C. 1605.] FIRST VISIT OF JAMES I. 131 



vessels of the Armada and thrown ashore on the coast 

 of Galloway. * From this period it became more 

 fashionable, and Newmarket had probably some kind 

 of a racing establishment as early as the reign of this 

 monarch, who erected a house here, which was de- 

 stroyed in the Civil Wars, but was rebuilt by Charles 



ii-"t 



The earliest intimation we have met with relating 

 to the first visit of James I. to Newmarket occurs in 

 a letter from the Earl of Worcester to Lord Febmary. 

 Cranborne, dated Royston, February 25, ^^°^- 

 1604-5, in which he mentions {intej^ alia) that " His 

 Majesty meanethe tomorowe to take his journey to- 

 wards Newmarket whe he myndeth to bestow 3 or 4 

 days, and so to Thetford yf he lyke the country." | 

 The next day the king, accompanied by his Master of 

 theHorse,^"his Principal Minister,^^ his Chief Physician,^^ 

 his Gentleman of the Bedchamber,^^ a portion of his 



* It would be interesting to find some contemporaiy authority for this 

 statement. There is no reference to horses having been cast ashore on 

 the Scotch coast from the wreck of the Spanish Armada to be found in the 

 Registers of the Privy Council of Scotland. James Melville, in his 

 Autobiography, alludes to the panic created in Edinburgh in August, 

 1588, when the descent of the "Spaniards and Barbars" on the Scotch 

 coast was deemed imminent. " Terrible was the feir," he says, " press- 

 ing was the pretchings, ernest, zealus, and fervent was the prayers, 

 sounding was the siches and sobbes, and abounding was the teares, at 

 that Fast and Generall Assemblie keepit at Edinburche, when the newes 

 was crediblie tauld, sum tymes of launding at Dunbar, sum tymes at 

 St. Androis and in Tay, and now and then at Aberdin and Cromertie 

 first. And in verie deid, as we knew certinlie soone after, the Lord of 

 Armies, wha rydes upon the wings of the winds, the keipar of his awin 

 Israeli, was in the mean tyme convoying that monstrous navie about our 

 costes, and directing thair hulkes and galiates to the ylands, rokkes, and 

 sandes, wharupon he haid destinat thair wrak and destruction " (p. 306). 



t Nichols' "Progress of James the First," Lond. 1828, vol. i., p. 496. 



X Lodge, " Illustrations of British History," vol. iii., pp. 264-266. 



