38 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



bell was won by Sir Oliver Cromwell, who had been knighted by Elizabeth four 

 years before and was the uncle of the Protector. A meadow near the Ouse, on which 

 Huntingdon Races were usually held, was actually at one time in the possession of 

 the great Puritan leader, whose attitude towards the Turf has probably suffered 

 from some misrepresentation ; and till the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 it kept the name of Cromwell's Acres. It was over this land that Lord Haddington 

 and Lord Sheffield settled a wager they had made at Newmarket by riding a 

 sporting match across country, which looks more like being an earlier ancestor of 

 the Grand National than has yet been discovered. The Sir Oliver who won at 

 Sapley ended his career as staunch a Royalist as he was when he began it, for racing 

 men are not as a rule turncoats. He had entertained both Charles I. and James I., 

 to whom his present of jewellery, horses, and hounds yet remains on record. 

 He was not going to fight against his old guest because his nephew happened 

 to be stirring up the country against established institutions ; and he remained 

 of that opinion till his death at the ripe old age of ninety-three. 



Though at Richmond the new-fangled fashion of running for a cup had been 

 started as long ago as 1576, the good burghers of Carlisle continued to 

 give the traditional silver bells. One of these actual prizes still survives in the 

 Town Hall with the name of the Governor's wife on it as follows : 



"The sweetest hors this bell to tak 

 For mi Ladi Daker's sake." 



Even if we had not so much documentary evidence of organised racing, the 

 allusions to the sport in contemporary writers would be quite sufficient to establish 

 the fact that the Turf was rapidly progressing under the last of the Tudors towards 

 that turning point in its history which was reached in the reigns of the later Stuarts. 

 Indeed it would be strange if an era of such unlimited expansion in almost every 

 other direction were not to show a growth in what was rapidly to become the 

 distinctive national pastime. In the works of one Gervase Markham, from whom I 

 shall have occasion to quote more fully later on, we read of a "bell course," which is 

 easily intelligible in view of the interesting relic I have described at Carlisle, of 

 "long and short courses," and of a "wager" ; and the term "running horse" has 

 evidently crystallised into the equivalent for our thoroughbred racer. The same 

 author's long discourse on " training " would in itself have provided testimony 

 enough had more been wanting. And as there is nothing for which you may 



