54 The Life of Fred Archer 
last of the Gordons of Gicht, and Lindsay Gordon and he were 
distantly related.) 
Judge Coke was disgraced here in 1616 for hinting that 
the King had caused the death of Prince Henry — a very un- 
courtierlike suggestion even for the good old times. 
In the Post and Paddock, p. 10, we are told that in 1751 
" two or three were still living who remembered how the Court 
turned back to London at the news of the Rye House Plot ; 
and how Nell Gwyn held her infant son out of the window as 
her royal lover passed down the palace gardens to his stables, 
and threatened to drop him down if he was not made a duke 
on the spot. 
" Although the King had roasted little Sir Christopher Wren 
for thinking that the apartments at his hunting palace at New- 
market were quite high enough, there were none at Whitehall 
that he loved better. One day His Majesty might be ' seen 
among the elms at St. James's Park, chatting with Dryden 
about poetry,' and on the next his arm was on Tom Durfey's 
shoulder, and he would be taking a second to his ' Phillida, 
Phillida ! ' or ' To Horse, my brave boys of Newmarket ! To 
Horse ! ' The races have not degenerated since the Merrie 
Monarch and his wastrel crew crossed the threshold for the 
last time. 
" A writer of Queen Anne's reign speaks of ' the great 
concourse of nobility and gentry on the Heath, all biting one 
another as much as was possible,' and draws no very flattering 
contrast between them and the ' horse-coursers of Smithfield.' 
" A hundred and thirty-four years after Francis, sixth Earl 
of Rutland, was nominated a Knight of the Garter at New- 
market, his descendant John Manners, Marquis of Granby, by 
his marriage with Lady Frances Leveson, became Lord of the 
Manor of Newmarket, and this property has been successively 
held by the Dukes of Rutland ever since." 
The town of Newmarket is divided into two parishes — All 
Saints and St. Mary's, the former in Chieveley Hundred, 
