THE CHAISE MATCH 17 



historic carriage match, his lordship seems to have 

 called in the assistance of a brother peer, the Earl 

 of Eglinton, as the bet accepted by Theobald Taaffe, 

 Esq. (otherwise known as Count TaafFe), and Andrew 

 Sprowle, Esq., was made conjointly with Lords 

 March and Eglinton, who agreed, for the wager oT 

 one thousand guineas, to provide a four-wheeled 

 carriage which should carry a man and be drawn 

 by four horses nineteen miles in one hour ! 



That an attempt to establish a record of this 

 kind, which outpaces many, very many, of our 

 'common' or slow passenger trains, should have 

 set the racing and sporting world ablaze, was only 

 to be expected. Clubland, in common with the 

 more arid regions of Society, was agitated to its 

 foundations, and it would be an interesting study 

 in the gamblmg proclivities of the past could some 

 of the old ' bet-books ' (if in existence) be studied 

 together with the pocket-book records of the 

 members of some clubs. An extract from one 

 recently published^ will and must suffice for the 

 Avhole. This is dated October 18th, 1749 (some ten 

 months before the match took place), and records 

 that ' Colonel Waldegrave betts (sic) Lord March 



^ The History of Whitens, publisbed by the Hon. Algernon Bourke, 

 1892. 



