A CAVALIER'S NOTEBOOK 367 



have been in his youth the very beau-ideal of a dashing 

 cavalier. Writing in later years to Lady Haggerston of 

 Haggerston in Northumberland, whose daughter he had 

 wedded, he thus playfully pictures himself when he came as 

 a suitor to the house of his future father-in-law. " You will 

 remember what a pretty straight young thing all dashing 

 in scarlet I came to Haggerston." In the Civil War he 

 joined the Earl of Derby's regiment of Dragoons ; but his 

 career as a soldier was soon brought to a close. He was 

 one of the heroic band who stormed the Castle of Lancaster 

 on the 1 8th of March 1642. But in the assault his thigh 

 was broken by a shot, and he was a cripple for the rest of 

 his life. 



Up to this time William Blundell had been a gay young 

 spark, and went the pace with a vengeance, scattering his 

 money right and left, and ruffling it with the fastest of his 

 contemporaries on the race-course, at the card-table, and in 

 the hunting-field ; and, to judge from his description, the 

 cavalier squires of Lancaster must have been a " very warm 

 lot " indeed. The way they drank fairly takes one's breath 

 away. Here is a record of a drinking-bout which shows how 

 the good old English gentleman could put away his liquor : 

 " Sir William Stanley told me that at Hooton my Lord 



M , the three T.'s, and some few more in three or four 



nights consumed sixteen dozen bottles of wine, two hogs- 

 heads of beer, and two barrels of ale." 



And yet, with all their drinking habits, these Englishmen 

 were hardy, athletic, and active, capable of great feats of 

 endurance and speed. As a specimen of the arduous sport 

 in which the nobles of that day indulged, our " Cavalier " 

 gives the following : — 



On a Thursday in August 1664, " the Earls of Castlehaven 

 and Arran (whereof the first was about fifty years of age), 

 in St James's Park, upon a wager laid with the King, killed 

 a fat, strong buck by running on foot, having each a knife 

 in his hand. They had six hours to perform it, but they 

 did it in two and a half. They were a good while before 

 they could unherd him, then they run him till, being 

 extremely hot, he took the water in the pond, where they 

 threw stones at him, and toiled, and drove him so to the 



