Newmarket was under a cloud of neglect during the Commonwealth, for under Puritan rule horse-racing was forbidden, but with the Restoration its fortunes grew bright. There was never a more ardent turfite than Charles II., who was continually visiting Newmarket, and maintained here a dissolute Court that shocked even some contemporaries.
Evelyn, the diarist, in 1671 “found the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting, and revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout than a Christian Court. The Duke of Buckingham was now in mighty favour, and had with him that impudent woman, the Countess of Shrewsbury, with his band of fiddlers.”
That was a very poor indictment. Much more might have been said of a Court which included Louise de la Quérouaille, afterwards created Duchess of Portsmouth, Nell Gwynne, and numerous others of their stamp. The wholesale and unblushing—nay, boastful—immorality of that Court is amazing; and still more amazing is the historical condonation of viciousness that has made Nell Gwynne a heroine. The origin of Nell, whose name popular usage has spelt as above, but which seems to have been originally written “Gwyn,” is almost as vague as that of Homer. Seven cities have claimed that old Greek as a native. Nell, whose name speaks her Welsh origin, was born in three places: Hereford, Oxford, and the Coalyard, Drury Lane. Reared in the foulest slums, and the common property of quite a number of persons, she yet became the favourite of a King, the mother of a Duke, and the grandmother of a Bishop. One feels sorry for that dignitary of the Church.
Charles, Lord Buckhurst, was the man who made her over to Charles II. It was quite a businesslike transaction, and his price was the step in the Peerage that made him Earl of Dorset. But that was not the first change of proprietors, for an earlier love had been Charles Hart, an actor. Her new protector, the King, she therefore spoke of as her Charles the third. That is a well-known story, how she procured a title for her boy. “Come here, you little bastard!” she called the child in presence of his father, the King. Charles was shocked at the coarseness of the expression, but she was prepared with a retort. “That is the only name I have to give the poor boy,” she said. As a result of this, the boy was christened Charles Beauclerk, created Earl of Burford in 1676, and Duke of St. Albans 1684.
Newmarket, with a licentious and idle Court seeking only to be amused, was in the time of Charles II. as distinguished for eccentric wagers and sporting feats as Brighton in after-centuries under the protection of the Prince Regent. Lord Digby in 1670 staked £50 that he would walk five miles in an hour, stark naked and bare-foot, and had the mortification of losing by the narrow margin of half a minute. Charles and a great crowd of courtiers were present. They all had “something on,” as well as clothes, but whether they backed my Lord Digby or not we are not told.
Then there was Captain John Gibbs, a gambler and racing-man of the same period, who laid a wager of £500 that he would drive his light chaise and four horses up and down the steepest part of the Devil’s Ditch, and won it, “to the surprise of all the spectators.” He performed the feat by making a very light chaise with a jointed perch and without any pole. The hero of that occasion lies buried in Attleborough Church, with a long set of eulogistic verses over him, which do not, however, refer to any of his sporting exploits. He died, it seems, October 22nd, 1695, forty-eight years of age.
BARCLAY OF URY ON HIS WALKING MATCH.
A sporting event of much later date and not quite so extravagant a nature was Captain Robert Barclay of Ury’s sixty-four-miles’ walk from Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, to Newmarket, on a hot July day in 1803. He accomplished that feat in ten hours. This famous pedestrian, son of another Robert Barclay, who once walked the 510 miles from London to Ury in ten days, was the hero of many such sporting performances, and in 1809 walked 1,000 miles on the Heath in 1,000 consecutive hours. He was thirty years of age at the time. On Wednesday, May 31st, he began what was then regarded as “the most remarkable feat ever recorded in the annals of pedestrianism,” concluding it on Wednesday, July 12th, at 3.37 p.m., in the presence of 10,000 spectators, with twenty-three minutes to spare. The wager (for no one in those days did anything without wagering) was for 1,000 guineas a side. It was supposed that not less than 100,000 guineas changed hands among those 10,000 onlookers. His mile average the first week was 14 min. 54 sec. During the last week it fell to 21 min. 4 sec., and his weight was reduced from 13 stone 4 lb. to 11 stone. This performance was undertaken without any training, and so does not compare on even terms with those of Edward Payson Weston, the American pedestrian, who, at the beginning of 1878, walked 1,000 miles in 398 hrs. 19 min., at the Cricket Ground, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and out of those 398 hours rested altogether 150 hrs. 38½ min. Weston, who improved even on this by walking 1,977½ miles in 1,000 hours along the roads, at the beginning of 1879, trained continually.
Another famous sporting item of this period was Abraham Wood’s forty miles running match on Newmarket Heath, on April 16th, 1807. The stake was 500 guineas, and the performance was to be concluded in five hours. Wood, who was a native of Mildrew, in Lancashire, and considered, as an athlete, second only to Captain Barclay, completed the forty miles in four minutes under the five hours. He ran the first eight miles in 48 minutes, and the first twenty in 2 hours 7 minutes.