Born on the estate of the Marquis of Rockingham at Wentworth Park near Swinton, West Riding, Clift’s fellow jockeys referred to him as a ‘wild, uncultivated Indian’. He was certainly brusque in the extreme – the Duke of Dorset, having put Clift up on a winner, asked him what he thought of the horse. Clift replied ‘I won – that’s all you need to know.”
His abruptness was matched by his total honesty in riding, but he was exceptionally hard on his mounts, punishing them severely from pillar to post. A rider of singularly little polish, he nonetheless rode the winners of thirteen classics.
He first came to Lord Rockingham’s attention when some pony racing was organized on the estate for the amusement of his guests: there was a shortage of riders so Clift partnered the runner belonging to Mr Fowlston. Not only did he win, but rode well enough to be persuaded to join the Lord’s private racing stable where Christopher Scaife was then trainer. When, shortly afterwards, Rockingham moved his racing operation to Newmarket, Clift accompanied the string.
Clift had the distinction of riding the first-ever winners of both the One Thousand and Two Thousand Guineas, the pair being owned by Mr Christopher Wilson.
He later renewed his connection with the Wentworth estate by accepting a retainer from Earl Fitzwilliam who had inherited the land from his uncle, Lord Rockingham, in1806. From there he rode many winners, including the Earl’s Paulina, who won the 1807 St Leger.
He retired from race-riding in 1826 and became the Earl’s trainer with his son Thomas Clift as assistant. When he retired from racing altogether, he enjoyed three pensions: one of £30 a year from Lord Fitzwilliam, one of £50 a year from the Duke of Portland for whom he had ridden the 1819 Derby winner Tiresias and another of £50 a year from Christopher Wilson.
A hardy South Yorkshire man who began life as a boy shepherd, he maintained a healthy way of life well into his seventies and thought nothing of walking the 28 miles from Newmarket to Bury and back to stretch his legs. This came to the notice of the London Insurers of the Irish Lottery who sent him to the pier head at Liverpool Docks to ascertain the number of the tickets which had drawn a prize. Once he had obtained these, Clift would ride a relay of horses back to London with the news.
William Clift was married on 2nd September 1776 in Stockbridge, Hampshire. He was 14 years old.
His first wife (Mary Perron) died having given him ten children, of which only one survived childhood. She died in 1802 and, remarrying, his second wife (Lucy White) gave him a further four.
Clift, whose riding career had lasted from 1778 to 1826, died at Newmarket on Dec 8th 1840, aged 78.
Clift’s classic winners were:
Two Thousand Guineas: Wizard (1809) and Interpreter (1818)
One Thousand Guineas: Charlotte (1814) and the Selim filly (1815)
The Derby: Waxy (1793), Champion (1800), Ditto (1803), Whalebone (1810)
The Oaks: Pelisse (1804) and Morel (1808)
St Leger: Paulina (1807) and Octavian (1810)
William Clift was heavily critical of trainer Christopher Scaife, whose horses were – in Clift’s opinion – very badly broken in.
Sir Ferdinand Poole’s 1793 Derby winner Waxy was named after a variety of potato. The horse went totally blind for the last ten years of his life, and grew remarkably attached to a doe rabbit which fed with him on the oats in his manger, and invariably slept with the old horse when he lay down. The most remarkable feature of this attachment was that the rabbit invariably selected the very centre of the stable in which Waxy was kept to make her nest, bringing up litter after litter of young rabbits in a spot where the horse might have been expected to tread most frequently. Long before the young rabbits were able to run around, the blind old horse would thrust his nose gently into the nest and fondle its occupants, taking the greatest care to do them no harm. When the young rabbits could run about they would play in the straw with which Waxy’s box was bedded: the horse was never known to tread or lie upon them.
