1617.] THE KING AS A SPORTSMAN. 53 



they are recorded by all the historians who have written of 

 those times. With such matters we have very little to do. 

 It is not within our province to advert to any of these trans- 

 actions, save those, hitherto recorded, which happened during 

 the sojourns of the king and his ministers at Newmarket. 

 Hence our memoir of Charles I. must necessarily be confined 

 to the royal sportsman rather than to the royal sovereign. 

 We only wish to see him divested of the purple, in the apparel 

 of one of Diana's votaries, amongst his subjects in the hunting- 

 field or upon the Turf, on and under which, we are told by a 

 late lamented statesman, " all men are equal" — a sentiment 

 Charles I. or any of his ministers would construe to be 

 treason without benefit of clergy. Brought up in a court 

 corrupt and venal, where his father was fooled to the top of 

 his bent by canny, vulgar, and rapacious sycophants, the boy 

 Charles could not escape the contagion which ultimately 

 carried off the royal constitution on the memorable last day 

 of January, 1649. Even in our fitful glances of the court of the 

 British Solomon at Newmarket we have seen how the baneful 

 effects of " the right divine to govern wrong " must have under- 

 mined the common sense of the young heir to the throne. 



But let us turn from these sad reflections to more cogent 

 matters, wherein Charles is exhibited in his true colours. 

 When only a kid — if such a plebeian Whitechapel phrase may 

 be applied to a royal Whitehall prince (but let it pass, as 

 "slumming" is just now all the fashion, by royal will and 

 favour) — he wrote, on one occasion, to his big brother, that, 

 in his absence, he rode his great horses and kept his hares 

 well exercised. Under St. Anthony the prince soon became 

 proficient in all the mysteries of the manege, and eventually 

 proved himself a worthy pupil of so great a master of eques- 

 trian art. On the death of Prince Henry, Charles came to 

 the front as heir-apparent, and from this time we find him at 

 the head of a large hunting establishment, almost rivalling in 

 its dimensions that of his father. The prince was passionately 

 addicted to field sports. He rode well, but not gracefully, 

 and took great interest in horse-breeding. We have seen how 

 and under what circumstances he first entered the lists as a 



