74 Sporting and Rural Records of the Cheveley Estate, 



Chevelf.y. 



Running their 

 Fathers. 



G.P.O. 



time of this transaction that Mr. Pigot's father was dead, unknown 

 and unsuspected by any of the parties. He died in Shropshire, 

 1 60 miles from Newmarket, at two o'clock in the morning of the 

 day on which this bet was made at Newmarket. The bet was 

 disputed, and Lord March took legal proceedings to recover the 

 sum at issue, the trial resulting in a verdict for the plaintiff with 

 ;^525 damages. An appeal for a new trial was heard before Lord 

 Mansfield, on the grounds that the contract was void as being 

 without any consideration, and that there was no possibility of the 

 defendant's winning (his father being actually dead), and therefore 

 he ought not to lose, it being a contract in fiitiiro, manifestly 

 made upon the supposition of a then future contingency. In 

 refusing to grant a new trial, Lord Mansfield held the 

 material contingency was, which of these two young heirs 

 should come first to his father's estate. The intention was, that 

 he who first came to his estate should pay the amount of 

 the odds agreed upon to the other who stood in need of it. Thus 

 Lord March won this wager, but in winning it he was the means 

 of stopping young heirs of running their fathers in future : 

 such wagers having been made illegal soon after by the 

 Statute 14 George IIL ch. 43. With a brief reference to the 

 bet that he would have a letter conveyed fifty miles within an 

 hour, and how he won it by enclosing the epistle in a cricket 

 ball, which was thrown round a circle from hand to hand by 

 twenty-four expert throwers, we must bring these reminiscences 

 of Lord March's career to a close. He succeeded, on the death 

 of his father, in 1778, to the Dukedom of Queensberry, and 

 continued to maintain his reputation as one of the leading 

 turfites of that epoch down to the year 1806, when he sold off 

 his stud, being then in his 82nd year. His racing establishment, 

 on the top of the town, partly occupying the site of Lord 

 Wolverton's new house, was one of palatial dimensions, where 

 some of the best horses that ever ran were boxed for over 

 half a century. The Duke died, unmarried, on December 23, 



