FAMOUS MASTERS 75 



bare-backed to the finish ! But it was in 1831, when 

 he was in his forty-fifth year, that he performed the feat 

 which has gained for him the greatest fame with pos- 

 terity when at Newmarket Houghton Meeting he made 

 a bet of a thousand guineas that he would ride two 

 hundred miles in ten consecutive hours, the number 

 and choice of horses to be unlimited. He divided the 

 distance into heats of four miles each, and, though he 

 stopped to lunch off a partridge and cold brandy and 

 water, and was thrown in the second hundred miles, 

 when odds of ten to one were freely laid against him, 

 he won this match against time by one hour eighteen 

 minutes. He died August i, 1866. 



