THE TURF UNDER JAMES /. " THE MARKHAM ARABIAN." 63 



Bainbrigge of Wheatley Hill, to found a " hunting prize" in the shape of a piece of 

 plate, to be run for on Woodham Moor every year. The King had come up on a 

 regular sporting tour, for he had attended a " great horserace on the Heath for a cupp " 

 at Lincoln only eighteen days before, where he had paid the Corporation's expenses in 

 setting up a grand stand, " and withall caused the race a quarter of a mile longe to be 

 raled and corded with rope and hoopes on bothe sides, whereby the people were kept 

 out and the horses that runned were seen faire." 



Lancashire rejoiced in the support of such good sportsmen as the Asshetons, Sir 

 Richard Molineux (ancestor of the Earl of Sefton), whose stables were at Walton- 

 le-Dale near Whalley Abbey, and the Towneleysof Carr, whose manuscript collections 

 proved later on of such interest and value. During this century and the next the 

 Towneleys never raced in their own name. The journal of Nicholas Assheton, who 

 spent a short life and a merry one with his friends, records a match of 20 a side, on 

 the i8th of July, near Liverpool, at ten stone each, between his cousin's dun gelding, 

 and Sir Richard Molineux's dun nag, owners up. Other sporting characters at that 

 time were the Throgmortons, descendants no doubt of the famous Elizabethan 

 ambassador. Two members of the family agreed, on the I3th July 1612, "to meete 

 together the Tuesday after Michelmas next at Brackly Cwoorse (in Northamton- 

 shire), and thether to bringe a graye mare and gray shorne mane nadgge, and each of 

 them to ridde the same coursse upon equal wate in their parsones, for X. quarter of 

 oates." 



On the whole, it is clear that if the break of the Civil War had not occurred, the 

 point reached by Charles II. would have been attained by his predecessor with far 

 less difficulty. The country was gradually becoming permeated with the love of 

 Racing, with an improved breed of horses, and with increased knowledge in the care 

 of them. By the next reign, which I must postpone to another chapter, the whole 

 details of the sport had become so familiar, that a dramatist could count on a 

 popular reception for his piece by making them the mainspring of his plot and action. 

 Lktle further evidence would be necessary of the progress of Racing under 

 Charles I ; but there are so many interesting occurrences which deserve notice 

 before the outbreak of the struggle, which did so much harm throughout the length 

 and breadth of England, that I must select a few, if only to explain the sudden 

 recrudescence and amazing growth of everything connected with the Turf when the 

 Restoration gave sportsmen a fair chance again, and the ruins of more places than 

 Newmarket were restored. 



