The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2) / Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field

by William Taplin

VERTUMNUS

—was a horse of some racing celebrity; and there is reason to believe he would have been held in equal estimation with his cotemporaries as a stallion, if he had enjoyed the run of fashion in his favour. He was bred by the late Colonel O'Kelly; foaled in 1775; got by Eclipse, dam by Sweeper, out of an old Tartar mare, the dam of Mercury and Volunteer. Vertumnus got many tolerable runners as country plate horses; but his merits as a stallion were never known, till a circumstance occurred at a period of life when it was generally considered too late to bring his powers experimentally into action. Baronet was got by Vertumnus, dam by Snap, out of an own sister to Nabob. He was foaled in 1785; bred by Sir W. Vavasour, and by him sold to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who brought him forward from obscurity, at six years old, to start at Ascot Heath for the great Oatlands Stakes of 100 guineas each, half forfeit, two miles, forty-one subscribers, for which nineteen started, (forming one of the richest and most striking spectacles ever seen upon the turf,) and was won by Baronet; beating Express, Chanticleer, Escape, Coriander, Toby, Skylark, Precipitate, Minos, Pipator, Euphrosyne, Competitor, Microscope, Crazy, Turnip-Top, Buzzard, Lambinos, and Vermin, who were concluded the best horses in the kingdom. The sums betted were immense, which were sported in the following proportions. Three to one against Vermin; seven to one against Precipitate; eight to one against Buzzard; nine to one against Chanticleer; twenty to one against Baronet; and one hundred to three against Express, who was second. Vermin, who was then the best three year old in the kingdom, and carried only five stone, three pounds, was universally expected to win easy; but the diminutive juvenile who rode him, was so hemmed in, and completely surrounded, by the rest at starting, that those horses keeping their strokes, and going well together, (or what is sportingly termed all in a hustle,) they never afforded him the least chance of extrication.