Given his stunning success training racehorses for royalty, Tregonwell Frampton, 1641 - 1727, earned the title Father of the Turf, a great honorific indeed. At Newmarket, the epicenter of the sport in 17th and 18th Century England, he was "The Keeper of the Running Horses to Their Sacred Majesties William III, Queen Anne, George I and George II”. His influence was immense, but he wasn’t just good at thoroughbreds - he also loved racing hounds, hawking and cock fights. He had rather a boatload of eccentricities as well.
One of his contemporaries took note of Frampton’s “uniformity of dress”, that is to say, he never changed his clothes. There are a lot of portraits of TF and, in all of them, he wears the exact same get-up.
In Newmarket, or an Essay on the Turf, London, 1771, the author wrote, “Regardless of its uncouth appearance, he would not unfrequently go to court and enquire in the most familiar manner for his master or mistress, the king or queen” - ie, Tregonwell not only looked awful, he quite likely smelled awful too, quite an accomplishment in 1720.
There may have been at least two reasons he was famously a woman-hater. First, he was the polar opposite of Hollywood handsome (his portraits employed the era’s version of photoshop to improve his appearance) and second, as previously attested, he wore the same duds day after day. All that and cock fighting?
I have three children and I promise you, had I it to do over again, one of them would have been named Tregonwell. I mean, how could you not?
“Come on, Little Tregonwell, finish your Spotted Dick or there’ll be no gin before before bed, you rascal! There’s a good lad…”.
Spotted Dick and Cock Fighting are both staples of English public schools. Two sides of the same coin.