Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter I first period Sir John Carleton, an ancestor very likely of the present Lord Dorchester (himself a member of the Jockey Club), appears to have been about the first person who ever exercised against frequenters of Newmarket Heath that somewhat mysterious power of 'warning off, ' which seems to invest the Jockey Club in the eyes of the public with a majesty beyond that of all other clubs consisting of noblemen and gentlemen. But it was not'touts' and defaulters and impertinent writers in the newspapers, under the style and title of 'Argus, ' or ' Hotspur, ' or ' Craven, ' or 'Pavo, ' or The Devil on Two Sticks, ' or the like or the unlike, that Sir John warned off, but noblemen and gentlemen themselves, of whom many, not to say most, were progenitors of the very noblemen and gentlemen upon whom, collectively as a Club, that mysterious power has devolved. Sir John, single-handed, did not, of course, issue his edict on his own account: he was merely the mouthpiece of his Most Gracious Sovereign, who, as we learn from the annals of State Papers (1636), having observed that 'divers lords and others are accustomed to give their meeting within the King's hunt-grounds of Newmarket, in those places which the King reserves for his own sport, ' gave instructions to Sir John Carleton (who was probably the ranger, or whatever may have been his official designation) to 'warn off' the noble and gentle intruders. We have changed all that, and it is now for the descendants of those ' divers lords' to ' warn off' whosoever may have given offence, and they are aided and abetted by a descendant of the very Sovereign who had 'warned off' their forefathers. Nay, it is just a hundred years since the heir to that Sovereign's throne, though he plumed hims
