1623.] S/Ji DUDLEY DIGGES. 315 



and 'tis a very lusty, able fellow, but carried it now by main 

 strength, so that the other gives over 'twixt this and Highgate, 

 when he was not twice his length behind him. This story 

 were not worth the telling, but that you may see we have 

 little to do, when we are so far affected with these trifles, that 

 all the court in a manner, lords and ladies, some farther off, 

 some nearer, went to see this race, and the king himself, 

 almost as far as Barnet, and, though the weather was so sour 

 and foul, yet he was scanty?/^ de bonne mere, that went not 

 out to see ; insomuch, that it is verily thought there was as 

 many people as at the king's first coming to London. 

 And, for the courtiers on horseback, they were so pitifully 

 bewrayed and bedaubed all over, that they could scant be 

 known, one from another. Besides divers of them came to 

 have falls and other mishaps, by reason of the multitude 

 of horses." * 



" Sir Dudley Diggs,"^ Knt, Master of the Rolls, by his last 

 will dated in 1638, left the sum of ;^20 to be paid yearly 

 to two young men and two maids, who on Monday, May 

 19th, yearly should ritn a tye, at Old Wives Lees in Chilham, 

 Kent, and prevail ; the money to be paid out of the profits 

 of the lands of the part of this manor of Selgrave, which 

 escheated to him after the death of Lady Clive. These lands, 

 being in three peiccs, contain about 40 acres, and are commonly 

 called TJie Rujining Lands. Two young men and two maids 

 run at Old Wives Lees in Chilham yearly on the ist of 

 May, and the same number at Sheldivich Lees, on the Monday 

 following, by way of trial, and the two which prevail at each 

 of those places run for ^10 at Old Wives Lees, as above 

 mentioned, on May loth." f 



"^ Sir Dudley Digges was a member of a family in which 

 talent seems hereditary, for his grandfather, Leonard, was 

 an able mathematician and architect, and was the author of 

 several works on geometry. His father, Thomas, was an 



* " The Court and Times of James I." (London, 1848), vol. ii., p. 72 ; 

 see also Camden's " Annalcs," s. d. 



t Hansted, " Hist. Kent," vol. ii., p. 787. London, 1790. 



