Note 377 — Chapter XXIII · HORSE-RACING, HUNTING, SHOOTING, &C.

The horse, necessarily, in those days, when locomotion was only obtainable through its agency, was of prime importance: farriery was fairly understood, and some voluminous disquisitions on it were published, with the most curious receipts for the various ills horseflesh is heir to, and elaborate engraving of fleams, firing irons, bits (some of them very cruel), and all sorts of harness—even down to currycombs, dandy-brushes, and stable utensils. But it is not here that the hack or roadster is to be spoken of, but the horse kept for sport—the race horse—about which they had already found out the fact, 'Like Race Horses cost more in keeping them than they're worth.'[377] The Queen was fond of racing, and gave her 100l. gold cups to be run for, as now: nay more, she not only kept race horses, but ran them in her own name. Her six-year-old grey gelding Pepper ran for her gold cup at York (over Clifton and Rawcliffe Ings) on July 28, 1712. Over the same course, and for the same stake, on August 3, 1714, ran her grey horse Mustard, by the Taffolet Barb, which, according to the Daily Courant of May 14, 1714, was entered to run 'in Whitsun week at Guildford in Surrey for the 50l. plate'; and, sad to tell, her brown horse Star (afterwards called Jacob) ran at York for a plate of the value of 14l., and won it, on July 30, 1714, the very day on which the Queen was struck with apoplexy, expiring the next day.