i8 The Life of Fred Archer 
dwellings, but the love of sport has got into the town's very 
bones, and could not even be eradicated by Dean Close, " The 
Pope of Cheltenham," who fought with Colonel Berkeley for 
supremacy, and prevailed for a time, so that he broke up 
the grandstand on the racecourse and sold it for firewood. 
He is likewise said to have engineered the prosecution of 
George Jacob Holyoake. 
In Cheltenham there are many people who officially dis- 
approve of racing yet take a great pride in the Prince of 
Horsemen, who rode into his fellow-townsmen's respectable 
hearts so that the love of his memory crops up in most unlikely 
sou. Men and women who have hardly ever seen a racehorse, 
and, if they had, wouldn't know its head from its tail, are 
interested in Archer, and perhaps they will read this book. 
When William Archer II., Fred's father, and his brothers 
and sisters were boys and girls at St. George's Cottage, the 
Cheltenham Gas Works were of modest dimensions, and some 
of the shops and offices were lighted by rows of oil lamps. 
On the night when George IV. died there was a fearful thunder- 
storm and, appropriately as some thought, a strong smell of 
sulphur. The infant Gas Works suffered grievous injury, and 
considerable damage was done in Compton Abdale, one of the 
smallest and most beautiful of the Cotswold villages. Just 
where the Gas Company now makes bricks, and also on the 
site of St. Peter's Church, was a large piece of waste ground 
where pony and galloway races were held. In these William 
Archer II. is said to have competed " in his pinafore," and it 
is recorded of the infant jockey that he often won. 
The future steeplechase rider had come as a New Year's 
present to his parents in 1826. Both St. George's Place and 
the Lower High Street were at that time more fashionable 
localities than they are nowadays. Dr. Jenner lived in St. 
George's Place, and at his house there Charles James Fox once 
said to him : " And what is this cowpox like that everybody is 
talking about ? " " Like a dewdrop in a section of a roseleaf," 
