4 ASHGILL; OR, THE LIFE 



type in his seat of the now popular American jockey, 

 J. T. Sloan — it was learnt that, after his retirement from 

 the pigskin, he affected a lugubrious mania for attending 

 every funeral in Wensleydale, presenting a quaint, if not 

 ludicrous figure in his natty bell-topper hat and 

 swallow-tailed coat. 



Middleham, unHke its near and somnolent sister, the 

 market town of Leyburn, is a decaying place so far as 

 regards its population, which now is reduced to between 

 seven and eight hundred inhabitants. This decline is 

 partly explained by the gradually decreasing number of 

 patrician and wealthy owners who patronise the Moor 

 as a training ground. All the support which the to^\Ti 

 now depends upon is limited to a few owners, the 

 majority of whom have not the means, if they had the 

 disposition, to maintain so big a stud of horses as were 

 quartered in the place before the migration of noblemen 

 and gentlemen took place from Yorkshire to 

 Newmarket. 



The town, which is snugly situated on the banks of 

 the meandering Yore, owes much of its importance to 

 the Turf and to racehorses. Antiquarian research tends 

 to show that horse races took place on Middleham 

 Moor in the days of King John. It is certain that the 

 Romans — that marvellous race whose vigour and spirit 

 and colonial enterprise approximate to those of Great 

 Britain in the closinc: vears of the Victorian era — 

 dominated this region of the proud North Riding of 

 Yorkshire in the early centuries of the Christian era, 

 a Roman camp in the neighbourhood affording evidence 

 of their location during the Latin conquest of the 

 district. It is not too curious to conjecture that the 

 swarthy and curled darlings of Caesar's legions would 



