90 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH TURF. 



But I must not linger too long upon the society of this period, though it is full of 

 interest for Racing in this respect, that the sport was then an affair of the Court and 

 of dignitaries to a greater extent than it was afterwards for nearly a hundred years. 

 Also, the society that surrounded Charles at Newmarket was one of a quality which 

 has hardly appeared since at the same place. The King was a King still, and 

 statesmen were even more sportsmen and soldiers than they were men of business, 

 and they were still, of necessity, courtiers. Consequently, Newmarket saw the 

 governors of England more comprehensively than even when Junius, the Duke of 

 Grafton, or Charles Fox frequented it, or when, to come nearer to our own time, 

 Lord Derby was the keenest of racing men. But it was by no means an exclusively 

 aristocratic society. Many of the respectable old families held aloof from Charles's 

 Court, and he did not press them to go to it. Social merit of any kind, not 

 respectability or antiquity, was what he chiefly welcomed. A pretty face in a 

 woman ; good manners and good humour in a man, these were the passports. It 

 was the most various and cheerful Court in Europe, and an hour or so in the middle 

 of it, watching the races at Newmarket, would be a pleasant experience. But not 

 longer perhaps. 



I do not like to give the details of racing in this reign, and the various lists of 

 horses and owners that are necessary, in the same chapter that has portrayed so large 

 a contempt for facts and figures as have these last pages. So I will take my leave 

 here, before proceeding to more technical matters, of that merry and unthinking 

 company whose fate made so deep an impression upon Evelyn. " I can never 

 forget" he writes, in one of the finest passages in his Diary, "the inexpressible luxury 

 and prophanenesse, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulnesse 

 of God which this day se'nnight I was witnesse of, the King sitting and toying with 

 his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarin, &c., a French boy singing love 

 songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the greater courtiers and others 

 dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least ,2,000 in 

 gold before, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflexions with 

 astonishments. Six days after was all in the dust ! 



The King had died of a sudden apoplectic stroke. " A mad world," as Pepys 

 said, " God bless us out of it." 



