62 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book II. 



in 1484 and died in 1534. A strange fate befell his son 

 George, the last male heir of this family, whose premature 

 death was caused at Thetford " in the house of Sir Richard 

 Fulmerstone, Knight, by meane of a vaunting horse, upon 

 which horses as he meant to have vaunted, and the pins at 

 the feet being not made sure, the horse fell upon him, and 

 bruised the brains out of his head." — Stow's Chron., p. 662. 



1° Gerald Fitz-Gerald, 9th Earl of Kildare, who was at 

 this time in England. He had a celebrated stud of, so-called, 

 Hobbies in Ireland, and a fragment of his stud book is still 

 preserved in the MSS. of the British Museum. He. died 

 December 12, 1534. 



" Richard Whiting, the last Lord Abbot of Glastonbury 

 monastery, was preferred to this vast religious house by 

 Cardinal Wolsey in 1524. He governed his monastery with 

 great prudence and judgment ; but, unwilling to surrender his 

 abbey to the king, or to lend an ear to any of the solicitations 

 which were offered him, he continued a firm opposer of the Re- 

 formation ; whereupon he was soon after seized at his manor- 

 house of Sharpham, in 1539, upon the pretence of embezzling 

 the plate belonging to the convent, and without much formal 

 process of law or equity, was drawn from Wells, where he 

 had been condemned at the assizes, to Glastonbury on a 

 hurdle, and hanged with two of his monks, on the hill called 

 the Torr (where St. Michael's church now stands), being 

 hurried out of the world without the least regard had to his 

 age, and not so much as suffered to take leave of his convent. 

 After his execution his head was set upon the abbey gate, and 

 his quarters sent to Wells, Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgwater. 

 He was head of the most ancient abbey in England, the governor 

 of which had precedence of all the abbots in England, till the 

 year 1154, when Pope Adrian IV. (the only Englishman that 

 ever sat in the papal chair) gave that honour to the abbot of 

 St. Albans, in Hertfordshire, in consideration of his having 

 received his education in that monastery, and because the 

 proto-martyr suffered there. He was always a member of 



