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Abstract
This article explores the role played by different types of equine culture — haute école and horse racing — in the turbulent politics of the early years of George III’s reign. It suggests that opponents to Lord Bute politicised the racecourse, and in particular Newmarket, in order to challenge the men and measures of the court of St James’s. Whilst Newmarket can be understood as a significant alternative to London as a site of aristocratic politicking, those eager to court favour with Lord Bute also tried to share his love of Spanish-bred horses.
Notes
1 For Newmarket’s royal history, see R.C. Lyle, Royal Newmarket (London, 1945); Richard Onslow, The Heath and the Turf: A History of Newmarket (London, 1971); Laura Thompson, Newmarket: From James I to the Present Day (London, 2000).
2 John Harris, ‘Inigo Jones and the Prince’s Lodging at Newmarket’, Architectural History, 2 (1959), pp. 26-40.
3 Simon Thurley, ‘A Country House fit for a King: Charles II, Winchester and Greenwich’, in Eveline Cruickshanks (ed.), The Stuart Courts (Stroud, 2000), pp. 214-39; idem., ‘Newmarket Palace’, Country Life (24 April 2008), pp. 100-03.
4 The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 43 (1773), p. 318.
5 Paget Toynbee (ed.), The Letters of Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, 16 vols (Oxford, 1905), vol. VIII, p. 308.
6 Mike Huggins, Horse Racing and British Society in the Long Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2018), passim.
7 With the notable exception of the work of Richard Nash. See, for example, ‘Turf Wars: Violence, Politics and the Newmarket Riot of 1751’, in Alexis Tadié and Daniel O’Quinn (eds), Sporting Cultures 1650-1850 (Toronto, 2018), pp. 93-113; and ‘Sporting with Kings’, in Rebecca Cassidy (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Horseracing (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 13-25.
8 Carl B. Cone, ‘Parliamenteering and Racing’, The Historian, 37:3 (1975), p. 407.
9 See, for example, the entry for Augustus Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, which, concerning the political discussions surrounding the change of administration in 1765, notes that, ‘Though Grafton and Cumberland had had several contacts in recent months, both in political matters and at Newmarket, Grafton was not one of the principal members of Newcastle’s circle’: Paul Durrant, ‘Fitzroy, Augustus Henry, third duke of Grafton’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9628 [accessed 20 March 2018].
10 John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), p. 59.
11 Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1991), p. 181.
12 Ibid., pp. 182-3.
13 For a recent history of racing at Newmarket, see David Oldrey, Timothy Cox and Richard Nash, The Heath and the Horse: A History of Racing and Art on Newmarket Heath (London, 2016), pp. 6, 173-94.
14 See, for example, a newspaper account of the Duke of Cumberland ‘and several persons of distinction [who] were present at Newmarket for three matches’ in 1761, when ‘after the sport was over the whole company dined with his Royal Highness at the King’s Palace at Newmarket’: The General Evening Post (London) (14–17 November 1761).
15 Between 1748 and 1749, MPs Charles Pelham and Sir Charles Codrington contributed sums of up to £30: Iris M. Middleton, ‘The Developing Pattern of Horse Racing in Yorkshire 1700-1749: An Analysis of the People and the Places’ (Leicester De Montfort University, PhD thesis, 2000), p. 53.
16 Harold J. Laski (ed.), Letters of Edmund Burke: A Selection (Oxford, 1920), p. 185.
17 ‘Westminster Races’, The Annual Register, or a view of the history, politics, and literature, for the year 1764 (London, 1765), p. 128. Temple was known by his nickname of Squire Gawky: see Joan Coutu, Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Montreal, 2006), p. 163. For a nuanced engagement with racing infused satirical cartoons from later in the decade, see Don Nichols, ‘Jockeying for Position: Horse Culture in Poetry, Prose and The New Foundling Hospital for Wit’, in Sharon Harrow (ed.), British Sporting Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century (Abingdon, 2015), pp. 125-52.
18 Richard Nash, ‘“Honest English Breed”: The Thoroughbred as Cultural Metaphor’, in Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker (eds), The Culture of the Horse: Status, Discipline and Identity in the Early Modern World (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 245-72.
19 Donna Landry, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (Baltimore, 2009), p. 4
20 British Library [hereafter BL], Add Ms 79500, fols 23-2: Bolingbroke to Joseph Emin (1 September 1759).
21 Monica Mattfeld, Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (University Park, PA, 2017), p. 56.
22 ‘To Mr Town’, The Connoisseur, 50 (1755), p. 300.
23 ‘Travels of a Guinea’, The Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (1758), p. 227.
24 ‘Essay on the Appellation, Life’, The Edinburgh Magazine, 6 (1762), p. 439.
25 ‘Grosvenor Square: Introduction’, in Survey of London: Volume 40, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings), F H W Sheppard (ed.) (London, 1980), pp. 112-17: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol40/pt2/pp112-117 [accessed 3 November 2018].
26 ‘A Description of Millennium Hall’, The London Magazine, or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, 31 (1762), p. 604.
27 James Boswell, The Cub At New-Market: A Tale (London, 1762), p. 15. See also Peter Martin, A Life of James Boswell (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 71.
28 William Harvard, The Elopement: http://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/HL_LA_mssLA223 [accessed 21 October 2018].
29 The Royal Magazine (1764), p. 200.
30 The Edinburgh Magazine, 5 (1761), p. 483.
31 ‘The necessity of a learned education for Men of Fortune’, The Edinburgh Magazine, 2 (1758), pp. 174-5. By the following year Rockingham owned Whistlejacket and would have him painted by Stubbs in 1762.
32 See, for example, Dr Messenger Monsey’s letters from the period, which document his clients’ (including Newcastle) frequent ailments: BL, Add Ms 79497-50.
33 The Universal Museum; or, Gentleman’s and Ladies Polite Magazine of History, Politicks and Literature for 1762 (1762), pp. 518-19.
34 Landry, Noble Brutes, p. 4.
35 Stephen Deuchar, Sporting Art in Eighteenth-Century England. A Social and Political History (New Haven and London, 1988), pp. 107-08.
36 Nathaniel William Wraxall, Historical Memoirs of My Own Time. Part the First, from 1772 to 1780. Part the Second, from 1781 to 1784, 2 vols (2nd edn, London, 1815), vol. I, 431-2.
37 Raber and Tucker (eds), The Culture of the Horse, p. 9.
38 Francis Russell, John, 3rd Earl of Bute: Patron and Collector (London, 2004), p. 179; Giles Worsley, ‘Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire – I: The Seat of Sir Marcus Worsley’, Country Life, 188:37 (1994), p. 92. See also, idem, ‘Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire – II: The Seat of Sir Marcus Worsley’, Country Life, 188:38 (1994), pp. 56-61; idem., The British Stable (New Haven and London, 2004), passim; and Richard Wilson and Alan Mackley, Creating Paradise: The Building of the Country House, 1660-1880 (London and New York, 2000), pp. 337-40.
39 Giles Worsley, ‘Riding on Royal Approval’, Country Life, 118:18 (1994), p. 58. See also Richard Nash, ‘William Cavendish: Riding School and Race Track’, in Peter Edwards and Elspeth Graham (eds), Authority, Authorship and Aristocratic Identity in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden, 2017), pp. 317-30.
40 Mount Stuart Archives [hereafter MSA], BU/98/2/89: Lord Eglinton to Lord Bute (25 June 1757).
41 Andrew Mackillop, ‘Montgomerie, Alexander, tenth earl of Eglinton (1723–1769), politician and agricultural improver’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19055 [accessed 21 October 2018].
42 A Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen (Edinburgh, 1762), pp. 231-2.
43 Thomas Henderson, revised by Stuart Handley, ‘Home, William, eighth earl of Home (d. 1761)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13649 [accessed 21 October 2018].
44 MSA, BU/98/3/98: Lord Home to Lord Bute (20 June 1758).
45 MSA, BU/98/3/70: Lord Home to Lord Bute (25 June 1758).
46 MSA, BU/98/3/216: Thomas Worsley to Lord Bute (undated [1758]).
47 MSA, BU/98/3/66: Thomas Worsley to Lord Bute (17 June 1758).
48 MSA, BU/98/3/217: Thomas Worsley to Lord Bute [1758].
49 John Screen, ‘Herbert, Henry, tenth earl of Pembroke and seventh earl of Montgomery’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13034 [accessed 21 October 2018].
50 See MSA, BU/98/2/107 (31 July 1757), and BU/98/2/110 (5 August 1757).
51 ‘The Stables: Gentleman of the Horse’, in Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 11 (Revised), Court Officers, 1660-1837, R O Bucholz (ed.) (London, 2006), p. 605, British History Online: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/office-holders/vol11/p605 [accessed 21 October 2018].
52 MSA, BU/98/5/211: Richard Berenger to Lord Bute (23 December 1760). It is likely that Berenger also taught Bute’s children to ride: see BL, Add Ms 59438, fol. 132: Lord Bute to Richard Berenger [no date].
53 Richard Berenger, quoted in Giles Worsley, ‘A Courtly Art: The History of ‘haute école’ in England’, The Court Historian, 6:1 (2001), p. 45.
54 William Reynell Anson (ed.), The Autobiography and Political Correspondence of Augustus Henry, 3rd Duke of Grafton (London, 1898), p. 15.
55 BL, Add Ms 32929, fol. 91v: Duke of Newcastle to Earl of Hardwicke (7 October 1762).
56 BL, Add Ms 32929, fol. 146r: Marquess of Rockingham to Duke of Newcastle (10 October 1762).
57 BL, Add Ms 32929, fol. 200v: Duke of Newcastle to Marquess of Rockingham (14 October 1762).
58 BL, Add Ms 32929, fol. 341v: Duke of Newcastle to Marquess of Rockingham (21 October 1762).
59 Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (2nd edn, London, 1961), pp. 403-15; Peter D.G. Thomas, George III: King and Politicians (Manchester, 2002), pp.78-9. There is only one reference to Newmarket throughout Thomas’s book, clearly indicating his perception as to the lack of importance that horse racing had in the 1760s.
60 ‘Westminster Races’, London Magazine, or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, 33 (1764), p. 253.
61 Cone, ‘Parliamenteering and Racing’, p. 411.
62 C. Lloyd, A Critical Review of the New Administration (London, 1765), pp. 28-9.
63 City Races (London, 1765).
64 Countess of Ilchester (ed.), The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826 (London, 1901), pp. 172-3.
65 David Watkin, The Architect King: George III and the Culture of the Enlightenment (London, 2004), pp. 56-9.
66 The dukes of Grafton, Ancaster, Kingston, Bridgwater, and Northumberland, the Marquess of Rockingham, the earls of Eglington, March, Orford, and Gower, and Viscount Bolingbroke.
67 C.P. Lewis, ‘John Chapman’s Maps of Newmarket’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 80 (1991), p. 75.
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Oliver Cox
Oliver Cox
Dr Oliver Cox is Heritage Engagement Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is responsible for creating long-term research partnerships between Oxford and the UK and international heritage sector, focussing in particular on the country house. He is a historian with a particular interest in the social and cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World.