The history of the Jockey Club and that of “Tattersalls” are inseparable. Richard, the first Tattersall, born in 1724, and originally stud-groom to the Duke of Kingston, founded the well-known business of horse-auctioneering in London in 1766, and prospered from the beginning of that enterprise; but his fortune was made rather in horse-breeding, and “Old Tatt” had his first great success in 1779, when he bought Highflyer, Lord Bolingbroke’s famous racehorse, for £2,500, and put him to the stud. It is a proof of his tried and proved integrity that he purchased Highflyer on credit.

But Highflyer himself demands a few words here. He was a bay horse, foaled in 1774, the property of Sir Charles Bunbury, who sold him to Lord Bolingbroke. He won a long succession of classic races at Newmarket in 1777-79, and was in after-years the sire of many equally famous horses. In fact, as in the case of “Eclipse first, the rest nowhere,” of later times, Highflyer stood for all that was fleetest and finest, in his own day, and it was from him that the stage-coach proprietors of old delighted to name their conveyances. We find no “Highflyer” coach, however, on this road, but a well-known London and Edinburgh “Highflyer” coach ran from 1788 to 1840, and at least five other local coaches of the same name travelled the cross-roads of Yorkshire, that shire most famous of all for the love of horses.

Highflyer in thirteen years brought Tattersall such prosperity that he was able to set up a fine establishment at New Barns, or “Highflyer Hall,” Ely, and to entertain the greatest in the land with a baronial hospitality. The New Barns port was said to be the best in England, and was very potent. Richard Tattersall, grandson of “Old Tatt,” who himself lived to be known as “Old Dick,” used to tell how, in 1794, as a boy of nine, he saw a post-chaise from his grandfather’s place drive up to the “Palace” door at Newmarket, with William Windham, the statesman, riding a leader and Charles Fox awheel, while the Prince of Wales, too greatly overcome with New Barns port to take part in the frolic, or even to sit on the seat, lay utterly helpless on the floor of the chaise.

Tattersall was not only powerful at Newmarket, but popular as well; and in those days, when Highway-men infested all the roads leading into this place where money flowed so freely, was the only man who could with impunity go back and forth, unattended and unarmed, with his pockets full of gold. The Highway-men declared him “free of the road.” On the one occasion when he actually was stopped and relieved of his treasure, it was the work of one who did not recognise him, and restitution was made when his identity was discovered. Not every one, although perhaps rejoiced to share this highway franchise, would feel altogether complimented by this more than fraternal affection of those knights of the crape mask and horse-pistol, for it argued a community of interests.

By the time the Jockey Club and Tattersall’s came into existence, Newmarket had become too firmly established as the headquarters of racing for any greater or less measure of Royal favour to affect its fortunes. Wealth, quite irrespective of birth and rank, now counts. It is all one to the town and the trainers who provides the funds, whether it be a millionaire Austrian Jew banker, a German Israelitish financier, a rack-renting peer-landlord, a monarch of the licensed victualling trade, or a wholesale furnisher from Tottenham Court Road; and when the bacon-kings and the sovereigns of soup, and all the other geniuses of the factory and the Exchange, who pile up huge fortunes out of the labour of others, come here to spend a percentage of their hoards, they will be all sure of the same welcome—as why should they not?

There is little or no snobbery in Newmarket, and it is perhaps the only place in the world where the King can depend upon being let alone. He can walk the High Street or the racecourse like any other sportsman, or look into the shop-windows without being mobbed. Here, at any rate, Addresses are never presented, and Royalty walks, for a change, upon pavements and mother earth, without the usual intermediary of red carpet. No one—at least none who are conversant with the manners and customs of the place—even takes off a hat to the Sovereign, who is thereby relieved from his invariable courtesy of returning the salute. In short, no one takes the least notice of him.