page_title: Apology (horse)
section_title: Scandal
hierarchical_section_title: Apology (horse) / Racing career / 1874: three-year-old season / Scandal
caption_attribution_description: Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln.
context_page_description: Apology was a British Thoroughbred racemare who was the third winner of the Fillies' Triple Crown, winning The Oaks, 1,000 Guineas Stakes and St. Leger Stakes in 1874. Apology was bred and owned by the Reverend John William King, the vicar of Ashby de la Launde, whose ownership of the mare caused a minor scandal in the Church of England after Apology won the St. Leger Stakes. King ultimately had to resign his clerical appointments due to the scandal and died shortly thereafter of a chronic illness. Apology raced until she was five years old, winning the Ascot Gold Cup in 1876. She was retired from racing at the end of 1876 to become a broodmare initially for the widow of John King, and then for Clare Vyner. Apology was euthanised in 1888 after an extended illness.
context_section_description: After Apology's highly publicised win in the St. Leger, Christopher Wordsworth, the Bishop of Lincoln, learnt that "Mr. Launde" was actually a vicar within his authoritative oversight. Greatly displeased with a clergyman being actively involved in a profession that facilitated gambling, the Bishop wrote to Reverend King in October 1874 demanding that King either give up racing Thoroughbreds or resign his position with the Church. In his letter, the Bishop stated he would use all the powers at his disposal, including legal if necessary, to compel King to relinquish the trade:
  Whether the law in its present state, which needs amendment, may enable a Bishop to correct such offenses as these I cannot say with certainty, but I had rather appeal to your own conscience without resorting to legal proceedings, and I now entreat you once more, solemnly and affectionately, in the name of our Blessed Lord ... either to resign your pastoral cures or else to relinquish a course which seems to me to be altogether at variance with the sacred obligations by which you are bound as a clergyman of the Church of England.
  At the time, the 82-year-old Reverend King was seriously ill due to a thigh bone fracture he had sustained some months previously and a condition described as "gout in the stomach". While King did tend to his racehorses personally, he had only been seen three times in his life on a racecourse, never wagered, and had largely retired from his clerical duties, instead employing a curate to do most of his parochial work. One of King's friends defended his actions by stating that the breeding of Thoroughbreds was all but expected of a man of property and the "Squire of Ashby". Reverend King agreed to relinquish his clerical position and wrote to the Bishop of Lincoln:
  My Lord, with reference to your present letter, it is true that now for more than fifty years I have bred and sometimes had in training horses for the turf. They are horses of a breed highly prized, which I inherited with my estate, and have been in my family for generations. It may be difficult, perhaps, to decide what constitutes a scandal in the Church; but I cannot think that in my endeavours to perpetuate this breed and thus improve the horses in this country, an object of general interest at the present moment—I have done anything to incur your lordship's censure ... if, therefore, I resign the livings which I hold within your lordship's diocese, it will be not from any consciousness of wrong, or from fear of any consequences which might ensue in the ecclesiastical courts, but simply because I desire to live the remainder of my days in peace and charity with all men ...
caption: Christopher Wordsworth, the Bishop of Lincoln, disapproved of King's participation in Thoroughbred racing and forced King's resignation from the Church in 1874.
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