Whereas, Had Their Own Fleet Been
Joined, It Might Have Cost More Blood To Have Mastered Them If It
Had Been Done At All.
The situation of this house is low, and on the edge of the fen
country, but the building is very fine, the avenues noble, and the
gardens perfectly finished.
The apartments also are rich, and I
see nothing wanting but a family and heirs to sustain the glory and
inheritance of the illustrious ancestor who raised it--sed caret
pedibus; these are wanting.
Being come to Newmarket in the month of October, I had the
opportunity to see the horse races and a great concourse of the
nobility and gentry, as well from London as from all parts of
England, but they were all so intent, so eager, so busy upon the
sharping part of the sport--their wagers and bets--that to me they
seemed just as so many horse-coursers in Smithfield, descending
(the greatest of them) from their high dignity and quality to
picking one another's pockets, and biting one another as much as
possible, and that with such eagerness as that it might be said
they acted without respect to faith, honour, or good manners.
There was Mr. Frampton the oldest, and, as some say, the cunningest
jockey in England; one day he lost one thousand guineas, the next
he won two thousand; and so alternately he made as light of
throwing away five hundred or one thousand pounds at a time as
other men do of their pocket-money, and as perfectly calm,
cheerful, and unconcerned when he had lost one thousand pounds as
when he had won it. On the other side there was Sir R Fagg, of
Sussex, of whom fame says he has the most in him and the least to
show for it (relating to jockeyship) of any man there, yet he often
carried the prize. His horses, they said, were all cheats, how
honest soever their master was, for he scarce ever produced a horse
but he looked like what he was not, and was what nobody could
expect him to be. If he was as light as the wind, and could fly
like a meteor, he was sure to look as clumsy, and as dirty, and as
much like a cart-horse as all the cunning of his master and the
grooms could make him, and just in this manner he beat some of the
greatest gamesters in the field.
I was so sick of the jockeying part that I left the crowd about the
posts and pleased myself with observing the horses: how the
creatures yielded to all the arts and managements of their masters;
how they took their airings in sport, and played with the daily
heats which they ran over the course before the grand day. But
how, as knowing the difference equally with their riders, would
they exert their utmost strength at the time of the race itself!
And that to such an extremity that one or two of them died in the
stable when they came to be rubbed after the first heat.
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