18 FAMOUS KACING MEN. 



Charlotte Hayes, who seems to have been more prudent and saving 

 than most women of her class, purchased the estate of Clay Hill, 

 near Epsom, and made it over to O'Kelly, who built himself 

 training stables on a splendid scale. " The Cottage," as the 

 mansion was facetiously termed, from this time became a famous 

 resort of sportsmen of all classes, and the colonel and Charlotte 

 had the privilege of entertaining some of the highest personages 

 in the land. But the society was strangely mixed. Here the Duke 

 of Cumberland and that notorious ruffian, Dick England, occasionally 

 hobnobbed together; here the Prince of Wales and Jack Tether- 

 ington. Lord Egremont and Ned Bishop, Lord Grrosvenor and M. 

 Champreaux, the Duke of Orleans and Jack Stacie, met, and for the 

 moment forgot the social differences between them in the charming 

 and magnificent hospitality of their lively and accomplished enter- 

 tainers, for Charlotte was still beautiful and witty, and O'Kelly was 

 voted by every one the prince of good fellows. His wines were superb, 

 his table of the choicest, and the motto of his house was the jolly old 

 Eabelaisian one. Fa ce que y vouldras. It was Liberty Hall in its 

 broadest sense, and yet, strange to say, though once an inveterate 

 gambler himself, O'Kelly would allow no gaming at Clay Hill. 

 During this time it appears that the colonel attended superficially to 

 his military duties and accompanied his regiment in its various 

 changes of quarters. But he and the fair Charlotte found time to 

 travel from race-meeting to race-meeting in grand style. That 

 lady, by the way, was O'Kelly's guardian angel. She had raised 

 him originally from poverty into a position in which he was 

 enabled to make his first bold stroke for fortune, and so long 

 as she was by his side he made no mistakes. Unfortunately she 

 was not always by his side, and on one occasion at York, he 

 forgot himself and grossly insulted (he said it was an accident) 

 the daughter of a Eoman Catholic baronet, an affair which 

 caused him for some time to be looked upon coldly by his 

 aristocratic friends. But he lived this scandal down in some 

 degree, though that it was not wholly forgotton is obvious from 

 the remarks which subsequently fell from Lord Mansfield in a case 

 in which O'Kelly was plaintiff. The colonel and his quondam 

 acquaintance, Dick England, a terrible specimen of the ruffianly 

 " gentleman " so called, from whom the ranks of the Mohawks 

 were recruited, quarrelled over a disputed debt. England, meeting 

 O'Kelly one day, when the latter was dining at Medley's, first in- 

 sulted and then assaulted him. The colonel was suffering from 

 a severe attack of gout, and though a powerful man and an accom- 

 plished bruiser, was unable to do much against his brutal and 

 cowardly assailant, and was consequently thrashed within an inch 

 of his life. He brouglit an action for damages against England 

 in the Court of King's Bench, but so adverse was Lord jNIansfield's 

 summing-up and in such black colours did he paint O'Kelly's 

 character that the jury only gave the plaintiff one shilling damages. 



