to dress you, according to your own fancy; your clothes should be of coloured silk, or of white holland [a plain woven or dull-finish linen], as being very advantageous to the spectators; your waistcoat and drawers must be made close to your body, and on your head a little cap tied on; let your boots be gartered up fast, and your spurs must be of good metal ; then mount and come to the starting place, where going off briskly or gently, as occasion requires, make your horse perform the course or heat, according to your intended design ; particularly, if you would win the same, and that your horse excels in goodness more than speed, start him roundly, and run him to- the very top of what he can do, during the whole course or heat; and by that means, if the horse you run against be not so good at the bottom, though he has more speed, you will beat him, because he will run off it a great way before he comes to the end. But on the contrary, if your horse's talent be speed, all that you can do is to wait upon the other horse, and keep behind till you come almost to the end, and then endeavour to give a loose by him. Sometimes when you are to run more heats than one, it will be your policy to lose a heat; and in that case you must, for the easing and safeguard of your horse, lie behind as much as you can, provided you bring him in within distance.

The posture to be observed is, that you place yourself upon your twist [the part of the saddle the rider feels between their upper inner thighs], with your knees firm, and your stirrups just at such a length, that your feet, when they are thrust home in them, you can raise yourself a little in the saddle, for your legs, without that allowance, will not be firm when you come to run; the counter-poise of your body must be forward, to facilitate your horse's running, and your elbows must be close to your body; be sure, above all things, that you do not incommode your horse by swaggering this or that way, as some do, for since weight is a great matter in running, and that a troublesome rider is as bad as so much more weight, there is no need to say how necessary it is to take great care of your seat and hand; you must therefore beware of holding yourself by the bridle, or of jobbing your horse's mouth upon any occasion; you must take your right rein in the same hand, holding up horse, &c. as you find it necessary, and every now and then remove the bridle in his mouth. But these things are best learned by experience and practice.

A plate being run for by heats, every man that rides must be just weight at starting, in great scales for that purpose, and at the end of the lame heat, for if you want of your weight at coming in, you shall lose your heat, though you are the first horse: you have half an hour between the first and second, to rub your horses, and at the warning of the drum and trumpet again, you mount, &c. as before, and so till all is done, which is three, and sometimes three heats and a course.

If you do not breed racers yourself, be sure you buy no horse that has not extraordinary good blood in his veins, for the charge of keeping is great, and a good one eats no more than a bad, and requires no more attendance; some to save twenty or thirty guineas in the price of a young horse have lost hundreds by him afterwards.

A horse that you have tried once or twice at a twelve stone plate, you may be sure will make an extraordinary good hunter: and you are to observe, that the posture, manner of riding &co is the fame in a match as in a plate race, only that there being but a single course to be run, you must push for all at that one time; whereas when there are several heats, there is more saving, and variety of play.'

The Appointment of a Steward

In the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre archives is a letter that sheds light on the rarely documented process of appointing officials to oversee races.

The letter is signed by J Benet Esq, sometimes written as Benett.

The letter is addressed to the subscribers to the races at Salisbury, referred to in the letter as Sarum, and is a reply to their invitation to be the Steward of their next race meeting.

The Steward's function was and still is to ensure that the rules of racing are observed. Stewards were first officially appointed in 1771. Before then, disputes had to be settled by a vote among the subscribers to the meeting

The Benetts of Norton Bavant, a long-established Wiltshire gentry family, were distantly related to the Bennetts (or Bennetts) of Pythouse, a few of whom had sat in Parliament in the seventeenth century. 

Benett’s grandfather, Thomas, of Norton Bavant, who married Etheldred, daughter of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, purchased Pythouse in 1725 and died in 1754. His eldest surviving son, another Thomas, who controversially secured a fellowship at All Souls, Oxford in 1754 and was sheriff of Wiltshire, 1758-9, married in 1766 Frances (who died, childless, two years later), daughter of the Rev. Richard Reynolds, chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln, of Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire. With his second wife Catherine (d. 1780), whom he married in 1771, he had three sons and two daughters.

The tall and thin John Benett, whose elder brother Thomas died in 1789, evidently entered the Wiltshire yeomanry cavalry as a private soon after he came of age, as he later boasted of his long service record.
Following his father's death, 16 May 1797, he inherited, by his will of 23 July 1795, considerable wealth and properties in Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset. He resided at Pythouse, which was extensively remodelled to his own architectural specifications, and greatly expanded and improved his agricultural estates, becoming a combative proponent of tithe commutation.

His house at Norton, which was occupied by his sisters Etheldred, a pioneering geologist, and Anna Maria, an amateur botanist, was in William Cobbett’s favourite part of the country despite derisorily dubbing Benett ‘the gallon loaf man’.

Cobbett admitted that if Benett would give him a farm there, ‘I would freely give up all the rest of the world to the possession of whoever may get hold of it. I have hinted this to him once or twice, but I am sorry to say that he turns a deaf ear to my hinting’. Although strongly Whig in his political outlook, he had no time for radicals, condemning, for instance, the activities of Henry Hunt, an old antagonist, when supporting a loyal address to the prince regent at the Wiltshire county meeting in March 1817. Hunt, who in turn held Benett in contempt, called his speech on that occasion ‘a violent, dastardly and unmanly attack upon me’ and commented that ‘he knew that his dirty hirelings would protect him against a reply from me, and he therefore gave a-loose to a most malignant spirit’. A swaggering squire, Benett, foreman of the Wiltshire grand jury (from 1820), had a reputation for oppressing his tenants.5 The Irish poet Tom Moore, who subsequently became a friend of the family, described him in 1818 as a very haranguing-minded gentleman - his wife odious - full of airs, with a hard, grinding Tartar voice, and presuming beyond anything.

Sir 

I am very sensible of the honor [sic] you & the Gentlemen intend me in offering me the stewardship of the next Sarum Race, & no consideration would induce me to decline such an offer but my being a complete stranger to horse race concerns.

Since however you are so good as to promise me assistance, of the Gentleman who are encouraged by the Racers that desire me to serve the Races I will however unequal impose on it and in proof of my reading a coming with yours & with their wishes.

J Benets Esq

Bath Races 1756

In 1756, a two-day Bath race meeting took place on Claverton Down on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd of September.

Any owner who wished to enter his, almost all owners were men, had to take their horse to The Lamb Inn in Bath, which was overseen by a Mrs Figg, on Saturday the 18th. 

The Lamb Inn was on Stall Street in Bath. The more recent establishment, the Lamb and Lion on Lower Borough Walls is a remodelling of the Lamb's stables. It is known that the Lamb was an Inn by 1718 but had probably been established at least a century before. By 1756, the Inn was the starting point for coaches to Devon and Cornwall [2]

At the inn, the owners would need to provide evidence that their horse met the qualifying conditions for the race they wished to enter. This was usually done via a Certificate completed in a standard format, as in the example below from the Sporting Kalendar of 1755.

If the certificate was not produced on the Saturday it had to be shown before the race.

Both races require at least three horses in each race to be 'reputed Running horses &c'. Owners had to pay a two guineas entrance if a subscriber to the meeting and, in addition, a five-shilling fee to the clerk of the Course; a non-subscriber had to pay three guineas and five shillings to the Clerk of the Course or pay double at the starting post. If only one horse was entered for a race, the owner would be given Ten Guineas and have his entrance money returned. Any disputes and objections were to be settled by 'Gentlemen at the Stand', i.e. those who had subscribed to be in the grandstand.

At the races, horses could only be fitted with their racing plates by one of the Smiths, who had half a guinea for the privilege. People who wanted to set up a stall to sell liquor on the Down had to pay a fee of one guinea. 

Horses placed either first or second on the first day were forbidden from entering races on the second day.

On both days, the organisers promoted backsword contests on the course to add to the entertainment. Backsword contests involved fencing with the wooden sticks used for training in the use of single-edged weapons.

The first day of the meeting consisted of a race for a £50 purse for any horse that had not won the value of fifty pounds in 1756 (matches between two horses were not included in this calculation).  The race was a handicap with five-year-olds carrying eight stone seven pounds and six-year-olds carrying nine stone seven pounds. Older horse (referred to as aged) twelve stone. As happens today, the bridle and saddle were included in these weights. The race consisted of three four-mile heats.[1]

This race was won by Mr Corker's Dishonesly, a 6-year-old bay horse. It is not certain who Mr Corker was, but he may have been a scion of the Cornish Corkers who were prominent in the African slave trade.

The next day, Thursday the 23rd, the race was for a purse of fifty pounds and was open to any horse, mare or gelding that had yet to win more than one fifty-pound plate in 1756. As with Wednesday, the race was a handicap with five-year-olds carrying ten stone four pounds; six-year-olds carrying seven stone four pounds. Older horse (referred to as aged) twelve stone. This race was also run over three four-mile heats. This race was won by Lord Craven's chestnut horse, Barforth Ball.

Lord Craven was Fulwar Craven, 4th Baron Craven (died 10 November 1764), educated at Rugby School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He became High Steward of Newbury and was about to stand for Parliament for Berkshire when his brother William's death in 1739 brought him the Barony of Craven.
He was famously fond of racing and hunting, hunting on his Berkshire estates at Hamstead Marshall and Ashdown Park, keeping his own stud of racehorses and founding a racecourse at Lambourn. He and his brother William founded the Craven Hunt, and he appears in James Seymour's 1743 A Kill at Ashdown Park. 

Via the Tate Gallery

Craven resided at Coombe Abbey, near Coventry in Warwickshire, when not hunting. He continued to hunt until his death at old Benham Park in 1764 after a long illness. He was buried at Hamstead Marshall and, being unmarried and childless, was succeeded by his nephew William. The early Craven Barons had been soldiers and courtiers and, as a result of the service, had gained large colonial estates, particularly in America.

The Barforth part of the winner's names suggest breeding for on one the horse of the Croft family stud at Barfoth in Country Durham whose stud and breeding lines were important in the creation of the thoroughbred race horse.

1. Boddely’s Bath Journal August 16th 1756
2. Bath Pubs Kirsten Elliot and Andrew Swift