A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



balances of Lady Castlemaine ; brown, fading characters that are like pathetic 

 shadows of the splendour and catastrophe in which their owners bore a part so long 

 ago. Such material trifles are often more potent in their call upon the mind's 

 imagination than any of the impersonal spells of eloquence. I could almost see the 

 Stuart lace and ringlets, and hear the stamping of the favourite's coach-and-four in 

 modern Fleet Street. 



I have occasionally quoted from Hamilton's " Memoirs of Grammont," because 

 the opinion of a contemporary who was almost a foreigner may be taken as almost 

 equivalent to the verdict of posterity. It retains the indulgence of the one, without 

 aspiring to the morality of the other. His astonishment at the zest with which 

 Englishmen of all ranks played at bowls is a trifle affected. The name of Boulingrin 

 still lingers on the spot, near the old walls of Rouen, where the soldiers of Henry V.'s 

 army passed away their time with the only sport they could bring with them. But 

 Grammont was soon reconciled when he discovered the large sums that could be lost 

 or won upon the green ; and his education did not stop there. He was taught, by 

 the simple process of losing a bet, that "a horse can do twenty miles an hour on the 

 high road," and that cock-fighting was a very gentlemanly pursuit when properly 

 arranged. His learning in the matter of " rooks," as they were called then, is so deep 

 as to be almost suspicious, and he was one of the few courtiers who got out of their 

 clutches with more money than when he began dicing in their company. There were 

 many other more exciting trials of skill to be seen upon the Heath ; as, for instance, 

 when Lord William Digby " did, upon a wager of .50, undertake to walk (not run 

 or step) 5 miles on Newmarket Common in an hour, but he lost it by half a minute, 

 but he had the honour of Good company, the King and all his nobles to attend to 

 see him do it stark naked and barefoot." Or again, at the October meeting of 1672, 

 all the men of Cheshire lost their money by backing their compatriot in " a foot- 

 match" against the Duke of Buckingham's servant, who proved an unexpected 

 winner. But the best athlete of his day, in this kind of trials, was a Leeds butcher, 

 by the name of Edward Preston, who won .3,000 in one day, over a match on Chapel- 

 town Moor. A contemporary writes in 1694, tnat ne could easily do his twelve 

 miles in less than an hour, and it was again a Cheshire man who suffered defeat on 

 one memorable occasion, by the prowess of this Yorkshire butcher. So ruined were 

 the backers, it appears, that many had to go home on foot. He was brought to 

 London in disguise, and won large sums of money for his enterprising patron, both 

 in Hyde Park and at Newmarket. 



