When after his death the Councillor's wretched stud were on their way to be sold by auction they excited universal pity from the humane in the towns and villages through which they passed. Many of the horses sold for the trifling sum of two or three guineas each, owing to the wretched condition of the poor animals. Councillor Lade, in his Turf transactions as elsewhere, was so consistently parsimonious even to those whom it would have been good policy to conciliate that every man's hand was against him, even that of his own servants. One of his manias was to run his horses as much as possible at race meetings near his home, in order to avoid the expenses of travelling. The years 1797 and 1798 were the most prosperous of his Turf career. Seven of his horses went to the post for twenty-four plates and purses, of which Truss, Will, and Grey Pilot won seven fifties--two at Ascot, two at Abingdon, and one each at Reading, Winchester, and Stockbridge. Councillor Lade was in himself a singular and unsociable man, seldom seen in company, upon the race-course or elsewhere. Cynically cold and innately parsimonious, few cared to sojourn beneath what might be justly termed, in more senses than one, a habitation without a roof. Hospitality was alien to the spirit of Cannon Park, and the building itself was one entire mass of chilling frigidity which betokened a total lack of good cheer. The owner was constantly involved in pecuniary disputes and lawsuits with his dependents, in which he was usually worsted. It was not infrequently his practice to drive his curricle and greys without a servant the fifty-seven miles to Cannon Park, not even taking them once out of the harness; a handful of hay, and two or three quarts of water at Salt Hill, and Spratley's, the Bear, at Reading, in addition to the turnpikes, constituted the entire expense of the journey, it being an irrevocable opinion of his that servants on the road were more troublesome and expensive than their masters. The Councillor was married to a lady of excellent family, who, owing to mental trouble, lived in seclusion. This, however, did not trouble him much, for he took care to make up for the lack of a wife's society by a profusion of female friends, who enlivened his elegant house in Pall Mall, his rural cottage near Turnham Green, and even his unadorned inhospitable mansion at Cannon Park.