After a time the Jockey Club seems to have regretted their line of action; and at a meeting, held at Brighton in the year 1805, they addressed the following letter to the Prince:--
“May it please your Royal Highness, the members of the Jockey Club, deeply regretting your absence from Newmarket, earnestly entreat the affair may be buried in oblivion, and sincerely hope that the different meetings may again be honoured by your Highness’s condescending attendance.”
The Prince, it is said, consented to overlook the past, but his horses were never sent to Newmarket after the year 1808, and then only to complete engagements. In addition to Brighton and Lewes, Bibury was his favourite race-ground, where he “appeared as a private gentleman for several years in succession, an inmate of Lord Sherborne’s family, and with the Duke of Dorset, then Lord Sackville, for his jockey. During the last ten years of his Majesty’s life racing interested him more than it had ever done before, and by the encouragement he then gave to Ascot and Goodwood, he contributed towards making them the most fashionable meetings in the world; and perhaps the day on which his three favourite horses--Fleur-de-lis, Zinganee, and the Colonel--came in first, second, and third for the cup at the latter place was one of the proudest of his life.”[102] The love of the turf was with him to the very last, and when the Ascot Cup was run for in the year 1830 under the royal colours he was on his death-bed; and “so strong was the ‘ruling passion’ in this awful hour--and his Majesty was well aware his hour was come--that an express was sent to him after every race.”[103]
His brother, the Duke of York, was almost as keen a lover of the turf as his Majesty himself, “jolly, cursing, courageous Frederick,” as Thackeray calls him. In the year 1816 he was the winner of the Derby with Prince Leopold, and in 1822 with Moses. But the “Duke of York was on the turf what he was everywhere--good-humoured, unsuspecting, and confiding; qualifications, however creditable to human nature, ill-fitted for a race-course.” Hence His Royal Highness was no winner by his horses, and his heavy speculations were the cause of his pecuniary embarrassments. On February 5, 1827, just one month from the date of his death, the Duke’s stud of thirty-two animals, including seven hacks and ten grey ponies, was brought to the hammer. The Duke of Richmond gave 1100 guineas for Moses, while Mr. Payne bought Figaro, that had run Moses in the Derby, at 200 guineas more. The King also gave 560 guineas for Rachel; but, writes “The Druid,” “racers, hacks, carriages, and dogs only produced 8804 guineas--a mere mole-hill compared with the Skiddaw-like pile of debts which he left behind him. Rundell and Bridge, his jewellers, had such an account that Cape Breton was ceded to them in lieu of it by the Government of the day, and his taste in their line may be judged of by the fact that his rifle, which brought 50 guineas, had a gold pan and touch-hole.”