IGGO.] VISIT OF THE DUKE OF TUSCANY. 



279 



specially got up by Charles II. in honour of the Grand 

 Duke's visit. 



" Everything- that was necessary for his [the Grand Duke] 

 journey to Newmarket, being arranged, and having heard 

 mass betimes in the morning of the 6th [of May, 1669, new 

 style], his highness got into his carriage, with Colonel Gascoyne 

 and his attendants, followed by other carriages for the con- 

 venience of his suite ; and left London for Newmarket, towards 

 which the king set out, the same morning, with the Duke of 

 York, for the sole purpose of shewing his highness the horse 

 races ; an amusement taken by the court several times in the 

 year, great numbers of ladies and gentlemen crowding thither 

 from London and from their country-houses in the neighbour- 

 hood. On quitting London they found many villages and a 

 numerous population ; the country afterwards rises into a level 

 plain, the greater part of which is devoted more to cow 

 pastures, than to cultivation. On the way to Epping is an 

 open place, belonging to the bishopric of London, to which it 

 was given, with other domains, by King William I. 



" Continuing his journey, after dinner, through a country 

 not very unlike that which he had before travelled over, his 

 highness reached Bishop's Stortford, to supper, a small town 

 in the county of Hertford, situated on the river Stort, which, 

 falling into the Lea which washes the town of Hertford, whence 

 the province takes its name, increases it with its tributary 



lator (qy. Count Lorenso Magalotti) in the Memoir of the Grand Duke 

 prefixed to the Travels, tells us that the original manuscript, which fills 

 two immense folio volumes, is preserved in the Laurentian Library at 

 Florence. Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Tuscany, was born on the 14th of 

 August, 1642. He married the Princess Margaret Louisa, eldest daughter 

 of Louis XIV., on the i8th of April, 1661. The alliance proved a most 

 unhappy one to H.S.H., whose journey and sojourn in England was induced 

 in order to avoid his spouse. However, we are indebted to the duke's 

 remembrancer for the best description of Newmarket extant at this date. 

 The duke died on the 31st of October, 1723, when the house of Medici 

 may be said to have become extinct. An account of the rural sports of 

 Tuscany, during the early part of his reign, will be found in the " Life of 

 the Hon. Sir Dudley North." 



