66 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



matter they complaine to the Archbishop. Master Hudson is sent for and examined 

 (that being a Schollar) who made him a Horseracer." He was duly summoned to 

 the Court of High Commission, but the case seems to have been settled out of court, 

 without prejudice to his future career, for in 1638 (only some three years later) he was 

 a Lincolnshire rector, and in 1640 he was presented to the living of St. John's 

 Hospital near Lutterworth, where I have no doubt both his mare and his nag too showed 

 the way to the Leicestershire sportsmen across country. He was not forgetful of this 

 latest proof of his monarch's approval, and he repaid the debt with interest, for it was 

 by his guidance that the unhappy Charles got to Scotland ; and it was owing to his 

 continued and heroic devotion to the Royal cause, which he frequently served by his 

 splendid riding, that he was finally killed in a peculiarly brutal manner by the 

 Puritans at Woodcroft House. 



Though the "Post" is the only authority for Hudson's clever coup against his 

 brother clerics, there are State Papers to attest a match which was regularly arranged 

 at almost the same date in Hyde Park between John Pretyman and John Haures or 

 Havers, a " grey nag " against a " browne horse or nagg," for a hundred pounds 

 aside, half forfeit, at 8st. ylbs. The description of the course is worth transcribing 

 in full : ". ... To begin and start together at the Upper Lodge in Hyde 

 Park and to run the usuall way from thence over the lower bridge unto the ending 

 place at the Park Gate. . . ." from which it will be seen that the direction taken 

 could already be described as usual and customary. 



In the unhappy Duke of Suffolk, I have already given one instance of the 

 Englishman's passion for sport surviving in a foreign country under alien conditions. 

 Young Harry Verney is an equally good example in the seventeenth century. " I 

 can right you no nuse," he says in a delightfully natural letter home from Holland, 

 " but of a horsmache as it is to be run yearely at the I lagge, for a cuppe of 50 

 pounds, as every officer gives yearly 20 shillings towards the bying of it. I hope 

 to win it afore I die myselfe. I have rod but to (2) maches cense I saw you, and 

 have won them both." Such enthusiasm is easily intelligible when we consider to 

 the extent to which racing had been already carried in the land from which young 

 Verney was unwillingly exiled to learn the trade of what he calls a " soger." New- 

 market, for instance, had got its gold cup two years before, and it was awarded at 

 the Spring Meeting of 1 634, as is recorded in a despatch of that year, dated from 

 Newmarket on March 14, and preserved among the State Papers. "This day," 

 writes Mr. Secretary Coke, "the races for running horses will bee come ended with 



