HORSE RACING ON CLAVERTON DOWN The O’Kelly years.

The first recorded racing on Claverton Down was in 1729 [1], but racing there was at its zenith between 1771 and 1783, when the town was visited annually by the extraordinary Col. Dennis O’Kelly, his much-envied horses, his enormously wealthy friends, and, possibly, by his infamous 'wife' Charlotte Hayes.

Dennis is the figure in blue.

O’Kelly had come to England from Ireland and initially earned his living as a sedan chair carrier. A series of adventures led him to the Fleet prison, where he met and joined forces with Charlotte Hayes. Together, they made an immense fortune based on gambling, brothel keeping and horse dealing. It was the latter that led him to acquire 'Eclipse,' the horse from which some 95% of today’s racehorses are descended.1771 was an important year for Dennis and racing as it was the year 'Eclipse' went to stud and his progeny feature in all the Bath races from 1776. It was also a big year for Bath with the opening of the New Assembly Rooms: race meetings took place just before the season's opening and generally lasted three or four days.

Claverton Down was used for many equestrian activities; the race course was laid out over two miles in front of Claverton Down House, facing Hampton Down, and from at least 1773, there was a grandstand erected on the course. Still, Genteel spectators were either mounted or in coaches. Racing in the 18th century was as much a test of stamina as speed and typically was settled by running four one-mile heats. Claverton Down horse racing attracted sizable crowds, enormously wealthy owners and gamblers. HRH, the Duke of Cumberland, regularly sent horses to run there and may have attended in person. Many businesses in Bath sought to profit from this, and tradesmen paid substantial fees to have booths on the course and provide services such as shoeing. The Assembly Rooms would also take advantage of the crowds and put on special pre-season balls, while local eateries would provide special meals.

A typical race was the first one of the 1771 meeting, which was for a prize of £50 (about £3000 today). The race was open to any horse, and all runners had to carry a minimum of 8st 7lbs except horses who had won a King’s Plate, which had to carry 9st. The result was to be determined by the outcome of three, four-mile heats. As it happened, only two heats were run by only three horses. Mr Hugo’s grey mare 'Frolic' beating Mr Carpenter’s grey horse 'Danger' and Mr Brereton’s bay horse, 'Star'. This could be the same Mr Brereton who was banned from the Jockey Club coffee rooms for making accusations of cheating against two fellow members. 'Frolic' won the first heat easily, the general opinion being that the other two had not really tried. Surprisingly, the odds going into the second heat went as high as 20:1 against 'Frolic' winning again. However, despite 'Danger' having run much better, 'Frolic' won by several lengths. Two other horses had originally been entered, but Mr Bishop’s 'Daniel' had gone lame, and Dennis had been paid not to start his horse, 'Helen.' It's quite likely that 'Helen' was a nine-year-old mare that appears in the records as having been bred out of Daphne, a daughter of the Godolphin Arabian, one of the three founding Arab stallions of thoroughbred breeding,  by the noted stallion 'Spectator,' winner of the Jockey Club plate. This first race set a precedent with the crowd, who were surprised by and often suspicious of how races were run and the curious movements in the betting market.

At the end of the meeting, Gyde’s Rooms held a ball, and The Chronicle declared the meeting to be equal, if not superior, to any meeting in the kingdom, which may reflect the impact of O’Kelly. The massive popularity of the races can be judged from the estimate of 1000 carriages on the Down on the Wednesday of that week. Another typical race was a sweepstake, such as the second race on the second day of the 1772 meeting. A fifty guinea sweepstake for three-year-olds over a four-mile course which was competed for by:

Mr Parker’s grey filly. Mr Parker is almost certainly John Parker of Saltram house in Devon, who represented Devonshire in Parliament and who would go on to win the 1783 Derby. The grey filly was probably a horse called 'Charlotte' out of a Regulus mare, and the stallion 'Shakespeare,' 'Shakespeare,' bred by Sir John Moore, was not a very successful racehorse but had a solid reputation for breeding good mares.

Mr Wildman’s grey colt was entered on his behalf by Mr Coxe. Wildman was a wealthy wholesale butcher and stock dealer who had bought the horse 'Eclipse' from the Duke of Cumberland’s stud sale. It's not clear who the J. Coxe that entered Wildman’s colt was, but he was almost certainly a connection to the Coxe family, which owned Ston Easton Park. The grey colt was probably a horse called 'Lamplighter' and was bred from 'Antinous' by the 3rd Duke of Grafton at Euston. 'Antinous' ran for six years from age four, beating the top horses of his day in big purse matches.

Mr O’Kelly’s chestnut colt, Young Colin.

Lord Corke and Mr Coxe paid forfeits of 25 guineas each to withdraw their horses.

Betting before the start was: Mr Parker’s filly, evens. 6 to 4 against the grey colt and 2 to 1 against 'Young Colin.' In running, bets were offered that 'Colin' would not come last. The race reports described it as a very fine heat won with difficult by the filly carrying 8st 5lb against the colts' 8st 7lb. The winner won 200 guineas (about £24,000 today).

The third race of the 1780 season was for three-year-olds over one two-mile course. The field consisted of HRH, the Duke of Cumberland’s colt 'Polydore' by 'Eclipse' out of a Spectator Mare. Mr Luttrell’s bay colt 'Tetrarch' by Herod, dam by 'Careless.' Mr. O’Kelly’s colt 'Budroo' by 'Eclipse' out of a Sweeper mare. Mr. Parker’s brown colt by 'Matchem' out of an Old England mare. In fact, 'Budroo' and 'Polydore' had in May competed in the first running of the Epsom Derby, 'Polydore' coming 6th and 'Budroo' coming 2nd out of a field of nine. But this day, 'Budroo' won and 'Polydore' came last. The following year 'Budroo' beat the winner of the first Derby, Sir Charles Bunbury's 'Diomed' at a 300 guinea rematch at Newmarket.

In addition to pre-advertized races, two owners would often agree to race their horses against each other in a match. In 1774, the match that had been planned between Dennis’s 'Catchpenny' and Mr Fenwick’s 'Playfellow' for 200 gn was called off because O’Kelly objected to how Fenwick was proposing to pay with a credit note payable in America. This undoubtedly reflects his concerns about the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the British government and the American colonists.
At the end of each meeting, the subscribers chose one of their number to be the steward who organised the following year’s meeting. Among the many colourful characters who undertook this role in Bath was the notorious Sir John Lade, Dr Johnson’s godson and soon to be the husband of the even more notorious Letty Lade.

It's not clear why O’Kelly stopped coming to Bath, but by 1783, he was 58 with only another four years to live. There were increasing disputes with landowners on the Down, who resented the damage and disruption caused by the racing. But Dennis was also starting to distance his family from all that had made him rich with the intention of making his heirs gentlemen, and in that, he succeeded.

1. An Historical List of All Horse-Matches Run, and of All Plates and Prizes Run for in England ... in 1729. ... by John Cheny 

The 1792 Races

A four-day meeting was held on the New Course on Lansdown starting on 18th September 1792 with a maiden plate of fifty pounds open to any horse that had never won more than £50 as a prize. The race was run over 4-mile heats[1]. Horses were. Handicapped by age and sex.

The first race was won by Lord  Courtenay's 3-year-old bay filly Adeline, bred by Highflier, who bested the field in the first two of the heats. This race was a selling plate requiring that the winner be put on sale for 50g to anyone applying within 15 minutes, with the owner of the second horse having first refusal.

 William "Kitty" Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon (c. 1768 – 26 May 1835), was the only son of William Courtenay, de jure 8th Earl of Devon, 2nd Viscount Courtenay and his wife Frances Clack. He attracted infamy for a homosexual affair with art collector William Beckford from boyhood when it was discovered and publicised by his uncle. From October 1788 until 1831, his official title was The Rt. Hon. The Viscount Courtenay of Powderham. Although following the scandal, Courtney lived abroad for most of his life, there is every indication that he had returned to Britain in the early part of the 1790s as not only does he seem to have entered his own horse in this race, but he had his portrait painted by the London based miniaturist Richard Cosway in 1793.

Highflyer was one of the most influential sires of the Georgian era.

This race was followed by a match where Mr Dottin's Conjuror, by Highflyer, 6 yrs old, 10st. I0lb beat Mr Chichester's Minister, aged 11st. 3lb. Ridden by their owners, over four miles, for 50gs.

Mr Dottin has not been positively identified but is likely to be one of the Dottin family of prominent Barbadian plantation owners, possibly Abel Rous Dottin, the son of Abel Dottin of Grenada Hall, Barbados, who was High Sherriff of Oxfordshire in 1764 and who had died in 1784 when his son has inherited the family estates. At the time of this match, Abel was in his early 20s and a Cornet in the Life Guards.

1. Bath Chronicle

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

John Gully and the Prizefighters of Bath

John Gully was born on 21 August 1783 at The Crown Inn, Wick, near Bristol, where his father was the landlord. During Gully's boyhood, the family moved to Bath, where his father became a butcher, and he was brought up in his father's trade. After his father's death, the business gradually declined, and at the age of twenty-one, Gully became an inmate of the Kings' Bench Prison, London. He had for some time taken an interest in prize-fighting matches, and this led in 1805 to his receiving a visit from an acquaintance, Henry Pearce, the ‘Bristol Game-Chicken’, the champion of England. The two men had a ‘set-to’ which so impressed the onlookers that several prize fight promoters paid Gully's debts and took him to Virginia Water, where he was trained for a more serious fight with Pearce. The contest took place at Hailsham in Sussex on 8 October 1805 before a huge crowd, among whom was the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV). After a fight of seventy-seven minutes, during which there were sixty-four rounds, Gully, who was nearly blinded, gave in.

Ill health forced the ‘Bristol Game-Chicken’ to retire in December 1805, and Gully was regarded as his legitimate successor, although he was never formally nominated champion. No challenger for his title came forward for two years. At length, he was matched to meet Bob Gregson, the Lancashire heavyweight, for 200 guineas a side. His opponent measured 6 feet 2 inches in height and was famously strong, while Gully himself was 6 feet tall. The fight took place on 14 October 1807 at Six Mile Bottom, on the Newmarket road. This encounter was remarkable for its brutality; both men became quite exhausted, but in the thirty-sixth round, Gully landed a blow which prevented Gregson from continuing. Captain Barclay took the winner off the ground in his carriage and drove him in triumph onto the Newmarket racecourse the next day. Gregson, not being satisfied, again challenged his opponent. This match, which was for £250 a side, took place in Sir John Sebright's park, near Market Street, Hertfordshire, on 10 May 1808, the combatants being watched by about a hundred noblemen and gentlemen on horseback and in carriages. The crowd was so great that it was rumoured the French had landed, and the volunteers were called out. The two men fought in white breeches and silk stockings, without shoes. After the twenty-seventh round, Gregson was too exhausted to continue. In this contest, which lasted an hour and a quarter, Gully, who had commenced with his left arm in a partially disabled condition, showed a complete knowledge of prize-fighting and a remarkable quickness of hitting.

In June 1808, with Tom Cribb, Gully took a joint benefit at the Tennis Court in London when he formally retired from the ring. By this time, he had become the landlord of The Plough Inn, 23 Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. He began devoting himself to the business of a betting man and became, in 1812, the owner of horses of his own, Cardenio being his first. He moved around this time to Newmarket and became more seriously involved in racing in 1827 when he gave Lord Jersey 4000 guineas for his Epsom Derby winner, Mameluke. He backed his purchase for the St Leger that year, but James Robinson on Matilda took the race, and Gully lost £40,000. In 1830, he became a betting partner with Robert Ridsale when their horse Little Red Rover ran second to Priam for the Derby. Their best year, however, was 1832, when they won the Derby with St Giles, and Gully took the St Leger with Margrave, making £50,000 on the former and £35,000 on the latter race. However, having fallen out with Ridsale in the hunting field, he horsewhipped him, which led to his having to pay £500 damages for assault. In partnership with John Day, Gully won the Two Thousand Guineas 1844 with Ugly Buck. In 1846, he took both the Derby and the Oaks (with Pyrrhus the First and Mendicant), an event previously accomplished only once, when Sir Charles Bunbury's Eleanor carried off both prizes in 1801. Gully was again the winner of the Two Thousand Guineas with Hermit in 1854, and in the same year, he won the Derby with Andover, having the bookmaker Henry Padwick for his partner in the latter horse. During this period as a racehorse owner and gambler, Gully purchased Upper Hare Park, near Newmarket, from Lord Rivers, but he subsequently sold it to Sir Mark Wood. He then bought Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, Yorkshire, becoming MP for that pocket borough from 10 December 1832 to 17 July 1837. Politically, he described himself as a reformer, supporting the ballot and shorter parliaments. In 1835, he brought a legal action against the editor of The Age for slander in connection with the Pontefract election. He unsuccessfully contested the seat again in June 1841. Having amassed a considerable fortune from his racing interests, he also acquired a degree of respectability. In 1836, he was presented at court. He married twice and had twelve children, with each wife. His first wife was the daughter of a London publican; his second, Mary, survived him.

Having sold Ackworth Park to Kenny Hill, Gully took up his residence at Marwell Hall, near Winchester. He had, however, invested his winnings in coalworks in the north and in land. He purchased a number of shares in the new Hetton Colliery, which he held until they had risen to a high premium. About 1838, he was involved in setting up the Thornley collieries and had a share in the Trindon collieries. In 1862, he became sole proprietor of the Wingate Grange estate and collieries. By this time, he had moved to Cocken Hall, near Durham. He died at the North Bailey in Durham on 9 March 1863 and was buried at Ackworth, near Pontefract, five days later.

Horse Racing in the Complete Sportsman of 1764

Of Horse Racing.

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, 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, 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 fay 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 fame 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 fare will make an extraordinary good hunter: and you are to observe, that the posture, manner of riding, is the same in a match as in a plate race, only that there being but a single course to be run, you must push for all ”