It was through the finesse of Colonel Anson that the affair ended as it did. By agreement he was to count up to three and when he called the last number both men were to fire.
"One" was uttered with great deliberation.
"Two, three" the Colonel called out in rapid succession, so that the Squire was taken unawares and his shot went an inch or two above Lord George's hair, piercing his hat.
As for Lord George he fired skywards and so the duel ended.
Colonel Anson and Lord George were friends for life, and years afterwards the quarrel with the Squire was so far made up that Lord George invited him to see his horses in training at Danebury. For the greater part of the period between 1830 and 1846 he was regarded as the Dictator of the Turf.
In 1841 he removed his stables from Danebury to Goodwood where his friend, the Duke of Richmond, allowed him every facility on his estate for training horses.
To his honour, be it said, he exercised a powerful influence in endeavouring to rid horse-racing of some of its worst features, and incurred the hostility of the cheats and rogues which have at all times been associated with it.
Finding that a check was being put upon their operations, the welshing fraternity assumed a virtuous attitude and actually put into operation an old statute passed in the reign of Queen Anne, which enabled any private informer to sue and recover treble the amount of a bet made over and above £10. Six writs were served upon Lord George and six upon his partner, Mr. Bowes, in the year 1843, but the plantiff failed to prove the making of the bets and it is obvious that the statute was unworkable. The attempt to put it into force merely shows the condition of racing at the time and the opposition which men who were honourable in their motives had to meet with in their efforts to guard it against reproach, as far as their sporting instincts allowed them.
In 1844 Lord George had as many as thirty-eight horses running in races, and his estimated expenses in 1845 for sixty horses in training were about £40,000, while, the value of the stakes was about £18,000, so that to make racing pay he had to rely upon the success of his betting transactions.
Disraeli called him the "Lord Paramount of the British Turf," which well described his ascendency at the time.