FIRST RACES OF IMPORTANCE 223 



interesting races were run on Newmarket Heath 

 towards the close of the sixteenth century ; yet 

 elsewhere we read that the first races of import- 

 ance run at Newmarket took place in 1640, and 

 that the round course was not made until about 

 the year 1666, while a third historian goes so far 

 as to declare that a gold cup run for at the New- 

 market Spring Meeting of 1634 affords per se the 

 earliest irrefutable record of such an occurrence, 

 based on contemporary data. 



Yet from statements set down in an earlier 

 chapter we have already seen that horse racing 

 of a sort must have taken place at Newmarket 

 quite a long time before this. In point of fact, 

 in almost every historical record of Newmarket 

 that I have come upon I have found either 

 direct or indirect allusion to the renown of the 

 neighbourhood of Newmarket for the horses that 

 were bred or trained there. 



The horses brought ashore from the Spanish 

 vessels probably were among the best that Spain 

 at that time possessed, and several attempts were 

 made by the Spanish to recover some of them. It 

 is known that towards the close of the sixteenth 

 century the Spanish were making determined 

 efforts to breed faster horses than they had pre- 

 viously bred, yet it is surprising that the horses 

 they had brought with them upon their famous 

 expedition should have been so swift, for they 

 must have been animals of far heavier type than 



