SQUIRE OSBALDESTON

Squire George Osbaldeston on Ashton with Sir Francis Holyoake Goodricke on Crossbow, by John Ferneley Snr (1830)

unparalleled shot with a rifle, beating horse racing records, being the finest foxhunter in the land and generally risk-taking like a frenzied honey badger. That he was an outrageous cur and irascible bounder to see him through all this is a given. That he made it to old age at all remains a mystery.

Born on Boxing Day 1786 as the only son of five children, Osbaldeston’s parents inherited a great uncle’s estate at Hutton Buscel, near Scarborough. His father had the cheek to die when George was only six, and although the estate was left in trust to him, his mother thought nothing of dipping deeply and frequently into the well and squandering it, because those political society parties were not going to host themselves. The usual path of Eton was tried, but he brilliantly got himself expelled within a year, most likely for being himself. Still, he once recalled, ‘“I could beat any boy single-handed at cricket, and any boy my age in fisticuffs.”

Despite his behaviours, dependable contacts got him a place at Brasenose College, Oxford, but he continued to display a complete allergy to studying, as well as pouring hot gravy over the heads of students or masters he took a dislike to. Obtaining an actual degree never appeared to feature anywhere in his plans, but he was known to play billiards for 50 hours straight.

He had also bought his first foxhounds, and this was to be the true love of his life. For nearly 30 years he spent a fortune moving from one famous hunt to another as its Master: 1810, the Burton, Lincolnshire; 1813, the Muster’s pack; 1815, the Meynall and Atherstone, Derbyshire; 1817-1827, the Quorn, Leicestershire; 1827-34, the Pytchley, Northants. Each move involved the enormous expense of purchasing the Mastership, which included the running costs of stables, kennels and men and renting a gentleman’s residence for the season.

George Osbaldeston, esq., M.P.

“Noticing that the posy contained a rare orchid, he hopped onto his mount and galloped into the night, riding non-stop for 25 miles to a large manor house, in the conservatory of which the special flower had been grown. He helped himself to a superior specimen, galloped the 25 miles back and, caked in mud, handed it gallantly to the overwhelmed Miss Burton, thus claiming the next waltz”

This necessarily itinerant approach was for a very straightforward reason. Despite subsidising everything, and one loyal friend remarking that ‘no one who ever knew the Squire would imagine for a moment that he was capable of doing anything approaching an ungentlemanly action,’ Squire Osbaldeston could be an absolute rotter. He antagonised and exhausted all ranks of society in every hunt by his limitless boasts, incessant arrogance and his paranoia that everyone was out to cheat him. He was also hunt-obsessed, often going six times a week, and more than once riding a poor horse to death. Thus he got kicked out of each hunt and moved on.

In parallel, and pushed by his status-obsessed mother, he also did what every self-centred, easily distracted, patronising and privileged trouble-maker still does to this day: he became an MP. A nod and a wink enabled him to be elected as Whig MP for East Retford, Lincolnshire, from 1812 to 1818, although

A Young Gentleman on a Bay Hunter by Frederick Herring The Elder (1830)

he rarely attended the House and would likely have been hard pressed to distinguish a Whig from a Tory. He had zero interest in politics, and although usually eye-rollingly prolix, he was never once known to give a speech in the House.

At the next election he resigned, because there was frankly far too much riding and gambling to be done. The Squire’s greatest riding feat came in 1831, when he bet one of his drinking buddies, Colonel Charrite, 1000 guineas that he could ride 200 miles in 10 hours. It became the viral news sensation of Autumn 1831, with Osbaldeston training, laying bets on himself and drinking in equal measure during the run-up. But soon before the big day, racehorse owner John Gully approached him, casually mentioning that he knew ‘damn well’ that Osbaldeston could ride that distance in ten hours. But the odds would be far more interesting if he could do it in nine…

Like a bear to honey, The Squire took him on, and opted to cover the distance by repeatedly circling the world’s largest racecourse, the roughly four miles at Newmarket in Suffolk. He picked 28 of his best horses, using one per circuit. Despite torrential rain on the morning of the November day itself, Osbaldeston didn’t delay. In a black velvet cap and rich purple silks – similar to the present Queen’s colours, in fact – he hopped on soon after 7am, and proceeded to ride like a possessed banshee.

Despite numerous stops to tussle with an unruly thoroughbred called Ikey Solomon, neck brandy, eat a selection of pies and liberally urinate, he completed the 200 miles, and descended from his final mount to await the official result. 8hrs and 42 mins. He had done it. Without hesitation, he leapt back on, galloped at full pelt to the Rutland Arms, skulled a few tankards, took a hot bath and aggressively claimed that he ‘could eat an old woman’.

To understand the scale of this feat, it is worth noting that 162 years later, on the same course, the champion steeplechase jockey Peter Scudamore barely beat the Squire’s record, despite taking shorter breaks, spending more time in the saddle and not riding while cabbaged on cognac. On completion, and in contrast to the Squire, witnesses recalled that Scudamore ‘declared himself exhausted and laid himself carefully on the ground for a massage’.

Even by his standards, 1831 was a busy year for Osbaldeston, as it marked an infamous duel with his bitter rival Lord George Bentinck. Some believed that the Squire had held back his horse Rush at Doncaster, in order to carry a lower handicap weight in his following race at Heaton, where – would you believe it – he won easily. Bentinck had bet £200 that he wouldn’t, and seethed when he saw that Osbaldeston had apparently progressed from blackguard to all-round scoundrel. When Osbaldeston demanded his winnings, Lord George declared,

“I’m surprised you ask for the money, for the affair was robbery”. “The matter will not end here, my Lord!” squeaked Osbaldeston, and so the Squire and the Lord met with pistols at dawn on Wormwood Scrubs.

Bentinck had reason to be the more apprehensive. Osbaldeston was an outstanding shot, noted on more than one occasion to bring down 98 pheasant from 100 shots. Bentinck’s friends therefore worked overtime in the run-up to negotiate some semblance of honour, resulting in both men shooting into the air. The coda came a few years later, when, at the races, Bentinck fired his pistol in the air to celebrate a victory. Osbaldeston, who was riding in the race with a gun, responded by shooting Bentinck cleanly through his hat, missing his head by two inches.

There was, however, no happy ending with his other nemesis, Lord Frederick Beauclerk. Since his

Oxford days, Osbaldeston had shown himself to be a fine right-handed all-round cricketer. His bowling style was described as ‘fearsome fast underarm’, putting not just batsmen but wicketkeepers at peril, with several stuffing their garments with straw when the Squire was unleashing another scorcher.

But being Squire Osbaldeston invariably meant combining skill with gambling and controversy. In 1810, in a two-a-side game of ‘Double wicket’, he and his friend William Lambert (right) challenged Beauclerk and Thomas Howard. The day arrived, but Osbaldeston had been dancing on the ceiling most of the night and woke up with wine flu. “Pay or play,” was the humourless Beauclerk’s riposte. Osbaldeston wobbled to the wicket, took a single and promptly retired to do some toilet hugging. Fortunately Lambert saved the day: he made 56 and 24 in his two innings, and then bowled out both Beauclerk and Howard twice each to win it by 15 runs.

The Squire then boasted that he could beat anyone in a single wicket game. George Brown of Sussex took the bet and defeated him. As everyone in those days appears to have been an appallingly sore loser, the Squire promptly scratched his name off the list of MCC Members. When the red mist had once again ascended, he repented and asked to be reinstated. A crowing Beauclerk, who essentially ran the MCC, point blank refused. However, Osbaldeston remained one of the leading cricketers of his day, representing Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex.

Glory in the saddle or on the pitch was not matched by success in relationships, though not for want of trying. While at one county ball he was said to have seduced both the daughters of the house in one evening; this appears to have been the exception rather than the rule.

Yet despite his gruff and suspicious exterior, he occasionally deigned to display a rare chivalry. At a ball in Lincoln, he was introduced to the beautiful Miss Burton, who entranced him. Later in the evening, as she went to complement another beauty on her posy of flowers and was rudely snubbed, the Squire knew what he had to do. Noticing that the posy in question contained a rare orchid, he did some digging, finished his supper, hopped onto his mount and galloped into the night, riding non-stop for 25 miles to a large manor house, in the conservatory of which the special flower had been grown. Breaking in, he helped himself to a superior specimen, galloped the 25 miles back and, caked in mud, handed it gallantly to the overwhelmed Miss Burton, thus claiming the next waltz.

The only proper relationship he seems to have had was early on, with a Miss Ann Green, also of Lincoln. In his memoirs Osbaldeston carefully described her as ‘a member of the frail sisterhood’, by which he meant ‘whore’. When she bore him a son in 1812, mother and son quietly moved to Tasmania, the latter siring 16 children, maintaining his family line and name to this day in the Antipodes.

The money Squire Osbaldeston made from racing wins was overshadowed by huge gambling debts of around £200,000 (equivalent to over £2 million today), which eventually forced him to sell his lands in 1848. Hawking around for some form of stability, he finally married his widowed housekeeper Elizabeth Williams in 1851 at the age of 65, most likely as he was then able to squat in her north London house. He admitted in his memoirs that he had wasted his riches and had lived ‘a life of plunder’, but had clearly regretted absolutely none of it. Williams, in turn, doubtlessly infuriated him by permitting him only a frugal allowance, quashing any hopes he had of unleashing his now meagre assets in a gambling house. Quiet his latter days may have been but, having passed away at home just shy of his 80th birthday on 1st August 1866, one nevertheless suspects that his phantom still rides exquisitely at the front of a hunt in the Midlands, pausing only either to insult the nearest rider or possibly buy him a drink. n