The Life of Fred Archer 19 
replied the enthusiast. Tom OHver, the steeplechase jockey, 
is said once to have lived in the Gloucester Road, and not far 
away Hved the La Terri^res, who were friends of Adam Lindsay 
Gordon's in their boyhood, and in later years watched over 
young Fred Archer's career with the greatest interest. 
William Archer L had thirteen children, one of whom, 
Albert, died in 1920 at Prestbury. Another son was Richard, 
who followed the family calling, riding for Alderman Coupland. 
Reuben, a very charming young man and a good horseman, 
died very early of consumption. 
The Georgian piUion-riding establishment of William 
Archer L boasted one great attraction in " the double-backed 
mare," whose back had been admirably adapted by nature to 
the double burden she had to carry. She was a beast with her 
likes and dislikes and with a will of her own. With the elder 
Fred Archer (the great jockey's uncle) she would always turn 
back into the yard, but with William Archer IL she never came 
back until William chose. 
At the time when William Archer H. was born, the Chelten- 
ham Races (first established upon the Cleeve Hill Downs in 
1819 as an annual fixture, and previously held occasionally on 
Nottingham Hill) were amongst the most popular meetings 
in the country. The last Duke of Gordon was in the town for 
the first annual meeting and gave a card-party in celebration 
of the event, to which he invited most of the fashionables then 
at the Spa. The stewards on this occasion were Lord Rosslyn 
and Colonel Berkeley : 
" Two followers of th' Ephesian Dame ; 
One pays his bows as haughty Nimrod drest, 
The other worships in a jockey's vest." 
His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester was also at 
Cheltenham in 1819. He had come in 1807, and enjoyed him- 
self so vastly that he came every year for the races until he 
died twenty-nine years later. A simple-minded and 
very kind man, not very clever perhaps, but clever enough 
