“In somer in whitsontyde whan knights most on horsbacke ride a cours let they make on a daye Stedes and palfraye for to assaye whiche horse that best may ren thre myles the cours was then who that might ryd should have £ LI. of redy golde.” Edward III. bought some running horses at £13, 6s. 8d. each; and in the ninth year of his reign the King of Navarre made him a present of two running horses. Still, very little is heard of race horses until the time of Elizabeth and James I. Bishop Hall, of Exeter and Norwich, in one of his Satires, writes: “Dost thou prize Thy brute beasts’ worth by their dam’s qualities? Say’st thou, this colt shall prove a swift-paced steed, Only because a jennet did him breed? Or say’st thou, this same horse shall win the prize, Because his dam was swiftest Trunchifice,[48] Or Runcevall his syre; himself a galloway? While, like a tireling jade, he lags half way.” In 1599, private matches by gentlemen, who were their own riders, were very common, and, in the reign of James I., public races were established at various places, where the discipline and mode of preparing the horses for running, etc., were much the same as they are now. The most celebrated races of that time were called the “Bell Courses,” the prize of the winner being a bell—hence the saying of “to bear the bell”; and a tradition of it still remains in the couplet with which children’s races are started. “Bell horses! Bell horses! what time of day? One o’clock, two o’clock, three, and away!” Perhaps the oldest record that we have of these silver bells is those of Paisley, which date from 1620, or 1608, as on that date there is an entry in the town books showing the purchase of a silver bell. The silver bells are now run for, but there are 100 guineas attached to them. Silver bells were also run for in this reign, at Gatherly, in Yorkshire, Croydon, Chester, and Theobalds, the King’s hunting lodge. Mr J. C. Whyte, in his _History of the British Turf_, says that in Harl. MS. 2150, fol. 235, is an account of a ceremony performed with the race for a bell at Chester, in the presence of the Mayor, at the Cross, in the Rodhi, or Roody, an open place near the City. I have examined the MS. but cannot find the passage, so extract from his work the following: