10 SPORTING STORIES 



of such a spendthrift as Richard Gargrave. When he 

 became Sheriff his extravagance was so wild that I think 

 he must have inherited a taint of madness. In private Hfe 

 he seems to have exhibited eccentricities similar to those 

 of such notorious sporting lunatics as Lord Barrymore, 

 Jack Mytton, and Mad Windham. Even now there linger 

 traditions of his midnight orgies, his insane wagers, his 

 appalling losses at cards and on the Turf. He is described 

 in contemporary records as a " notorious horse-courser," 

 and a horse-courser was the term applied to a man who 

 ran his horses for great sums of money, not without a 

 suspicion of sharp practice. He bred and raced " innumer- 

 able running horses of great speed," which apparently 

 were not quite speedy enough, as they soon brought him 

 to ruin. 



Roger Dodsworth, the Yorkshire antiquary, writing in 

 1634, says: "He now lyveth in the Temple (Alsatia) for 

 sanctuary, having consumed his whole estate to the value 

 of i^3500 per annum at least, and hath not a penny to 

 maintain himself but what the purchasers of some part of 

 his lands in reversion allow him." It must be remembered 

 that in those days ^^300 a year was considered a good 

 income for a country gentleman, and a squire with ^500 

 a year was regarded as wealthy. Sir Richard Gargrave's 

 ;^3500 would therefore have been equivalent to at least 

 ;^20,ooo a year in the present day. 



Finally, the gentleman who had owned one of the 

 largest estates in Yorkshire was reduced to be an attendant 

 of a team of pack-horses. Sir Richard Gargrave seems to 

 have followed this occupation for a couple of years. It 

 was the last phase of his chequered career. For, one night, 

 after he had brought his pack-horses safely into London, 

 he got gloriously drunk in an old Southwark hostelry, and 

 the next morning was found lying dead in the stable, with 

 his head pillowed on a pack-saddle. So died the greatest 

 " horse-courser" of his time. 



These two plungers were, at any rate, honest sportsmen. 

 They paid their debts and their wagers so long as they 

 had a gold piece left. But there were others less honour- 

 able — defaulters of a type familiar to the bookmakers of 



