I remembered reading an old column by the great old racing writer 'Salvator' from the 1920's on this subject. I went to the DRF Archives to find it. It's brutally long.
For whatever reason -- links never seem to work from that site -- but if you'd like to do a search for it, it opens like this...
It's hard to read -- but this cut was great stuff...
He later profiles the three stallions.
Here is the Godolphin Arabian:
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by all means the most famous was the Godolphin Arabian. And here, stripped of all superfluous detail, is his real history: About 1728 a certain Mr. Coke of Norfolk, a Quaker of humanitarian instincts, happened to be in Paris, and one day noticed a horse being badly abused there on the streets. His sympathies being aroused, he interceded for the animal and finally bought him to rescue him from mistreatment. At the time, he was drawing a watering- cart. Mr. Cooke took this horse home to England with him, but having no use for him, presented him to a man named Williams, who kept a coffee house in London, which was frequented by men of sporting tastes. Among those was the Earl of Godolphin, who, in 1730 wanted a stallion to use as a "teaser" for his Hobgoblin, and Williams having no use for the little horse gave him to Lord Godolphin.
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Here is the Darley Arabian:
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Now we reach the Darley Arabian. The progenitor of the "line of lines," that of Eclipse. Here at last we find a genuine Oriental horse. He was bought, it appears, in Aleppo by a Mr. Darley, an English trader there, and shipped to his brother in England in about 1700. The accounts of this transaction openly say that Brother Darley obtained him "for an inconsiderable sum" (it is said in trade for a musket and a small amount of money) from a fugitive Bedouin, who, according to his own story, had stolen him from a member of a rival tribe. In late years it has been claimed that "papers" are in existence which "establish the fact" that the Darley horse was "of full Al-Khamseh blood" and "probably the only pure-bred Anazeh horse in our Stud Book." What "the papers" in question may be is immaterial in view of the fact, first, that the horse was obtained from a man who had stolen him; and second, that the Bedouins are illiterate and, according the testimony of all competent investigators, keep no written records of the breeding of their horses. but depend on hearsay only
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