BIOGRAPHIES IN A NUTSHELL 117 



tried the patience of the Squire ; and it must be re- 

 membered that the Squire had once been nearly 

 killed by a man jumping on the top of him, so he 

 may be excused if he occasionally lost his temper 

 with the thrusting scoundrels who would not give 

 him room at his fences. 



To recount his feats of horsemanship alone would 

 fill a volume. Once at the beginning of a good run 

 his girths broke, so he threw the saddle away and 

 rode bare-backed to the finish. But it was in 1831, 

 when he was in his forty-fifth year, that he performed 

 the feat which has gained for him the greatest fame 

 with posterity, when at the Newmarket Houghton 

 Meeting he made a bet of a thousand guineas that 

 he would ride 200 miles in ten consecutive hours, the 

 number and choice of horses to be unlimited. He 

 divided the distance into heats of four miles each, 

 and though he stopped to lunch off a partridge and 

 cold brandy and water, and was thrown in the second 

 hundred miles, when odds of ten to one were freely 

 laid against him, he won this match against time by 

 one hour eighteen minutes. 



The racing career of the Squire was far from satis- 

 factory from whatever point we may regard it. 

 Though he has been acquitted of any dishonest 

 intention in regard to the Rush affair, which led 

 to his famous duel with Lord George Bentinck at 

 Wormwood Scrubs after the Craven Meeting of 

 1836, his admirers are bound to admit that when 

 riding he resorted to tactics which at the present 



