304 HORSE-RACING IN ENGLAND 



A.D. 1761 : On May 4, at Newmarket, John 

 Woodcock, a professional jockey who rode (as we 

 have seen) against such celebrities of the pigskin 

 as ' Match'em ' Timms, John Singleton, sen., the 

 Jacksons, and the like, began the match for which 

 he had been engaged by Mr. Jenison Shafto, who 

 had betted the celebrated Mr. Hugo Meynell 

 (the * Father of Foxhunting ') an even thousand 

 guineas that he (Shafto) would find a man that 

 should ride 2,900 miles in twenty-nine successive 

 days, that is, 100 miles a day, on any one horse 

 each day, for twenty-nine days in succession, em- 

 ploying any number of horses, not exceeding 

 twenty- nine altogether. Woodcock started at 

 one o'clock a.m. on May 4, and finished about 

 six p.m. on June i (which was to be the day of 

 Lord Howe's perhaps more memorable victory in 

 1794), having employed but fourteen different 

 horses, and thus won the match. He might very 

 well have lost it, however ; for, after riding a 

 horse called Quidnunc (whether Mr. Button's by 

 Squirt, or Mr. Marshall's) sixty miles, it ' gave 

 out,' as the Americans say, and the 100 miles had 

 to be recommenced (at ten o'clock in the morning 

 too, when the sun was probably beginning to be 



