The third and concluding volume, commencing with Bendigo (William Thompson), will include the Decline and Fall of the P.R., with occasional flickerings of its olden fire, till its final expiry in the doings of Tom Sayers, John Camel Heenan, and Tom King. _Wood Green, August, 1880._ [Illustration: THOMAS WINTER (SPRING), CHAMPION. _From a Drawing by_ GEORGE SHARPLES _in 1822_. ] PUGILISTICA: THE HISTORY OF BRITISH BOXING. PERIOD V.—1814 TO 1824. FROM THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF TOM SPRING TO THAT OF JEM WARD. CHAPTER I. TOM SPRING (CHAMPION)—1814–1824. A new era in boxing arose about the period of Spring’s appearance and Tom Cribb’s later battles, of which Thomas Winter (Spring) was the exponent, and of which school Jem Ward (in the next Period), Peter Crawley, Ned Neale, Jem Burn, Baldwin, Young Dutch Sam, and others, with numerous light weights, carried out the exemplification and practice. This we shall have ample occasion to notice in the coming chapters; for the present we will address ourselves to the milling career of Thomas Spring. Thomas Winter, who adopted the name of Spring on his appearance in the ring as a professor, was born at Fownhope, Herefordshire, February 22nd, 1795. His fighting-weight thirteen stone two pounds; later, thirteen stone four pounds; height, five feet eleven and a-half inches. The relations and connexions of Thomas Winter, at Hereford and in the neighbourhood, were respectable; and when he tried his “’prentice han’,” at the age of seventeen, in battle with Hollands, a big countryman of some provincial repute, he won by science and steadiness. He thus gained a name is the immediate neighbourhood of Mordeford, where he was in service with a butcher, who was in after life a firm friend and an admirer of Tom’s prowess. Two years afterwards (in 1814), one Henley, a local celebrity, challenged Tom for three sovereigns a-side. This also came off at Mordeford, when in eleven rounds Henley was satisfied that he had found his master in the youth whom he had challenged to the fray. Spring two years afterwards made his way to the metropolis. Here he met one Stringer, a Yorkshireman, from Rawcliffe, renowned for its “paddocks.” Stringer was under the wing of Richmond, and was proposed as a “trial horse” for the young aspirant Spring. The battle took place at Moulsey, September, 9, 1817. We take the contemporary report as giving the first impressions produced on those who did not foresee the brilliant career of the youthful débutant.