96 THE HISTORY OF NEWMARKET. [Book II. 



Mr. Huscroft, and Mr. Levett maye lykewise sett a 

 workman to cutt down or digg upp the sayd stoope.' " 



" A race course on ' Wheatlay More ' is noticed 

 in old deeds [dated] a.d. 1600." — Doncaster Races. 

 Hist. Notices, etc., by William Sheardown, Esq., J. P. 



"April 6, 1602. This day there was a race at 

 Sapley neere huntingdon : invented by the gents of 

 Huntingdon, that Country : At this Mr. Oliuer Cromwell's 

 1602. horse won the syluer bell : And Mr. Crom- 

 well had the glory of the day. Mr. Hynd came be- 

 hinde." — Diary, anonymous, Had. MS. 5353, fo. 36^/. 



This diary was printed by the Camden Society in 1868. 

 It is edited by Mr. John Bruce, by whom it is attributed 

 to "John Manningham, of the Middle Temple, and of 

 Bradbourne, Kent, Barrister-at-law, 1602, 1603." ^'^^- Bruce, 

 in his notes on the above extract, says, " This ' Mr. OHver 

 Cromwell ' was in truth, according to other writers who hive 

 mentioned him. Sir Oliver Cromwell, stated to have been 

 knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1598, created K.B. at the 

 coronation of King James, and uncle to his namesake the 

 future Protector. An ancestor of his in the reign of Henry 

 VIII. is described by Mr. Carlyle as ' a vehement, swift-riding 

 man" (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, i. 42, ed. 1846). Sir 

 Oliver seems to have inherited some of the ancestral quali- 

 ties." — p. 49. 



Huntingdonshire, says Leland {temp. Henry viii.), "in old 

 time, was much more woody than it is now, and the dere 

 rcsortid to the fcnnes : it is ful long sins it was deforested." 

 Camden corroborates this, and states, that " the inhabitants 

 say it was once covered with woods, and it appears to have 

 been a forest till Henry II., in the beginning of his reign, 

 disafforested the whole, as set forth by an old perambulation, 

 ' except Waybridge, Sapple \(]ua; Sapley above], and Herthei/ 

 which were the lords' woods and remain forest." 



