THE TURF TO THE RESTORATJON 



home to London as best they could, in what few carriages had not been burnt. You 

 may be sure there were plenty of highwaymen on the road, too, on the look-out for 

 broken-down coaches, and Newmarket guineas to be found behind the cushions. 

 The few newspapers of the time are full of them. The whole thing turned out to 

 be a blessing in disguise, for the conspirators of what is known as the " Rye House 

 Plot," were once more, and apparently finally, prevented from carrying out their 

 nefarious project by these inopportune and unexpected movements of the Court. 

 Life was certainly full of incident in those days. If not on this occasion, it was on 



some similiar sudden return from New- 

 market that Nell Gwynne is said to have 

 greeted the King from the first-floor 

 window by holding his baby out at arm's 

 length over the London pavements, and 

 threatening to drop him if he was not 

 made a Duke upon the spot. 



In the Newmarket, which the King 

 was leaving in such a hurry that day, 

 and above the very arches of the King's 

 house, which Evelyn admired as being 

 so well turned by Mr. Samuel, the archi- 

 tect, I have myself spent a pleasant 

 hour or two listening for memories and 

 echoes of that vanished Court, in the 

 surroundings of the owner of modern 

 thoroughbreds who lives in the same 

 sporting quarters where the King lived, 

 and races over the old course where Charles himself so often rode a winner ; 

 and I may perhaps add here that very excellent proof is forthcoming that after 

 Charles's death, his friends did not " let Nelly starve," for her Account is still 

 preserved- at Child's Bank, and its extraordinarily interesting items and signatures 

 furnish material for quite a new view of her domestic economy. For both these 

 opportunities of romantic interest I can never forget to be grateful for the courtesy 

 which made them respectively possible. In the same old folios, which lay for long 

 in the recesses of Temple Bar itself, there are also not only accounts in the names 

 of their Majesties, the King and Queen, but the signatures of Rochester and the 







George Monk, Duke of Albentarle. 

 By Samuel Cooper. 



