The story of the Byerley Turk begins at the seige of Buda in Hungary in 1688, when Captain Robert Byerley of the Sixth Dragoon Guards under King William III of Orange took a fine brown charger from a captured Turkish officer.

The stallion served as Byerley's war horse when he was dispatched to Ireland in 1689 during King William's War.

The Byerley Turk first entered stud in England, at the family seat at Middridge Grange, County Durham and later stood at Byerley's Goldsborough Hall, near Knaresborough, in Yorkshire.

Breed histories of the Thoroughbred focus on the three foundation sires -- the Byerley Turk, Darley Arabian, and Godolphin Arabian -- who were brought to England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and crossed on English and imported mares.

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