Gentlemen Riders 



the York Cup, in which he had the mount on Thunder, 

 belonging to Mr. Clare Vyner. 



A good-tempered, but funny old horse, Thunder knew 

 when he had a stranger on his back, and at once recog- 

 nising one in Mr. Thompson, stood still directly the flag 

 fell and started kicking, with the result that the other horses 

 had got a hundred yards' start before he could be induced to 

 follow, and in the end was beaten a length by Fred Archer 

 on Spinaway. 



Mr. Thompson tells us he was never successful in any 

 event of very great importance. The Gentleman's Derby 

 at Stockbridge, wherein he rode for the late Sir John Astley 

 on Bally Edmond, was perhaps the nearest approach to 

 one — in sound at all events. This fact, however, in no way 

 detracted from his fame as a horseman, which to this day 

 remains as juvenescent as when in its zenith. 



Mr. ALEXANDER GOODMAN 



It may truthfully be said, without fear of contradiction, that 

 at the period he was in the saddle, there was no finer horse- 

 man to be met with in this country, either to hounds, or 

 " between the flags," than the grand specimen of the British 

 yeoman who forms the subject of this chapter. 



Mr. Simon Goodman, his father, was tenant of a fen 

 larm on the Townley estate near Upwell, Cambridgeshire, 

 and here, on July 30, 1822, his son was born. Eight years 

 later the family migrated to Willow Hall, a large farmhouse 

 in the parish of Thorney, about five miles from Peterborough, 



134 



